History, Philosophy and Science Teaching argues that science teaching and science teacher education can be improved if teachers know something of the history and philosophy of science and if these topics are included in the science curriculum. The history and philosophy of science have important roles in many of the theoretical issues that science educators need to address: the goals of science education; what constitutes an appropriate science curriculum for (...) all students; how science should be taught in traditional cultures; what integrated science is; how scientific literacy can be promoted; and the conflict which can occur between science curriculum and deep-seated religious or cultural values and knowledge. In part, answers to these questions hinge on views about the nature of science, views that are best informed by historical and philosophical study. Outlining the history of liberal, or contextual, approaches to the teaching of science, Michael Matthews elaborates contemporary curriculum developments that explicitly address questions about the nature and the history of science. He provides examples of classroom teaching and develops useful arguments on constructivism, multicultural science education and teacher education. The book will appeal to school and university science teachers, educators of science teachers, and historians and philosophers of science. (shrink)

Classroom discussion constitutes a unique opportunity for student deliberation and is often believed to be a desirable attribute of Social Science teaching. Yet, despite its potential, large scale observational research on discussion in Nordic classrooms is scarce. To address this shortcoming, the present study investigated the prevalence and contexts of classroom discussion in a Nordic sample of 375 teaching segments (each lasting 15 min). The sample was gathered through video observations, and discussion was measured by an element (...) from the Protocol for Language Arts Teaching Observations. Discussion was present in 39.2% of the investigated segments but was very unequally distributed across classes. While this study found classroom discussion to be most likely during small group work, in the middle of a 45-min lesson, and in schools with high achieving students, more research is needed to determine the sources of inequality in social science students’ opportunities for classroom deliberation. (shrink)

Technological developments affect and disturb all aspects of human existence and values more than any other factor in our modern man-made world. This calls for responsive higher education which will produce better decision-makers capable of being actively, rationally, and creatively involved in the continuous search for solutions to our current and future problems in a world of conflicting interests and values. Consequently, science teaching in future higher education should be drastically changed in order to be relevant to needs (...) of both students and society rather than to reflect the needs of the disciplines per se. (shrink)

This anthology opens new perspectives in the domain of history, philosophy, and science teaching research. Its four sections are: first, science, culture and education; second, the teaching and learning of science; third, curriculum development and justification; and fourth, indoctrination. The first group of essays deal with the neglected topic of science education and the Enlightenment tradition. These essays show that many core commitments of modern science education have their roots in this tradition, and (...) consequently all can benefit from a more informed awareness of its strengths and weaknesses. Other essays address research on leaning and teaching from the perspectives of social epistemology and educational psychology. Included here is the first ever English translation of Ernst Mach’s most influential 1890 paper on ‘The Psychological and Logical Moment in Natural Science Teaching’. This paper launched the influential Machian tradition in education. Other essays address concrete cases of the utilisation of history and philosophy in the development and justification of school science curricula. These are instances of the supportive relation of HPS&ST research to curriculum theorising. Finally, two essays address the topic of Indoctrination in science education; a subject long-discussed in philosophy of education, but inadequately in science education. This book is a timely reminder of why history and philosophy of science are urgently needed to support understanding of science. From major traditions such as the Enlightenment to the tensions around cultural studies of science, the book provides a comprehensive context for the scientific endeavour, drawing on curriculum and instructional examples. Sibel Erduran, University of Oxford, UK The scholarship that each of the authors in this volume offers deepens our understanding of what we teach in science and why that understanding matters. This is an important book exploring a wide set of issues and should be read by anyone with an interest in science or science education. Jonathan Osborne, Stanford University, USA This volume presents new and updated perspectives in the field, such as the Enlightenment Tradition, Cultural Studies, Indoctrination in Science Education, and Nature of Science. Highly recommended. Mansoor Niaz, Universidad de Oriente, Venezuela This volume provides an extremely valuable set of insights into educational issues related to the history and philosophy of science. Michael J Reiss, University College London, UK. (shrink)

The main argument of this article is that science teaching based on a pedagogy of questions is to be modeled on a hermeneutic conception of scientific research as a process of the constitution of texts. This process is spelled out in terms of hermeneutic phenomenology. A text constituted by scientific practices is at once united by a hermeneutic fore-structure and scattered in a diversity of spaces of representation. The educational questioning that should reveal the interpretative aspects of the (...) textualization of scientific research consists of four groups of issues. The ultimate aim of this kind of science teaching is the education of ?internal critics of science' who are able to make explicit hidden possibilities of doing research. (shrink)

This paper describes an attempt to introduce philosophy and history of science to pre-service science teachers. I argue briefly for the view that science in the schools cannot be taught without implicitly assuming a particular philosophy of science. Therefore, both philosophy and history of science are necessary components of undergraduate science education courses.

Annotation Contains 17 contributions which together aim to speed the process of epistemological reform of undergraduate science teaching in order to align it with the social constructivist reform goals of the science education community. Chapters include impressionistic accounts, studies of recent transformative teaching endeavors, and radical new approaches to learner-sensitive science teaching. Of likely interest to graduate teaching students, science educators, and the educational discourse community. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (...) (booknews.com). (shrink)

School science education is currently the subject of much debate. Historians and philosophers of science should play a role in this debate. Since the late nineteenth century there has been a persistent, if minor, tradition arguing for the incorporation of historical and philosophical dimensions in the teaching of school science. With the current crisis in science teaching, there are encouraging signs that more attention is being paid to this tradition. What is required is much (...) greater collaboration between philosophers, historians, and science educators, particularly in the training of teachers. (shrink)

This inaugural handbook documents the distinctive research field that utilizes history and philosophy in investigation of theoretical, curricular and pedagogical issues in the teaching of science and mathematics. It is contributed to by 130 researchers from 30 countries; it provides a logically structured, fully referenced guide to the ways in which science and mathematics education is, informed by the history and philosophy of these disciplines, as well as by the philosophy of education more generally. The first handbook (...) to cover the field, it lays down a much-needed marker of progress to date and provides a platform for informed and coherent future analysis and research of the subject. -/- The publication comes at a time of heightened worldwide concern over the standard of science and mathematics education, attended by fierce debate over how best to reform curricula and enliven student engagement in the subjects There is a growing recognition among educators and policy makers that the learning of science must dovetail with learning about science; this handbook is uniquely positioned as a locus for the discussion. -/- The handbook features sections on pedagogical, theoretical, national, and biographical research, setting the literature of each tradition in its historical context. Each chapter engages in an assessment of the strengths and weakness of the research addressed, and suggests potentially fruitful avenues of future research. A key element of the handbook’s broader analytical framework is its identification and examination of unnoticed philosophical assumptions in science and mathematics research. It reminds readers at a crucial juncture that there has been a long and rich tradition of historical and philosophical engagements with science and mathematics teaching, and that lessons can be learnt from these engagements for the resolution of current theoretical, curricular and pedagogical questions that face teachers and administrators. (shrink)

(2007). Strategies For Successful Science Teaching. Sharon Brendzel. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2005. pp. 152. $26.00 (paper). Educational Studies: Vol. 41, No. 3, pp. 264-268.

This essay explores the benefits of utilizing non-scientific examples and analogies in teaching philosophy of science courses. These examples can help resolve two basic difficulties faced by most instructors, especially when teaching lower-level courses: first, they can prompt students to take an active interest in the class material, since the examples will involve aspects of the culture well-known, or at least more interesting, to the students; and second, these familiar, less-threatening examples will lessen the students' collective anxieties (...) and open them up to learning the material more easily. To demonstrate this strategy of constructing and employing non-scientific examples, a lengthy analogy between musical styles and Kuhn's theory of scientific revolutions is developed. (shrink)

This paper describes an attempt to develop a pedagogy for teaching philosophy in science rather than a philosophy of science to be taught in the Bulgarian educational system.

Relationship research suggests that romantic relationships will suffer most from four conversation poisons: expressions of contempt, excessive criticism, defensiveness, and stonewalling. John Gottman and his collaborators have long urged couples to deploy the four antidotes of gentle start-ups, building a culture of appreciation, taking responsibility, and physiological self-soothing. I explain how these conversation poisons contribute to political polarization and how the antidotes can help.

If any nature of science perspective is to be incorporated in science-related curricula, it is hard to imagine a satisfactory didactic toolkit that neglects the social studies of science, the academic field of study of the institutional structures and networks of science. Knowledge production takes place in a world populated by actors, instruments, and ideas, and various epistemic cultures are responsible for providing the concepts, abstractions, and techniques that slowly trickle down the information pathways to become (...) stabilized in university curricula or ossified in high-school science, losing much of the tacit knowledge along the way that enabled the production of knowledge in the first place. The discussion of the sociology of science and the sociology of scientific knowledge is followed by a short overview of recent approaches in science studies and the studies of expertise. (shrink)