The inclusion of the history and philosophy of science in science teaching is widely accepted, but the actual state of implementation in schools is still poor. This article investigates possible reasons for this discrepancy. The demands science teachers associate with HPS-based teaching play an important role, since these determine teachers’ decisions towards implementing its practices and ideas. We therefore investigate the perceptions of 8 HPS-experienced German middle school physics teachers within and beyond an HPS implementation project. (...) Within focused interviews these teachers describe and evaluate the challenges of planning and conducting HPS-based physics lessons using collaboratively developed HPS teaching materials. The teachers highlight a number of obstacles to the implementation of HPS specific to this approach: finding and adapting HPS teaching material, knowing and using instructional design principles for HPS lessons, presenting history in a motivating way, dealing with students’ problematic ideas about the history of science, conducting open-ended historical classroom investigations in the light of known historical outcomes, using historical investigations to teach modern science concepts, designing assessments to target HPS-specific learning outcomes, and justifying the HPS-approach against curriculum and colleagues. Teachers' perceived demands point out critical aspects of pedagogical content knowledge necessary for confident, comfortable and effective teaching of HPS-based science. They also indicate how HPS teacher education and the design of curricular materials can be improved to make implementing HPS into everyday teaching less demanding. (shrink)

For nearly a decade we have taught the history and philosophy of science as part of courses aimed at the professional development of physics teachers. The focus of the history of science instruction is on the stages in the development of the concepts and theories of physics. For this instruction, we designed activities to help the teachers organize their understanding of this historical development. The activities include scientific modeling using archaic theories. We conducted surveys to gauge (...) the impact on the teachers of including the conceptual history of physics in the professional development courses. The teachers report greater confidence in their knowledge of the history of physics, that they reflect on this history for their teaching, and that they use of the history of physics for their classroom instruction. In this paper, we provide examples of our activities, the rationale for their design, and discuss the outcomes for the teachers of the instruction. (shrink)

The following article describes a pilot study on the possible integration of digital historiography into teaching practice. It focuses on Émilie Du Châtelet’s considerations of space and time against the background of Leibniz’s program of analysis situs. Historians have characterized philosophical controversies on space and time as a dichotomy between the absolute and relational concepts of space and time. In response to this, the present case study pursues two aims: First, it shows that the common portrayal simplifies the complex (...) pattern of change and the semantic shift from absolute-relational concepts of space and time to invariance and conservation principles. Second, against this background, I present the Online Reading Guide on Émilie Du Châtelet’s Foundations of Physics, a teaching and research project designed to help navigate Du Châtelet’s Institutions physiques. This project makes Du Châtelet’s important text visible to a broad audience and allows for a more critical and deeper view on classical topics of the history of philosophy and science in a more accessible way than traditional introductions. (shrink)

A deaf scientist, who teaches deaf physics students, writes about deaf people throughout history who overcame negative attitudes to contribute significantly to various fields of science. He also discusses education, including the establishment of Gallaudet University, and suggests ways representation of deaf people could be increased in the scientific community.

This book brings together a broad spectrum of authors, both from inside and from outside Cuba, who describe the development of Cuba's scientific system from the colonial period to the present. It is a unique documentation of the self-organizing power of a local scientific community engaged in scientific research on an international level. The first part includes several contributions that reconstruct the different stages of the history of physics in Cuba, from its beginnings in the late colonial era (...) to the present. The second part comprises testimonies of Cuban physicists, who offer lively insights from the perspective of the actors themselves. The third part presents a series of testimonies by foreign physicists, some of whom were directly involved in developing Cuban physics, in particular in the development of teaching and research activities in the early years of the Escuela de Física. The fourth part of the volume deals with some of the issues surrounding the publishing of scientific research in Cuba. Cuba's recent history and current situation are very controversial issues. Little is known about the development and status of higher education and scientific research on the island. However, Cuba has one of the highest proportions in the world of people with a university degree or doctorate and is known for its highly developed medical system. This book focuses on a comprehensive overview of the history of the development of one specific scientific discipline: physics in Cuba. It traces the evolution of an advanced research system in a developing country and shows a striking capacity to link the development of modern research with the concrete needs of the country and its population. A little known aspect is the active participation of several "western" physicists and technicians during the 1960s, the role of summer schools, organized by French, Italian, and other western physicists, as well as the active collaboration with European universities.<. (shrink)

This book explores the rise of theoretical physics in 19th century Germany. The authors show how the junior second physicist in German universities over time became the theoretical physicist, of equal standing to the experimental physicist. Gustav Kirchhoff, Hermann von Helmholtz, and Max Planck are among the great German theoretical physicists whose work and career are examined in this book. Physics was then the only natural science in which theoretical work developed into a major teaching and research (...) specialty in its own right. Readers will discover how German physicists arrived at a well-defined field of theoretical physics with well understood and generally accepted goals and needs. The authors explain the nature of the work of theoretical physics with many examples, taking care always to locate the research within the workplace. The book is a revised and shortened version of Intellectual Mastery of Nature: Theoretical Physics from Ohm to Einstein, a two-volume work by the same authors. This new edition represents a reformulation of the larger work. It retains what is most important in the original work, while including new material, sharpening discussions, and making the research more accessible to readers. It presents a thorough examination of a seminal era in physics. (shrink)

Today, there is a large consensus in science, politics and society about the relevance and necessity for advancing gender equality. Despite increased measures and initiatives for gender-appropriate research and teaching and for funding programs, women are still strongly underrepresented in science. The number of women in philosophy of science is conspicuously low. While gender and diversity issues are at the top of the agenda in other sciences, disciplines, and scientific cultures, and gender research has long since found its way (...) into practice, there is a considerable research deficit in philosophy of science vis-à-vis such approaches, apart from a few critical voices from feminist science studies. The aim of this chapter is to provide guidance on how to make women’s participation in research visible from a historical, constructive, and systematic point of view by using selected examples from philosophy and history of physics. (shrink)

In the history of science, the birth of classical chemistry and thermodynamics produced an anomaly within Newtonian mechanical paradigm: force and acceleration were no longer citizens of new cited sciences. Scholars tried to reintroduce them within mechanistic approaches, as the case of the kinetic gas theory. Nevertheless, Thermodynamics, in general, and its Second Law, in particular, gradually affirmed their role of dominant not-reducible cognitive paradigms for various scientific disciplines: more than twenty formulations of Second Law—a sort of indisputable intellectual (...) wealth—are conceived after 1824 Sadi Carnot’s original statement and a multitude of entropy functions are proposed after 1865 Clausius’ former definition. Furthermore, at the end of nineteenth century, thermodynamics extended its cognitive domain to chemistry. Mainly thanks to Gibbs, a brand new discipline—chemical thermodynamics or physical chemistry—gradually affirmed its role inside the scientific community. This paper reports the former results of collaborative research program in the History and Epistemology of Science as well as Nature of Science Teaching aimed at retracing the foundations of the physical chemistry. Specifically, the research is structured in three parts: historical-epistemic reflections on fundamental thermodynamic concepts and principles—such as reversible process, heat, temperature, thermal equilibrium and Clausius’ Second Law—that play a structural role inside modern physical chemistry; panoramic overview on the entropy, whose polysemy makes it one of the most demanding concepts for scholars, teachers and students while approaching thermodynamics; conceptualization of chemical equilibrium as complex entity according to the dual epistemological approach offered by Gibbs’ thermodynamic model and the kinetic standpoint by Guldberg and Waage. In particular, the present work details an original reading of thermodynamic principles with the aim of setting forth a rationalized multidisciplinary substrate whereon the foundational concepts of reversible process and thermal equilibrium can be set. (shrink)

This paper addresses the context of emergence, development, and current status of the use of history and philosophy of science in science education in Brazil. After a short overview of the three areas (history of science, philosophy of science, and science education) in Brazil, the paper focuses on the application of this approach to teaching physics, chemistry, and biology at the secondary school level. The first Brazilian researches along this line appeared more consistently in the decade (...) of 1970. From 1980 onwards, the importance of this approach became widely accepted, and the subject became a common theme of dissertations and theses, appearing in conferences and educational journals. Since 1998, the use of history and philosophy of science was included among the government recommendations for secondary school science teaching in Brazil. Nowadays, this is an important line of research in graduate programs on science and mathematics education. However, the actual use of this approach in secondary education is still a desideratum. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss the history of the concept of function and emphasize in particular how problems in physics have led to essential changes in its definition and application in mathematical practices. Euler defined a function as an analytic expression, whereas Dirichlet defined it as a variable that depends in an arbitrary manner on another variable. The change was required when mathematicians discovered that analytic expressions were not sufficient to represent physical phenomena such as the vibration of (...) a string and heat conduction. The introduction of generalized functions or distributions is shown to stem partly from the development of new theories of physics such as electrical engineering and quantum mechanics that led to the use of improper functions such as the delta function that demanded a proper foundation. We argue that the development of student understanding of mathematics and its nature is enhanced by embedding mathematical concepts and theories, within an explicit–reflective framework, into a rich historical context emphasizing its interaction with other disciplines such as physics. Students recognize and become engaged with meta-discursive rules governing mathematics. Mathematics teachers can thereby teach inquiry in mathematics as it occurs in the sciences, as mathematical practice aimed at obtaining new mathematical knowledge. We illustrate such a historical teaching and learning of mathematics within an explicit and reflective framework by two examples of student-directed, problem-oriented project work following the Roskilde Model, in which the connection to physics is explicit and provides a learning space where the nature of mathematics and mathematical practices are linked to natural science. (shrink)

In 1911 the Wilson cloud chamber opened new possibilities for physics pedagogy. The instrument, which visualized particles’ tracks as trails of condensed vapour, was adopted by physicists to pursue frontier research on the Compton effect, the positron and the transmutation of atomic nuclei. But as the present paper will show, Wilson's instrument did not just open up new research opportunities, but the possibility of developing a different kind of teaching. Equipped with a powerful visualization tool, some physicists–teachers employed (...) Wilson's instrument to introduce their students to a wide range of phenomena and concepts, ranging from the behaviour of clouds to Einstein's photon, the wave–particle duality and the understanding of the nucleus. This paper uses the notes, books and prototypes of these pioneering physicists–teachers to compose a pedagogical history of the Wilson cloud chamber, documenting an episode of immense ingenuity, creativity and scientific imagination. (shrink)

The paper describes the author's experience in using the history of science in teaching physics to science teachers. lt was found that history becomes more useful to teachers when explicitly combined with 'investigative' experimentation, which, in turn. can benefit from various uses of the history of science.

This anthology contains selected papers from the 'Science as Culture' conference held at Lake Como, and Pavia University Italy, 15-19 September 1999. The conference, attended by about 220 individuals from thirty countries, was a joint venture of the International History, Philosophy and Science Teaching Group (its fifth conference) and the History of Physics and Physics Teaching Division of the European Physical Society (its eighth conference). The magnificient Villa Olmo, on the lakeshore, provided a memorable (...) location for the presentors of the 160 papers and the audience that discussed them. The conference was part of local celebrations of the bicentenary of Alessandro Volta's creation of the battery in 1799. Volta was born in Como in 1745, and for forty years from 1778 he was professor of experimental physics at Pavia University. The conference was fortunate to have had the generous financial support of the Italian government's Volta Bicentenary Fund, Lombardy region, Pavia University, Italian Research Council, and Kluwer Academic Publishers. The papers included here, have or will be, published in the journal Science & Education, the inaugural volume (1992) of which was a landmark in the history of science education publication, because it was the first journal in the field devoted to contributions from historical, philosophical and sociological scholarship. Clearly these 'foundational' disciplines inform numerous theoretical, curricular and pedagogical debates in science education. Contemporary Concerns The reseach promoted by the International and European Groups, and by the journal, is central to science education programmes in most areas of the world. (shrink)

In this article, we put forward a new strategy for teaching the concept of energy. In the first section, we discuss how the concept is currently treated in educational programmes at primary and secondary level (taking the case of France), the learning difficulties that arise as well as the main teaching strategies presented in science education literature. In the second section, we argue that due to the complexity of the concept of energy, rethinking how it is taught should (...) involve teacher training specifically developed for the concept. In our view, Epistemology and the History of Science and Technology (EHST) is the best method for a full understanding of the concept of energy and should thus be included in the teacher training programme. In the third section, we provide a general framework for a teacher training programme on energy, based on the history and epistemology of the concept and structured on the following three questions: ‘What is the origin of the concept of energy?’, ‘What is energy?’ and ‘What purpose does the concept of energy serve?’. (shrink)

Science lessons using inquiry only or history of science with inquiry were used for explicit reflective nature of science instruction for second-, third-, and fourth-grade students randomly assigned to receive one of the treatments. Students in both groups improved in their understanding of creative NOS, tentative NOS, empirical NOS, and subjective NOS as measured using VNOS-D as pre- and post-test surveys. Social and cultural context of science was not accessible for the students. Students in second, third, and fourth grades (...) were able to attain adequate views of empirical NOS, the role of observation and inference, creative and imaginative NOS, and subjective NOS. Students were not able to express adequate views of socially and culturally embedded NOS. Most gains in NOS eroded by the next school year, except for tentative NOS for both groups and creative NOS for the inquiry group. (shrink)

Research in science education has recognized the importance of history and philosophy of science (HPS), and this has facilitated the evaluation of science textbooks. Purpose of this chapter is to review research based on analyses of science textbooks that explicitly use a history and philosophy of science framework. This review has focused on studies published in the 15-year period (1996–2010) and has drawn on the following major science education journals: International Journal of Science Education, Journal of Research in (...) Science Teaching, Science Education, and Science & Education. Based on HPS-related criteria, 52 articles were selected for review, and of these 28 were published in Science & Education, which clearly shows the importance of HPS for this journal. Selected articles were classified in the following subject areas depending on the textbooks analyzed: university biology textbooks (n = 2), university chemistry textbooks (n = 14), university physics textbooks (n = 17), and primary, secondary, and high school textbooks (n = 19). Results obtained revealed the following: (a) Most biology, chemistry, physics, and school science textbooks lack a history and philosophy of science perspective; (b) most of the textbooks analyzed were published in the USA and to a much lesser extent in other countries; (c) few studies provided details of the procedure and reliability of the application of criteria/rubric for analyzing textbooks; (d) some of the topics analyzed in the textbooks were nature of science, atomic structure, Newtonian mechanics, quantum mechanics, special theory of relativity, and evolution; (e) textbooks avoided including controversial and difficult aspects of different topics (e.g., concepts of force, weight, heat, temperature, origin of the quantum hypothesis, oil drop experiment, Millikan’s data supported Einstein’s photoelectric equation but not his theory); and (f) various science topics provide an opportunity to illustrate the tentative nature of scientific knowledge, and still very few textbooks referred to this important aspect. As textbooks do refer to laws and theories while referring to historical content, it is concluded that HPS is already “inside” the science curriculum provided textbook authors make an effort to scrutinize the historical reconstructions while dealing with the different topics. (shrink)

The didactics of astronomy is a relatively young field with respect to that of other sciences. Historical issues have most often been part of the teaching of astronomy, although that often does not stem from a specific didactics. The teaching of astronomy is often subsumed under that of physics. One can easily consider that, from an educational standpoint, astronomy requires the same mathematical or physical strategies. This approach may be adequate in many cases but cannot stand as (...) a general principle for the teaching of astronomy. This chapter offers in a first part a brief overview of the status of astronomy education research and of the role of the history and philosophy of science (HPS) in astronomy education. In a second part, it attempts to illustrate possible ways to structure the teaching of astronomy around its historical development so as to pursue a quality education and contextualized learning. (shrink)

The appearance and proliferation of physics laboratories in the academic institutions of Britain between 1865 and 1885 is an established feature of Victorian science. However, neither of the two existing modern accounts of this development have adequately documented the predominant function of these early physics laboratories as centres for theteachingof physics, characteristically stressing instead the exceptional cases of the research laboratories at Glasgow and Cambridge. Hence these accounts have attempted to explain, somewhat misleadingly, the genesis of these (...) laboratories purely by reference to the stimuli of professionalizedresearchprogrammes, instead of considering the contemporary growth in demand for the professional laboratory teaching of physics. In failing to consider such physics laboratories in terms of the political economy of British education, these accounts have also faileda fortiorito correlate this development with the contemporaneous extension of laboratory teaching methods to other scientific disciplines, a movement dubbed as a laboratory ‘revolution’ by later nineteenth-century commentators. (shrink)

History of science provides access to a reservoir of meaningful experiments that can be studied and reproduced in classrooms. This is the case of Joule’s paddle-wheel experiment which displays the potentiality to help students improve their understanding of the concept of energy. This experiment has been mentioned in many physics textbooks during the twentieth century. Recently, it has received renewed attention by several researchers in science education. However, the accounts of Joule’s experiment proposed by these researchers are at (...) variance with each other: either in terms of equivalences, in terms of energy change, or in terms of energy transformation and Rankine’s definition. This raises several questions: What is their respective contribution to the understanding of the historical emergence of the energy concept, and to the understanding of the very meaning of this concept? Are these accounts concurrent? Eventually, how can they help for the teaching energy? To investigate these questions, historical details concerning this experiment are first considered. It is stressed that Joule did not made use of the concept of energy, and instead described his experiment in terms of conversion of living force into heat. The three accounts of Joule’s experiment are then presented and their respective contribution discussed. By emphasizing different aspects of this experiment, they are shown to suggest different strategies for teaching energy. For all that, they are not contradictory and, considered together, they bring to light the great potential of Joule’s experiment to foster students understanding of this concept. (shrink)

This study considers the short list of Nature of Science features frequently published and widely known in the science education discourse. It is argued that these features were oversimplified and a refinement of the claims may enrich or sometimes reverse them. The analysis shows the need to address the range of variation in each particular aspect of NOS and to illustrate these variations with actual events from the history of science in order to adequately present the subject. Another implication (...) of the proposal is the highlighting of the central role of science educators who, facing various strong claims of researchers in education and philosophy of science, often have difficulty in making a choice of what to teach about NOS. It is suggested that a representative variation with regard to the traditional NOS claims may be appropriate for a genuine understanding of the subject. In that, using the discipline-culture structure of the fundamental theories of physics and addressing the plurality of scientific methods may be helpful in the actual teaching and learning of NOS. (shrink)

Discussing theories at length, including their origin, development, and replacement by other theories, can help students in understanding of both objective and subjective aspects of the scientific process. Presenting theories in the form of- models helps in this undertaking, and the history of science provides a number of suitable models. The paper describes specific examples that have been used in in-service courses for science teachers.

It is argued that the manner in which we teach science in the high schools represents an outdated positivistic conception of science. The standard presentation of a year of each of chemistry, biology and physics should be replaced by an integrated science plus history, philosophy, and sociology of science which would take a total of three years to complete. A proper appreciation for the true nature of science is essential to the continued health of the scientific enterprise.

In recent decades, the development of sciences and technologies had a significant impact in society. This impact has been object of analysis from several standpoints, i.e., scientific, communication, historical and anthropological. Consequently, serious changes were required by the society. One of these has been the emerging relationship science in society and its foundations of applied sciences. A related foundational challenging is the educational process, which was and still is an unlimited challenge for teachers and professors: i.e., levels of understanding, curricula, (...) activing critical engagement, transfer knowledge—and—skills, management, classroom and subsequently pre-service teachers need special teacher education. Taking into account Joule’s bicentenary commemoration in physics and Nature of Science teaching this paper introduces to a level of inquiring within historical and NoS approaches in the pre-service teachers, typically science, technology, engineering and mathematics. In particular, history and historiography of Joule’s physics are dealt with. (shrink)

Authored by an acclaimed teacher of quantum physics and philosophy, this textbook pays special attention to the aspects that many courses sweep under the carpet. Traditional courses in quantum mechanics teach students how to use the quantum formalism to make calculations. But even the best students - indeed, especially the best students - emerge rather confused about what, exactly, the theory says is going on, physically, in microscopic systems. This supplementary textbook is designed to help such students understand that (...) they are not alone in their confusions (luminaries such as Albert Einstein, Erwin Schroedinger, and John Stewart Bell having shared them), to sharpen their understanding of the most important difficulties associated with interpreting quantum theory in a realistic manner, and to introduce them to the most promising attempts to formulate the theory in a way that is physically clear and coherent. The text is accessible to students with at least one semester of prior exposure to quantum (or "modern") physics and includes over a hundred engaging end-of-chapter "Projects" that make the book suitable for either a traditional classroom or for self-study. (shrink)

Since 2004, it has been mandated by law that all Danish undergraduate university programmes have to include a compulsory course on the philosophy of science for that particular program. At the Faculty of Science and Technology, Aarhus University, the responsibility for designing and running such courses were given to the Centre for Science Studies, where a series of courses were developed aiming at the various bachelor educations of the Faculty. Since 2005, the Centre has been running a dozen different courses (...) ranging from mathematics, computer science, physics, chemistry over medical chemistry, biology, molecular biology to sports science, geology, molecular medicine, nano science, and engineering. -/- We have adopted a teaching philosophy of using historical and contemporary case studies to anchor broader philosophical discussions in the particular subject discipline under consideration. Thus, the courses are tailored to the interests of the students of the particular programme whilst aiming for broader and important philosophical themes as well as addressing the specific mandated requirements to integrate philosophy, some introductory ethics, and some institutional history. These are multiple and diverse purposes which cannot be met except by compromise. -/- In this short presentation, we discuss our ambitions for using case studies to discuss philosophical issues and the relation between the specific philosophical discussions in the disciplines and the broader themes of philosophy of science. We give examples of the cases chosen to discuss various issues of scientific knowledge, the role of experiments, the relations between mathematics and science, and the issues of responsibility and trust in scientific results. Finally, we address the issue of how and why science students can be interested in and benefit from mandatory courses in the philosophy of their subject. (shrink)

The author (physics, Northeastern U.) draws on history, theories of human development, and 30 years of teaching to argue that scientific thinking, which is analytic and objective, goes against the grain of traditional human thinking and arose in Greece because of unique historical factors. Having taken an active interest in middle-level science education in recent years, he concludes with recommendations for an overhaul of science teaching to steer away from the pervasive over-abstraction at inappropriate grade levels. (...) Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

Although maybe not the most fashionable area of study today, French science has a secure place in the classical canon of the history of science. Like the Scientific Revolution and Italian science at the beginning of the seventeenth century, French science, particularly eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century French science, remains a safe, albeit conservative, bet in terms of history-of-science teaching and research. The classic trope of the passage of the flame of European science from Italy to Britain and (...) France in the seventeenth and then eighteenth centuries is well established in overviews of the field. Specializing in research in this area is not, therefore, unreasonable as a career choice if you are aiming for a history-of-science position in Europe or even in the US. The Académie des sciences, with its state-sponsored model of collective research, provides a striking counterpoint to the amateur, more individualistic functioning of London's Royal Society – a foretaste of modernity in the institutionalization of science. Clearly naive, such a representation of French science serves as a good initial framework on which to hang half a century of critical historical research. If proof of the continued interest for eighteenth-century French science is needed, we can cite the Web-based project around Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie currently in progress under the auspices of the French Academy of Sciences. The large number of publications in the history of French science make it unreasonable to pick out one or two for special attention here. But what about history of science in France and the academic community that practises this discipline today? Here, I offer a very personal view and analysis of this community, trying to underline contrasts with the history of science in the UK and the US. (shrink)

Although maybe not the most fashionable area of study today, French science has a secure place in the classical canon of the history of science. Like the Scientific Revolution and Italian science at the beginning of the seventeenth century, French science, particularly eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century French science, remains a safe, albeit conservative, bet in terms of history-of-science teaching and research. The classic trope of the passage of the flame of European science from Italy to Britain and (...) France in the seventeenth and then eighteenth centuries is well established in overviews of the field. Specializing in research in this area is not, therefore, unreasonable as a career choice if you are aiming for a history-of-science position in Europe or even in the US. The Académie des sciences, with its state-sponsored model of collective research, provides a striking counterpoint to the amateur, more individualistic functioning of London's Royal Society – a foretaste of modernity in the institutionalization of science. Clearly naive, such a representation of French science serves as a good initial framework on which to hang half a century of critical historical research. If proof of the continued interest for eighteenth-century French science is needed, we can cite the Web-based project around Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie currently in progress under the auspices of the French Academy of Sciences. The large number of publications in the history of French science make it unreasonable to pick out one or two for special attention here. But what about history of science in France and the academic community that practises this discipline today? Here, I offer a very personal view and analysis of this community, trying to underline contrasts with the history of science in the UK and the US. (shrink)