Science Education and Culture: The Contribution of History and Philosophy of Science PDF
Preview Science Education and Culture: The Contribution of History and Philosophy of Science
SCIENCE EDUCATION AND CULTURE Science Education and Culture The Contribution of History and Philosophy of Science Edited by Fabio Bevilacqua Pa via .U niversity, Italy Enrico Giannetto Pavia University, Italy and Michael R. Matthews University of New South Wales, Australia Selected papers from the "Science as Culture" conference held at Lake Como and Pavia, September 1999, and generously sponsored by the Voita Bicentenary Fund - Lombardy Region, Pavia University, and the itai ian Research Counc il Springer-Science+Business Media, B.V. A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-0-7923-6973-8 ISBN 978-94-010-0730-6 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-010-0730-6 Printed (In acid-free paper Cover photo: A vista of Ul'h century Pavia with Aiessandro Voita AII Rights Reserved © 2001 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 200 l Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 200 l No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form Of by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, record ing or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner. Table of Contents EDITORIALINTRODUCTION ix PART ONE: HISTORY OF SCIENCE,EDUCATIONANDCULTURE INTRODUCTION 1 1.JOHNHEILBRON/ History inScienceEducation, with Cautionary Tales aboutthe AgreementofMeasurementand Theory 5 2.ALBERTO CORDERO/ Scientific Cultureand Public Education 17 3. PETERMACHAMER/ Galileoand the Rhetoric ofRelativity 31 4.F.JAMES RUTHERFORD/ Fosteringthe History of Sciencein American ScienceEducation 41 5. RON GOOD & JAMES SHYMANSKY/ Nature-of-ScienceLiteracy in Benchmarks and Standards: Post-modernlRelativistor ModernlRealist? 53 6.ROBERT N. CARSON/ The Epic Narrative of Intellectual Culture as a Frameworkfor CurricularCoherence 67 7.HSINGCHI A. WANG & WILLIAM H. SCHMIDT/ History, Philosophy and Sociologyof Science inScienceEducation: Results from the Third InternationalMathematics and Science Study 83 PART TWO: FOUNDATIONALISSUES INSCIENCE EDUCATION INTRODUCTION 103 8.JAMES DONNELLY/ Instrumentality, Hermeneutics and the Placeof Science in the School Curriculum 109 9.BO DA:m..IN/The Primacy ofCognition -or ofPerception? A Phenomenological Critiqueof the Theoretical Bases of Science Education 129 vi TABLEOFCONTENTS 10.EDGAR W.JENKINS I ConstructivisminSchool Science Education: Powerful Model or theMost Dangerous Intellectual Tendency? 153 11.smELERDURANI Philosophy of Chemistry:AnEmerging Field with Implications for Chemistry Education 165 12.FRITZ KUBLII Can theTheory of Narratives Help Science Teachers beBetterStorytellers? 179 13.DOUGLAS ALLCHIN I Values inScience: AnEducational Perspective 185 14.ALEXANDERT. LEVINEI Which Way is Up? Thomas Kuhn's Analogy toConceptual Developmentin Childhood 197 15.ROBERT NOLAI Saving Kuhn from theSociologists ofScience 213 PART THREE: HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY AND PHYSICS EDUCATION INTRODUCTION 227 16.IGALGALILI & AMNON HAZANI The Effect ofaHistory-Based Course inOptics onStudents' Views about Science 229 17.NAHUM KIPNISI Scientific Controversies inTeaching Science: The Case of Volta 255 18.ROBERTO DEANDRADE MARTINS & cmELLECELESTINO SILVAI Newton andColour:The Complex Interplay ofTheory andExperiment 273 19.MICHAEL R.MATTHEWS I Methodology and Politics inScience: The Fate ofHuygens' 1673Proposal ofthe Seconds Pendulumas anInternational Standard ofLength, and SomeEducational Suggestions 293 20.OLIVIA LEVRINII Reconstructing theBasic Concepts ofGeneral Relativity from anEducational and Cultural Pointof View 311 TABLEOFCONTENTS vii 21.FANNY SEROGLOU& PANAGIOTIS KOUMARAS / The Contribution of the History ofPhysics inPhysics Education:A Review 327 CONTRIBUTORS 347 NAMEINDEX 353 SUBJECTINDEX 357 Editorial Introduction 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 160papers 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, PaviaUniversity, Italian Research Council, andKluwer Academic Publishers. The papers included here, have or will be, published in the journal Science & Education, the inaugural volume (1992) of which wasa 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 andpedagogical debates inscience education. Contemporary Concerns The reseach promoted by the International and European Groups, and by the journal, iscentral to science education programmes in mostareas of the world. Increasingly school science courses are being asked to address issues concerning the Nature of Science. Students are expected togain a rudimentary understanding of the 'big picture' of science: its history, its philosophical assumptions and implications, its interaction with culture and society, and so on. It is increasingly expected that students will leave school with not just knowledgeofscience, butalso with knowledgeabout science. These 'liberal' curricular developments have occurred in the UK, US, Canada, Australia and Japan. In the US, aspects of the history and philosophy of science are written into the National Science Education Standards and are enthusiastically promoted bythe AAAS's Project 2061. InEngland and Wales, these liberal goals have survived the vicissitudes of the unfolding National Curriculum (Donnelly 2001). InGreece, satisfactory completion of a final year course on the history of science is now a requirement for graduation from high school. In the Australian state of New South Wales, history of science and natureof science comprise twoof six prescribed curriculum focus areas. ix x EDITORIALINTRODUCTION Even those with a more narrow and disciplinary focus maintain that if we want students to learn and become competent in science, then they must be taught something about the nature of science. For instance, Frederick Reif wrote: All too often introductory physicscourses 'cover' numerous topics, but the knowledge actually acquired by students is often nominal rather than functional. Ifstudentsaretoacquirebasicphysicsknowledge ...itisnecessary to understand better the requisitethoughtprocessesand to teach these more explicitly... ifonewants toimprovesignificantly students' learningofphysics ... It is also necessaryto modify students' naive notionsabout the natureof science. (Reif1995,p.281) But it is not just curriculum injunctions that require teachers to address the nature of science: frequently they are called on to address issues raised by the so called 'Science Wars', by the Creationism controversy, by Feminist critiques of science, by multiculturalist claims for inclusion of indigenous science in the curriculum, and so forth. Inmany parts ofthe world, proponents of Islamic Science demand that the school science curriculum reflect the Koran's teaching on biological, cosomological and methodological matters. Intelligent discussion ofall ofthese questions depends upon some grasp ofthe history, philosophy and sociology of science. There are engaging tensions between science education and culture. Most people hope that children who learn science will be affected by what they learn; that lessons from the science classroom will flow on to children's ways of thinking about personal and social matters; that it will contribute to their world views, and ultimately to culture. If science teaching is done well, these flow-on effects are positive; if it isdone badly, they are negative. But ofcourse often there are no flow-on effects of either kind - some years ago it was famously shown that belief in astrology was unaffected by completion ofa US science degree. A major issue in multicultural science debates is the extent to which there should be flow-ons from the science classroom to religious, social and traditional beliefs and practices. Historical Background Questions about the nature of science have long been of concern to science teachers and curriculum developers. It has been hoped that science education would fructify in society and have a beneficial impact on the quality of culture and public life in virtue of students appreciating something of the nature of science, internalising something of the scientific spirit, and developing a scientific frame of mind that might carry over into other spheres of life. John Dewey well expressed this Enlightenment hope for science education when he said: EDITORIALINTRODUCfION xi Our predilection for premature acceptance and assertion, our aversion to suspendedjudgment, aresignsthat wetendnaturallytocutshorttheprocessof testing. We are satisified with superficial and immediate short-visioned applications. ... Science represents the safeguard of the race against these natural propensities and the evils whichflow from them. ... It is artificial (an acquired art), not spontaneous; learned, not native. To this fact is due the unique,theinvaluableplaceofscienceineducation. (Dewey1916,p. 189) Such historical and philosophical contributions had been urgedfor well over a century. The Duke of Argyll in his 1856 Presidential Address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science challenged the meeting with the claim that: 'What we want in the teaching of the young, is, not so much the mere results, as the methods and, above all, the history of science ... that is what we ought to teach, if wedesire to see education, well-conducted to the great ends in view'. Ernst Mach - who could be considered to have founded the discipline of science education when, in 1887, he published and edited the first issue of Zeitschrift fur den Physikalischen und Chemischen Unterricht (Journal ofInstruction in Physics and Chemistry) - said that: 'The historical investigation of thedevelopment ofa science is mostneedful, lest the principles treasured up in it become a system of half-understood prescripts, or worse,asystemofprejudices' (Mach 1886/1943). Other contributions to this liberal tradition included John Dewey's work at the tum of the century (Dewey 1910); F.W. Westaway's teacher preparation text of the 1920s (Westaway 1929); Joseph Schwab's writings in the 1940s and 1950s (Schwab 1945, 1958); the books of James Conant in the late 1940s and 1950s,especially his On Understanding Science (Conant 1947) and Harvard Case Studies (Conant 1948); Gerald Holton's writings in the 1950s (Holton 1952) and the Harvard Project Physics Course that he directed (Rutherford, Holton & Watson 1970); the books of Leo Klopfer, James Robinson and Arnold Arons inthe 1960s(Klopfer 1969,Robinson 1968,Arons 1965);Martin Wagenschein's German work in the 1960s(Wagenschein 1962); the publications of Jim Rutherford and Michael Martin in the 1970s (Rutherford 1972, Martin 1972); and numerous articles that appeared through the 1980s urging the incorporation of history and philosophy of science into science education and into teacher education programmes (lung 1983, Hodson 1986, 1988, Duschl 1985, Lederman 1986, Solomon 1989, and Matthews 1988). Journal and Group History Throughout the long history of liberal advocacy, there had been no central forum where the participants could keep abreast of the debate, and where curricular andclassroominovations mightbeadvertised an appraisals of these XII EDITORIALINTRODUCfrON read. The commumties of philosophers, historians, sociologists, scientists, cognitive psychologists, and science educators were insular and seldom paid attention to issues outside their field. Certainly historians and philosophers of science paid notoriously little attention to pedagogical, curricular or theoretical issues in science education. Indeed one article appearing in the mid-1980s was titled 'Science Education and the History and Philosophy of Science: Twenty five Years ofMutually Exclusive Development' (Duschl 1985); while another article of the period said that the number of philosophers of science who had bothered themselves with educational matters 'could be counted on the fingers of one hand' (Ennis 1979). The appearance of Science & Education in 1992 began to change this culture ofisolation. This in part has been due to the journal's association with the two organisations that sponsored the Como conference: the History of Physics and Physics Teaching Division of the European Physical Society, and the International History, Philosophy and ScienceTeachingGroup. The European group is the older, having its first conference in Pavia in September 1983, which was attended by about 90 scientists from 25 countries (Bevilacqua & Kennedy 1983). Among contributors to the conference were Walter Jung, Lewis Pyenson, Gerd Buchdahl, David Edge, John Heilbron, Samuel Goldberg, Anthony French, Stephen Shapin, Jurgen Teichmann, Harry Collins, Gianni Bonera and Salvo D'Agostino. Subsequent conferences, with published proceedings, were held in Munich (1986), Paris (1988), Cambridge (1990), Madrid (1992), Szombathely (1994), and Bratislava (1996). Fabio Bevilacqua was, and has remained, the foundation secretary of the group. The International group coalesced around a series of journal special issues devoted to 'History, Philosophy and Science Teaching' that were published in the late 1980s. The seed was a special issue of Synthese journal (vol.80, no.1, 1989) that Michael Matthews was invited to guest edit during a sabbatical leave period in the Philosophy Department at Florida State University. The group became 'formalised' at its first conference held at Florida State University, Tallahassee, in 1989, a conference co-organised by David Gruender and Kenneth Tobin, and attended by about 200 teachers and researchers from about thirty countries (Herget 1989, 1990). Presentors included Arnold Arons, Derek Hodson, Joan Solomon, Alberto Cordero, James Wandersee, Jane Martin,Joseph Nussbaum, James Cushing, Joseph Pitt, Nancy Nersessian, Harvey Siegel, Jim Garrison, Ian Winchester and Ernst von Glasersfeld. Subsequent conferences have been held in Kingston, Ontario (1992), Minneapolis (1995), and Calgary (1997). The next conference of the International Group, which is being held in conjunction with the US History of Science Society, will be held in Denver Colorado, 7-11 November 2001. Michael Matthews was, and has remained, the foundation secretary of the group, details ofwhich can be found at www.ihpst.org,
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