Some Sources for the History of Science Education in the Twentieth Century, with particular reference to Secondary Schools

1980 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. W. Jenkins
Author(s):  
Leandro Londero ◽  
Monica Abrantes Galindo ◽  
Marcos Serzedello

Resumo: Analisamos na tradução feita para o inglês, por Elisabeth Carter, em 1739, a obra de Francesco Algarotti “Sir Isaac Newton’s philosophy explain’d for the use of ladies. In six dialogues on light and colours”. Buscamos compreender os aspectos que a caracterizam como uma publicação para damas e identificar possíveis questões de gênero. Identificamos na obra uma tendência machista na ciência e elementos que evidenciam um imaginário de que a mulher não teria as qualidades necessárias para compreender a ciência, elementos esses coerentes com a transição de um período em que as mulheres eram consideradas inferiores em todos os aspectos para um outro no qual a construção do papel materno aparece como fundante de uma concepção de mulher não mais inferior, mas fundamentalmente diferente do homem e com papeis complementares a ele. Podemos dizer que esses imaginários podem influenciar as possibilidades de participação das mulheres na empreitada científica.Palavras-chave: Educação em Ciências; História da Ciência; Ciência e Sociedade (Gênero). History of Science and gender relations: a publication of “Sir Isaac Newton’s philosophy explained for de use of ladies. In six dialogues on light and colours”Abstract: We analyze Elisabeth Carter's 1739 translation of Francesco Algarotti's "Sir Isaac Newton's philosophy explain'd for the use of ladies. In six dialogues on light and colors. "We seek to understand the aspects that characterize it as a publication for ladies and to identify possible gender issues. We identified in the work a macho tendency in science and elements that evidence an imaginary that women would not have the qualities necessary to understand science, elements that are consistent with the transition from a period in which women were considered inferior in all respects to a another in which the construction of the maternal role appears as the founder of a conception of woman no longer inferior but fundamentally different from man and with roles complementary to him. We can say that these imaginary can influence the possibilities of participation of women in the scientific enterprise.Keywords: Science Education, History of Science; Science and Society (Gender). 


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Noam Chomsky

By mid-twentieth century, a working consensus had been reached in the linguistics community, based on the great achievements of preceding years. Synchronic linguistics had been established as a science, a “taxonomic” science, with sophisticated procedures of analysis of data. Taxonomic science has limits. It does not ask “why?” The time was ripe to seek explanatory theories, using insights provided by the theory of computation and studies of explanatory depth. That effort became the generative enterprise within the biolinguistics framework. Tensions quickly arose: The elements of explanatory theories (generative grammars) were far beyond the reach of taxonomic procedures. The structuralist principle that language is a matter of training and habit, extended by analogy, was unsustainable. More generally, the mood of “virtually everything is known” became “almost nothing is understood,” a familiar phenomenon in the history of science, opening a new and exciting era for a flourishing discipline. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Linguistics, Volume 7 is January 14, 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.


1993 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 469-483 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ludmilla Jordanova

The production of big pictures is arguably the most significant sign of the intellectual maturity of a field. It suggests both that the field's broad contours, refined over several generations of scholarship, enjoy the approval of practitioners, and that audiences exist with an interest in or need for overviews. The situation is somewhat more complicated in the history of science, since the existence of big historical pictures precedes that of a well-defined scholarly field by about two centuries. Broadly conceived histories of science and medicine were being written in the eighteenth century, when such an all-encompassing vision was central to the claims about the progress of knowledge upon which Enlightenment ideologues set such store. The Plato to Nato style histories, characteristic of the earlier twentieth century, were written largely by isolated pioneers, and while these were used in teaching as the field was becoming professionalized, recent scholars have preferred to concentrate on a monographic style of research. Despite the existence of the series started by Wiley, and now published by Cambridge University Press, it is only in the last ten years or so that more conscious attempts have been made to generate a big-picture literature informed by new scholarship. It is noteworthy that most of this is addressed to students and general readers, although there is no logical reason why it should not tackle major theoretical issues of concern to scholars. My point about maturity still holds, then, since as a designated discipline the history of science is rather new; it is still feeling out its relationship with cognate disciplines. Big-picture histories have an important role to play in these explorations since they make findings and ideas widely available and thereby offer material through which ambitious interpretations can be debated, modified and transformed.


2015 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 310-332 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renee M. Clary ◽  
James H. Wandersee

In many science classes, students encounter ‘final form’ science (Duschl 1990, 1994) in which scientific knowledge is presented as a rhetoric of conclusions (Schwab 1962). Incorporation of the history of science in modern science classrooms combats this false image of linear science progression. History of science can facilitate student understanding of the nature of science, pique student interest, and expose the cultural and societal constraints in which a science developed, revealing science's ‘human side’ (Matthews 1994). Carefully selected and researched episodes from the history of science illustrate that scientists sometimes chose incorrect hypotheses, misinterpreted data, and argued about data analysis. Our research documented that historical vignettes can hook students' attention, and past controversies can be used to develop students' analysis and argumentation skills before turning class attention to modern controversial issues. Historical graphics also have educational potential, as they reveal the progression of a science and offer alternative vehicles for data interpretation. In the United States, the National Science Education Standards (United States National Research Council 1996) acknowledged the importance of the History and Nature of Science by designating it as one of eight science content strands. However, the new United States Next Generation Science Standards (Achieve 2013) no longer include this strand, although the importance of the nature of science is still emphasized in the science framework (United States National Research Council 2012). Therefore, it is crucial that science education researchers continue to research and implement the history of science via interdisciplinary approaches to ensure its inclusion in United States science classrooms for better student understanding of the nature of science.


Author(s):  
Josep Simon

This article focuses on physics textbooks and textbook physics in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with particular emphasis on developments in France, Germany, Britain, and the United States. It first examines the role that physics textbooks played in the early stages of the professionalization of the history of science before presenting a general overview of the genesis of textbook physics in the nineteenth century. It also looks at major textbooks produced in France and the German states while making some reference to British and American textbooks. Finally, it considers recent scholarship dealing with textbooks in the history of physics. The article shows how our views on textbooks have been shaped by events that have established particular hierarchies between scientific research and science education, and between universities and schools. It argues that the study of textbooks would benefit from greater reflexivity.


Author(s):  
Juliana Mesquita Hidalgo ◽  
Daniel De Medeiros Queiroz

ResumoO presente trabalho visa contribuir com a fundamentação teórica para a escrita de biografias científicas com fins didáticos. O gênero biográfico é um legítimo foro de “humanização” do conhecimento científico, um dos papéis centrais da inserção didática da História da Ciência. Recortes biográficos que não representem os cientistas com caráter sobre-humano, escritos não como absoluta verdade, e sim como história interpretada, podem ser úteis no contexto educacional. Sugerimos a escrita de recortes biográficos destinados à educação científica que considere os novos aportes do gênero, isto é, à luz de fundamentos historiográficos atualizados. São apresentados subsídios da área disciplinar História, a exemplo da perspectiva de história-problema, e subsídios da História da Ciência, em objeção às biografias laudatórias.Palavras-chave: Biografia Científica; Gênero Biográfico; Historiografia.AbstractThis paper aims to contribute for the theoretical foundation concerning the writing of scientific biographies for didactic purposes. Biographical genre is a legitimate forum “to humanize” the scientific knowledge, one of the central roles of the didactic insertion of the History of Science. Biographical fragments not representative of scientists as “superhuman” and written as interpreted history, may be useful in the educational context. We suggest the writing of biographical fragments for science education that consider the new contributions of the genre, in other words, in light of historiographical foundations currently accepted. Subsidies from the disciplinary area History are presented, such as the perspective of history as problem, and subsidies from History of Science, in objection to laudatory biographies.Keywords: Scientific Biography; Biographical Genre; Historiography.


Author(s):  
Francisco Sáez de Adana Herrero

This article analyses the Manhattan Project comic-book series, which recounts an alternative ending to the Second World War, where the Manhattan Project hides another mission more closely related to science fiction. Here we discuss how the concept of the so-called «imaginary life», a term coined by Marcel Schwob, has been applied to the history of science in the twentieth century.


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