A swing and a child: how scientific phenomena can come to matter for preschool children’s emergent science identities

The focus of this study is the co-actings of a 5-year-old girl, a swing, and physical phenomena. The study explores how the swing and physical phenomena worked as co-creators of the girl’s scientific explorations as well as her bodily capacities and identity construction. Empirically, the study makes use of a video sequence generated during a field study in a Swedish preschool with 5-year-old children. The field study focused on the children’s play and explorations together with the preschool environment, during activities not specifically guided by teachers. To conceptualize children’s emergent scientific learning as mutual with their identity construction and as being co-created together with nonhuman agents, the study combines perspectives from new materialism, emergent science, physics, and gender theory. As a theoretical and methodological foundation, a new materialist perspective drawing on Karen Barad’s (Meeting the universe halfway. Quantum physics of the entanglement of matter and meaning, Duke University Press, London, 2007) theory of agential realism and diffractive methodology were used, as well as Elizabeth de Freitas and Anna Palmer’s (Cult Stud Sci Educ 11(4):1201–1222, 2016. 10.1007/s11422-014-9652-6) notion concerning how scientific concepts can work as creative playmates in children’s explorations. The findings show how the girl, together with the swing, could experience and explore various physical phenomena as well as, extend her bodily capacities and become brave and strong. As such, new materialism shows how scientific phenomena can create affordances for an individual’s becomings as scientific as well as how “becoming scientific” can be understood. At the same time, the findings also indicate the importance of teachers not assuming that scientific phenomena are automatically part of children’s play or can be experienced by all children all the time. The explored situation was rare. On most occasions, the girl did not get the same kind of experiences with the swing because of gender norms. I argue that norms and discourses connected to science and gender are not things that “come with” older children or are only introduced by adults. These are instead already in the making and re-making within children’s co-actings with the material-discursive environment in preschool. It is therefore important that teachers engage in children’s embodied play with scientific phenomena, with the aim to empower the children, their bodies, capacities and (science) identities.

Cuvier et Lamarck: deux naturalistes en miroir

Lamarck and Cuvier built opposite theories concerning the origin of living beings, their links and fate. If they could agree on the bases of the animal classification, they drastically differed in their interpretations. Lamarck claimed the reality of the transformation of species, whereas Cuvier challenged and attacked him fiercely. The two naturalists competed strongly for the leading place in natural history at the beginning of the 19th century, dialoguing indirectly through their scientific papers, which need to be reviewed in light of this debate. Their polemical discussion shows some major issues in the emergent science of biology.

Developing a Pedagogy of Education for Sustainable Futures: Experiences and Observations from Danish Preschools

Purpose: This article aims to outline an approach to education for sustainability based on play and science activities. Design/Approach/Methods: While deviated from traditional academic articles, this article has combined knowledge drawn from various action research projects and personal observations from a number of preschool settings. Findings: The article results in the development of an educational method: a scientific playworld to support emergent science and sustainability. Originality/Value: The constructed educational approach is value -oriented and challenges children to strike a balance between pessimism and optimism in addressing major societal themes.

Un acercamiento al interés por la traducción vitícola en el siglo XIX: a propósito de la recepción del Ensayo sobre las variedades de la vid común que vegetan en Andalucía de Simón Clemente y Rubio en Francia

La ciencia española se caracterizó, a lo largo de los siglos XVIII y XIX, por ser una ciencia dependiente de las investigaciones y descubrimientos científicos producidos en Europa, especialmente aquellos que tuvieron lugar en Francia, auténtico faro cultural y científico de la época, una condición que se acrecentaba por la proximidad geográfica con España. De esta manera, la necesidad por conocer estos progresos conllevaron un aumento de la actividad traductora en este país. Sin embargo, ciertos tratados escritos originalmente en lengua española adquirieron gran relevancia y prestigio en el continente europeo, entre los que encontramos la obra Ensayo sobre las variedades de la vid común que vegetan en Andalucía de Simón de Rojas Clemente y Rubio. El presente artículo aborda la recepción de dicho tratado en Francia, así como su traducción, habida cuenta del gran interés del que gozaba la enología como ciencia emergente durante el siglo XIX. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Spanish science has been characterized as a dependent science of the researches and scientific discoveries in Europe, especially those proceeding from France, one of the most prominent countries in the continent at the cultural and scientific level. In this context, the needs to have access to these discoveries and researches provoked an augmentation of the translation in Spain. Nevertheless, some treatises originally written in Spanish acquired relevance and prestige in Europe, among which it is found Simón de Rojas Clemente y Rubio’s Ensayo sobre las variedades de la vid común que vegetan en Andalucía. This paper focuses the reception and the translation of this book in France, having into account the interest of enology as an emergent science during the nineteenth century. La science espagnole s’est caractérisée, tout au long du XVIIIe et XIXè siècle, comme une science dépendante des recherches et des progrès scientifiques produits en Europe, spécialement ceux survenus en France, pays qui possédait le rang de phare culturel et chercheur de l’époque, condition accrue par sa proximité géographique avec l’Espagne. De cette manière, la nécessité de connaître les différents progrès et découvertes étrangers ont provoqué une augmentation de l’activité traductrice dans le pays ibérique. Cependant, certains traités rédigés originalement en espagnol ont acquis une grande relevance et prestige en Europe, parmi lesquels on trouve l’ouvrage Ensayo sobre las variedades de la vid común que vegetan en Andalucía de Simón de Rojas Clemente y Rubio. Le présent article aborde la réception dudit ouvrage en France et sa traduction en français, compte tenu du grand intérêt dont jouissait l’énologie en tant que science émergente durant le XIXe siècle.

Lamarckian Historical Romance

This chapter addresses how the politics of the revolutionary era charged the intellectual debates and institutional rivalries that were agitating the emergent science of the forms of life, centered now in Paris. Arguing for the reform of knowledge as a necessary condition of political reform, scientific authors opposed to the Bourbon regime rallied around Lamarckism, and transformist natural history more broadly, throughout the 1820s. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck's protégé Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, emerging as a leading light of the liberal movement, made monstrosity a key research program of the new philosophical anatomy. Geoffroy sought to reaffirm the orderliness of nature by insisting that monstrosities were natural phenomena, subject to natural law-deviations, on classifiable principles, from the archetypal regularity of the species, itself subject to the grand law of “unity of organic composition.” At the same time, monstrosity provided a mechanism for the transformation of species. The chapter then looks at examples of historical fiction and romances that feature powers beyond human nature, such as Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris.

Designing play-based learning chemistry activities in the preschool environment

This study focuses on the design of play-based learning activities for chemistry in preschool. Viewing chemistry as a part of our past and present culture instead of as a subject, provides the backdrop for a more holistic approach to chemistry within this specific environment. A cultural-historical perspective, together with scaffolding, emergent science skills and sustained shared thinking, made up the framework for the design of the learning activities. Results show that when scaffolding and emergent science skills are used within the design, they provide good support for both the content and the teacher in the actual learning situation. Working with scaffolding was also beneficial for professional development. However, for a progressive and inclusive activity design, it is essential to take into account aspects of the immediate environment and methods for direct evaluation.

Nanomedicine regulation in Australia

The relative benefits and risks of nanomedicine have led to global indecisiveness regarding a suitable approach for regulation of this industry, and Australia is no exception. This article proposes a meta-regulation approach for regulating nanomedicine in Australia, demonstrating how this approach enables companies to surpass their compliance requirements and improve stakeholders’ capacity to deal with the inherent uncertainty surrounding the emergent science of nanotechnology.