Adapting Historical Knowledge Production to the Classroom
Adapting Historical Knowledge Production to the Classroom
Edited by
P.V. Kokkotas, K.S Malamitsa and A.A. Rizaki National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface.................................................................................................................... vii Section A: Theoretical Framework 1. Teaching the Philosophical and Worldview Components of Science: Some Considerations ......................................................................................... 3 Michael R. Matthews 2. Is the History of Science the Wasteland of False Theories?............................ 17 Stathis Psillos 3. The History of Science and the Future of Science Education: A Typology of Approaches to History of Science in Science Instruction ........................... 37 William F. McComas 4. Textbooks of the Physical Sciences and the History of Science: ǹ Problematic Coexistence ................................................................................. 55 Kostas Gavroglu 5. Does History of Science Contribute to the Construction of Knowledge in the Constructivist Environments of Learning? ............................................ 61 Panagiotis Kokkotas and Aikaterini Rizaki 6. On the Concept of Energy: History of Science for Teaching .......................... 85 Ricardo Lopes Coelho 7. Troublesome Droplets: Improving Students’ Experiences with the Millikan Oil Drop Experiment ...................................................................... 103 Peter Heering and Stephen Klassen 8. The Antikythera Mechanism: A Mechanical Cosmos and an Eternal Prototype for Modelling and Paradigm Study ............................................... 113 Xenophon Moussas 9. History of Science and Argumentation in Science Education: Joining Forces?.............................................................................................. 129 Gábor Á. Zemplén 10. Integration of Science Education and History of Science: The Catalan Experience ..................................................................................................... 141 Antoni Roca-Rosell v
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Section B: Praxis 11. Teaching Modern Physics, using Selected Nobel Lectures ........................... 153 Arthur Stinner 12. Classroom Explorations with Pendulums, Mirrors, and Galileo’s Drama ............................................................................................ 159 Elizabeth Cavicchi 13. Developing Greek Primary School Students’ Graph/Chart Interpretation and Reading Comprehension as Critical Thinking Skills: Assessing a Science Teaching Approach which Integrates Elements of History of Science ......................................................................................... 181 Katerina Malamitsa, Michael Kasoutas and Panagiotis Kokkotas 14. Use of the History of Science in the Design of Research-informed NOS Materials for Teacher Education ................................................................... 195 Agustín Adúriz-Bravo 15. Which HPS do/should Textbooks Refer to? The Historical Debate on the Nature of Electrical Fluids....................................................................... 205 Cibelle Celestino Silva 16. A wiki-course for Teacher Training in Science Education: Using History of Science to Teach Electromagnetism.......................................................... 213 Vassilis Koulountzos and Fanny Seroglou 17. Could Scientific Controversies be used as a Tool for Teaching Science in the Compulsory Education?: The Results of a Pilot Research Based on the Galileo – Del Monte Controversy about the Motion of the Pendulum....................................................................................................... 229 Constantina Stefanidou and Ioannis Vlachos 18. Resolving Dilemmas in Acquiring Knowledge of Newton’s First Law: Is the History of Science Helpful? ....................................................... 249 Gyoungho Lee and Arie Leegwater
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PREFACE
Over the last decades an intensive interest has been developed related to the incorporation of History and Philosophy of Science in science education curricula. This fact is in direct relation to the organization of national and international scientific conferences, workshops, meetings, summer schools for PhD students etc., the publishing of proceedings, the publishing of the scientific journal ‘Science & Education’ and the creation of the International History, Philosophy Science Teaching Group. This group organizes every two years an International History, Philosophy Science Education Conference in different places of the Planet and the year in between an international workshop of experts is held at a different place in the World. In this context the 7th International History, Philosophy Science Teaching Workshop of Experts, which was entitled “Adapting Historical Science Knowledge Production to the Classroom”, was hosted in Athens 7–11 July 2008. The organization of this workshop gave the opportunity to the experts in History and Philosophy of Science as well as to science educators worldwide to sit together for fruitful discussions and speculations. The result of this exchange of views was a collection of high quality papers dealing with issues of both theoretical and practical interest, which focus and contribute to the discussion and the promotion of the strategic incorporation of History and Philosophy of Science in science teaching. The aims of the workshop were: – the communication and the exchange of views about the introduction and the utilization of History and Philosophy of Science in science teaching, – the osmosis of the views of the experts present at the discussion followed each presentation and – the contribution to the reflections for the improvement of science teaching. Product of the Athens workshop of Experts is the publication of the present book which includes the papers presented and discussed there. Additionally, a number of other papers, relevant to the theme of the conference, are included as they are of interest to the theme of this book since they deal with the use of the History of Science in science teaching. In this sense, the book is more extensive and wide ranging than if it was just a collection of contributions of the workshop. The aims of this book are: (1) to contribute to the improvement of the quality of science education at all levels of education with the utilization of elements from History of Science incorporated in science teaching and (2) to contribute to the debate about science education at the international level in order to find new ways for further inquiry on the issues that the book is dealing with. The book is divided in two parts: The first expounds its philosophical and epistemological framework and the second combines theory and praxis, the theoretical insights with their practical applications. The themes presented in it may attract the interest of the members of the international scientific community specialized either in History and Philosophy of Science or in science education (science teachers and advisors, researchers in science teaching etc) especially those specialists interested vii
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in the use of History and Philosophy of Science in science teaching and its potential to improve the quality of science education at all levels, for the benefit of all students boys and girls worldwide. More specifically, the reader of the book will find some contributions that deal with and develop issues of great interest since all of the issues addressed remain open for further analysis and inquiry or lead to dilemmas. In the chapter Teaching the Philosophical and Worldview components of Science Some considerations, Michael Mathews discusses an important aspect of the contribution of science to culture, namely its role in the development of worldviews in society. A case study of the adjustments to a central Roman Catholic doctrine occasioned by the metaphysics of Atomism which was embraced at the Scientific Revolution is presented. In the chapter Is the History of Science the Wasteland of False Theories?, Stathis Psillos uses the caloric theory of heat, as an example showing the non existence of a completely falsifiable or verifiable theory. On the contrary, he states that, using the example of the Laplace’s caloric theory of heat, past science, although not completely corroborated, is viewed historically a living part of contemporary science. In the chapter The History of Science and the Future of Science Education - A Typology of Approaches to History of Science in Science Instruction, William McComas examines the role to be played in the incorporation of History of Science approaches to the teaching of Nature of Science by discussing the rationales, reviewing prior strategies, considering examples with the ultimate goal of proposing a taxonomy (typology) of History of Science instructional approaches to inform practice, guide future research and provide shared definitions. In the chapter Does History of Science contribute to the construction of knowledge in the constructivist learning environments?, Panagiotis Kokkotas and Aikaterini Rizaki describe the attempts made for the introduction of History of Science in science teaching over the last century and research how from traditional theories of learning we arrived in the modern ones, which are very well rooted in epistemology. Modern theories of learning support the view that knowledge is constructed in individual learning or appropriated in interactive learning environments. So, it is neither transmittable nor discoverable. In constructivist learning environments the use of History of Science is based in two epistemological presuppositions a) the similarity between the conceptions of students’ and of scientists’ or philosophers’ of the past, and b) the parallelism between the development of students’ understanding and the evolution of scientific concepts in History of Science. Furthermore, there are contributions that deal with issues regarding the writing of contemporary science textbooks in which the position and the incorporation of elements of History of Science in science teaching are addressed, and the extent to which this incorporation contributes to the improvement of the quality of science teaching. In the chapter Textbooks of the physical sciences and the history of science ǹ problematic coexistence, Kostas Gavroglu tries to answer two questions. The first is whether historically informed textbooks play any role in making students understand what History of Science is. The second question is whether pedagogic viii
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expediency is always in tandem with the scholarship of History of Science. Finally, the author wonders “might it be the case that what one wants to achieve in pedagogic terms may be in conflict with what one wants to convey in historical terms?” and he concludes that what, perhaps, we need to attempt is to encourage the writing of historically informed textbooks. In the chapter Which HPS do/should textbooks refer to? - The historical debate on the nature of electrical fluids, Cibelle Celestino Silva asserts the importance of Nature of Science in science teaching and presents Brazilian National Standards which emphasize the social and cultural contextualization as necessary and point some abilities to be developed in physics teaching, recognizing among others: physics as a human endeavor, teaching aspects of its history and its relationship with cultural, social, political and economic contexts, its role in the production system etc. There are some other contributions that deal with science teaching approaches using History of Science, as they have been applied at the tertiary level of education, creating a fruitful field of discussions. In these contributions, based on the experience of the application, the results of the teaching procedures have been described. In the chapter Teaching Modern Physics, using selected Nobel lectures, Arthur Stinner describes the course and a rationale for prospective physics teachers at the University of Manitoba, using a selected number of appropriate Nobel lectures. He decided to give them some enthusiasm and self confidence for the teaching of the ideas and the concepts of modern physics. Based on his prior experience, he was convinced that the conventional approach revisiting the main ideas of modern physics using a textbook would only lead to boredom. His contribution also contains a shortened version of a handout produced by one of his students (in consultation with the instructor) based on the work of J. J. Thomson, as reported in his Nobel lecture. In the chapter Classroom Explorations with Pendulums, Mirrors, and Galileo’s Drama, Elizabeth Cavicchi presents classrooms explorations with Pendulums, Mirrors, and Galileo’s Drama. In this context, while exploring materials, students researched Galileo, his trial, and its aftermath. Questions and experiments evolved continually, differing perspectives on science and authority were exchanged respectfully and students developed as critical explorers of the world. In the chapter Use of the History of Science in the design of research-informed NOS materials for teacher education, Agustin Aduriz Brabo recognizing the NOS as a major component in science teacher education, argues that several programs and materials have been issued, based on NOS research and aim at changing prospective and in-service teachers’ ideas on what science is and how it works. In this study, he describes one possible rationale for an integration, which uses the History of Science as a set (in the theatrical sense) to learn key ideas from 20th century philosophy of science. He also provided a brief overview of the process of derivation of historybased NOS materials using the idea of ‘setting’. In the chapter A wiki-course for teacher training in science education: Using History of Science to teach electromagnetism, Vassilis Koulountzos and Fanny Seroglou present the design and development of the instructional e-material that ix
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has been inspired by History of Science for science teachers e-training. The teachers have been introduced to a variety of activities such as: experiments, role-playing, discussions, and debates. Wiki offers a dynamic environment for in-service teachers to interact with each other, providing a Wiki-course as a promising flexible and expanding character to teacher education. In the chapter Developing Greek Primary School Students’ Graph/Chart Interpretation and Reading Comprehension as Critical Thinking Skills - Assessing a Science Teaching Approach which Integrates Elements of History of Science, Katerina Malamitsa, Michael Kasoutas and Panagiotis Kokkotas discuss the development of sixth grade students’ graph/chart interpretation and reading comprehension skills as critical thinking skills, relatively to the contribution of the integration of aspects of History of Science into instruction. Towards this direction a project on electromagnetism was designed and implemented aiming to engage primary school students in a critical examination of knowledge by generating argumentation and discussion in their classrooms. The results were supportive to the integration of History of Science in science instruction. In the chapter Could scientific controversies be used as a tool for teaching science in the Compulsory Education? - The results of a pilot research, Constantina Stefanidou and Ioannis Vlachos present the results of a pilot research which aimed to introduce aspects of the Nature of Science in physics teaching, based on a historical context. Taking into account that the study of the simple pendulum is included in physics curriculum, they were inspired by the scientific and philosophical controversy between Galileo and Del Monte about the pendulum motion. The intervention was addressed to thirteen high school students and was assessed. The results indicated that scientific controversies may be useful for teaching Nature of Science. The following three contributions refer to Spain, Greece and Slovacia respectively and have their own distinguished contribution to this book. In the chapter Integration of Science Education and History of Science: The Catalan experience, Antoni Roca-Rosell signalizing that the role of History of Science in education ought to provide an alternative view of science and technology placing them in a human context, presents the efforts for the achievement this objective in Barcelona. There are a number of groups working on this objective with two main orientations: first, dissemination of historical content in science education, highlighting the educational value of case studies and second, special courses on history of science and technology at the university level. In the chapter the Antikythera Mechanism - A Mechanical Cosmos and an eternal prototype for Modelling and Paradigm Study, Xenophon Moussas argues that the Mechanism of Antikythera is the oldest, the only and in fact the very best known example of a complex astronomical device, a dedicated analogue astronomical computer, possibly a planetarium, a device made with gears. We know that this type of devices have been used as educational devices in schools. As we read in Cicero and other ancient texts, great scientists and philosophers developed and used such devices either for education, entertainment, or to impress one’s visitors and guests, including state persons during their state visits. The Mechanism is ideal for x
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investigating interdisciplinarity in the sciences, as it covers many fields of traditional disciplines, without taking into account traditional boundaries between academic subjects, so that it helps a pupil and a student, or an adult learner, to think in a way that crosses the borders of established fields and have a holistic view. In the chapter On the Concept of Energy: History of Science for Teaching, Ricardo Lopes Coelho acknowledges that some physicists have pointed out that we do not really know what energy is. He regards as a main aim of the present paper: “How to understand energy thanks to its history”. For this purpose, he proposes that historical topics which constitute the basis of modern approaches in textbooks will be considered and how to interpret Joule’s experiment. The history of science teaches us that energy was discovered in the 1840s. Mayer, Joule, Colding and Helmholtz are generally considered the discoverers. They did not speak of conservation or transformation of energy but rather of force (Mayer, Colding or Helmholtz) or conversion of mechanical power into heat and vice-versa. Studies like the following deal exclusively with either the educational transformation of the science concepts and the construction of educational material or the use of teaching strategies which incorporate History of Science in science teaching. In the chapter On the Concept of Energy: History of Science for Teaching, Ricardo Lopes Coelho acknowledges that some physicists have pointed out that we do not really know what energy is. He regards as a main aim of the present paper: “How to understand energy thanks to its history”. For this purpose, he proposes that historical topics which constitute the basis of modern approaches in textbooks will be considered and how to interpret Joule’s experiment. In the chapter Troublesome droplets - Improving students’ experiences with the Millikan oil drop experiment, Peter Heering and Stephen Klassen argue that the Millikan’s oil drop experiment is among the classic experiments from modern physics and one of the ‘most beautiful’ experiments of all time. They acknowledge that the educational existing concerns for the Millikan’s experiment contrast with the laboratory experience of students and instructors in performing the experiment. So, they started a research project on the Millikan experiment in order to improve its educational potential. In this chapter, they describe the project and the measures that they intend to take to improve the experience of students. In the chapter History of science and argumentation in science education: Joining forces?, Gábor Zemplén presents an important aspect of any educational approach that aims to incorporate History of Science to develop either knowledge and skills on the Nature of Science, citizenship ideas (including ‘socio-scientific issues’ and ‘public understanding of science’), or reflective, critical thinking. Argumentation appears to be a crucial aspect of science, and, as such, also for approaches incorporating history of science in curricula. In spite of this, at the moment mostly desiderata are set in course and curriculum objectives, without providing the necessary time for both history of science and argumentation in science classes, as a recent study concludes. Furthermore, the author outlines a number of limitations and some of the possibilities that research in argumentation in science education suggests in the hope of showing the benefit of these considerations for the incorporation of History of Science in science classrooms. xi
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In the chapter Resolving Dilemmas in Acquiring Knowledge of Newton’s First Lawn - Is the History of Science Helpful?, Gyoungho Lee and Arie Leegwater explore a dilemmas episode of a physics teacher who is confronted by student disbelief in Newton’s First Law of Motion; there is the tension between students’ common-sense knowledge and the formal knowledge of science. Furthermore, they present the historical case of natural motion and its potential for resolving the dilemmas of teaching Newton’s First Law. The Editors Panagiotis Kokkotas, Katerina Malamitsa and Aikaterini Rizaki National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece
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SECTION A: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
MICHAEL R. MATTHEWS
1. TEACHING THE PHILOSOPHICAL AND WORLDVIEW COMPONENTS OF SCIENCE Some Considerations1
1. INTRODUCTION
A common feature of contemporary science education curricula is the expectation that as well as learning science content and method, students will learn something about science - its nature, its history, how it differs from non-scientific endeavours, and its interactions with society and culture. Thus as well as disciplinary or technical goals, contemporary science curricula rightly seek to contribute wider educational goals. These have often been called ‘humanistic’, ‘cultural’ or ‘liberal’ goals. The American Association for the Advancement of Science expressed its commitment to cultural or humanistic outcomes of science education in its Project 2061 (AAAS, 1989) publication, and the following year in The Liberal Art of Science: The teaching of science must explore the interplay between science and the intellectual and cultural traditions in which it is firmly embedded. Science has a history that can demonstrate the relationship between science and the wider world of ideas and can illuminate contemporary issues (AAAS, 1990, p. xiv). The unique contribution of the science programme to this more general problemsolving educational goal is the cultivation and refinement of specifically scientific habits of mind. These are meant to ‘spill over’ from the laboratory bench to the home, workplace, community and nation. For the AAAS, the wider ‘planetary’ problems are not just scientific and technical, they are also social, cultural, and ideological; and the conviction is that these problems can be, and perhaps only can be, solved by application of a ‘scientific habit of mind’. The expectations of the AAAS have found their way through to the US National Science Education Standards where there is a separate content strand on ‘History and Nature of Science Standards’ (NRC, 1996) this strand is to be covered in science programmes from kindergarten to year 12. Of this strand, the document says that: Students should develop an understanding of what science is, what science is not, what science can and cannot do, and how science contributes to culture (NRC, 1996, p. 2). P.V. Kokkotas et al., (eds.), Adapting Historical Science Knowledge Production to the Classroom, 3–16. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
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And, The standards for the history and nature of science recommend the use of history in school science programs to clarify different aspects of scientific inquiry, the human aspects of science, and the role that science has played in the development of various cultures. (NRC, 1996, p. 107). The liberal or cultural curricular views advanced by the AAAS and evidenced in Norway’s Education Framework have a long history. The hope for a positive ‘spillover’ effect from the learning of science to the improvement of society and culture is a 21st century restatement of the central plank of the European Enlightenment of the 18th century: The Enlightenment thinkers believed that the spread of science would ameliorate many of the enormous physical, social and ideological problems that then beset Europe - terrible religious wars, widespread and gross superstitions, witch crazes, plagues, absolutist and authoritarian monarchical regimes, a domineering and intrusive Roman Catholic Church, and equally domineering Protestant Churches where they had the opportunity, the Inquisition, and so on. In these circumstances it was not surprising that many thought that the method of the New Science that was so manifestly fruitful in the achievements of Newton should be applied more broadly and that it would have flow-on effects for the betterment of culture and society. These curricular statements and Framework pronouncements provide an ‘open cheque’ for the inclusion of history and philosophy of science in science teacher education programmes, and for their utilisation in classrooms. Unfortunately this open cheque is too often not cashed. This paper will discuss an important aspect of the contribution of science to culture, namely its role in the development of worldviews in society; and then how this interaction of science and worldviews can be taught in school programmes. 2. SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY
Science raises philosophical questions and requires philosophical commitments: science and philosophy go hand-in-hand2. It is no accident that many of the major physicists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries wrote books on philosophy and the engaging overlaps between science and philosophy - for instance Boltzmann, von Helmholtz, Mach, Duhem, Eddington, Jeans, Planck, Bohr, Heisenberg, Born, and Bohm3. Many less well known physicists also wrote such books; among the better ones being: Bridgman, Campbell, Margenau, Bunge, Chandrasekhar, Holton, Rabi, Shimony, Rohrlich, Cushing and Weinberg4. A good many chemists and biologists have made contributions to this genre –for instance Haldane (1928), Polanyi (1958), Bernal (1939), Hull (1988), Mayr (1982), Gould (1999), Birch (1990), Monod (1971), and Wilson (1998). One very recent contribution to the genre is by Francis Collins, the geneticist and leader of the Human Genome Project (Collins, 2007)5. 4
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The Oxford philosopher, R. G. Collingwood in his landmark study The Idea of Nature wrote on the history of mutual interdependence of science and philosophy and commented that: The detailed study of natural fact is commonly called natural science, or for short simply science; the reflection on principles, whether those of natural science or of any other department of thought or action, is commonly called philosophy. …but the two things are so closely related that natural science cannot go on for long without philosophy beginning; and that philosophy reacts on the science out of which it has grown by giving it in future a new firmness and consistency arising out of the scientist’s new consciousness of the principles on which he has been working (Collingwood, 1945, p. 2). He goes on to write that: For this reason it cannot be well that natural science should be assigned exclusively to one class of persons called scientists and philosophy to another class called philosophers. A man who has never reflected on the principles of his work has not achieved a grown-up man’s attitude towards it; a scientist who has never philosophized about his science can never be more than a second-hand, imitative, journeyman scientist (Collingwood, 1945, p. 2). What Collingwood says about the requirement of ‘reflecting upon principles’ being necessary for the practice of good science, can equally be said for the practice of good science teaching. Liberal education promotes just such deeper reflection and questioning of the basic laws or assumptions of any discipline being taught, including science. 3. SCIENCE AND METAPHYSICS
Science not only raises and is intertwined with the foregoing types of ‘routine’ philosophical questions, but these philosophical reflections lead inexorably to metaphysical ones, and finally to questions about worldviews. The phenomena and questions science investigates; the kinds of answers it entertains; the types of entities it recognises as having causal influence; the boundaries, if any, it sets to the domain of scientific investigation; and so on, all begin to touch upon or push against larger metaphysical commitments of an epistemological, ontological, and sometimes ethical kind. Consider the Law of Inertia, the foundation stone of classical physics which is taught to every science student in school. It is usually stated as: ‘bodies either remain at rest or continue travelling in a straight line at a constant velocity unless acted upon by a force’. In better schools it might be ‘demonstrated’ by means of sliding a puck on an air table. In a purely technical science education the law is learnt by heart, and problems worked out using its associated formulae of F = ma. Technical purposes might be satisfied with correct memorisation and 5
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mastery of the quantitative skills - ‘a force of X newtons acts on a mass of Y kilograms, what acceleration is produced?’- but the goals of liberal education cannot be so easily satisfied. Just a little philosophical reflection and historical investigation on this routine topic of inertia opens up whole new scientific and educational vistas. Apart from interesting and important history, basic matters of philosophy arise in any good classroom treatment of the law of inertia: – epistemology - we never see force-free behaviour in nature, nor can it be experimentally induced, so what is the source and justification of our knowledge of bodies acting without impressed forces? If force is measured by acceleration, and if acceleration is a function of measures of time, then the magnitude of a supposedly independent force depends upon our metric of time. – ontology - we do not see or experience force apart from its manifestation, so does it have existence? What is mass? What is a measure of mass as distinct from weight? – cosmology - does such an inertial object go on forever in an infinite void? What happens at the limits of ‘infinite’ space? Were bodies created with movement? These are the sorts of considerations that prompted Poincaré to say: ‘When we say force is the cause of motion, we are talking metaphysics’ (Poincaré, 1905/1952, p. 98). And as every physics class talks of force being the cause of motion, then there is metaphysics lurking in every classroom, just waiting to be exposed. But as well as movement upwards from the study of nature (science) to associated metaphysics, there is of course movement downwards. The study of nature presupposes certain metaphysical and procedural or methodological commitments: first the existence of an external world that is independent of the observer; second the universality of causation in that world, if something happens there is a cause that made it happen; and third the constancy of causation, if an event E has cause C today, then it will have the same cause tomorrow and the same cause in other places. To these three presuppositions might be added epistemological commitments such as: our mind or reason is such that we can come to know the external world. Some might add an additional epistemic presupposition of science: namely that appraisal of alternative beliefs needs to be rational; science is an activity in which evidence is of central relevance in deciding upon truth or falsity, it is thus different from politics or business. These presuppositions, postulates or principles might be labelled Realism, Determinism, Lawfulness, Reason and Rationality. They are not self-evident; not all people and cultures have believed them, some have argued that it was the Christian worldview where God was removed from nature that, contra animism, allowed science to flourish; and some of these principles are disputed by contemporary philosophers of science. The principles are not directly proved by science rather they are the default metaphysical positions for the conduct of Western science. Duhem and Poincaré, at the beginning of the twentieth century, called these principles ‘conventions’. Poincaré wrote that: ‘while these laws are imposed on 6
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our science, which otherwise could not exist, they are not imposed on Nature’ (Poincaré, 1905/1952, p. xxiii). And reassuringly for a Realist he added: ‘Are they then arbitrary? No; for if they were, they would not be fertile’ (ibid.). One philosophical question here is how does ‘fertility’ bear upon the truth of the principles of the fertile research programme; another is how does such truth, if truth it be, give grounds for believing in the invisible entities postulated by the principles? Clearly one important task for educators who are exhorted to teach something about science, its impact on culture, and how it is distinguished from other ways of knowing is to reflect on whether philosophy and metaphysics is separate from or a part of science. Either way it is going to need to be taught. If metaphysics and philosophical commitments are an integral part of science, then they clearly need to be fleshed out, articulated and examined; if they are something separate from science, then it will need to be shown just how they are separate. 4. SCIENCE AND WORLDVIEWS
This amalgam of ontological, metaphysics, epistemological and ethical commitments, especially when extended to include religious or irreligious positions can loosely be called a ‘worldview’. A worldview encompasses ideas of nature - its constitution, origins and purposes if any; ideas of our place in nature and in the general ‘scheme of things’; ideas of what entities exist in the world - matter?, spirits? minds? Angels?; ideas about the powers and actions of such existing entities?; ideas of God and how God may or may not interact with the world including answering prayers, performing miracles, making Revelations, and anointing prophets or messengers; ideas of the Sacred; ideas of how knowledge is acquired and tested; ideas of the goodness or badness of human nature; and so on. In the seventeenth century, the new science (natural philosophy) of Galileo, Descartes, Huygens, Boyle and Newton caused a massive change not just in science, but in European philosophy that had enduring repercussions for religion, ethics, politics and culture. All the major natural philosophers of the time rejected Aristotelianism in their scientific practice and in their enunciated philosophy. Overwhelmingly the new philosophy to which they turned was corpuscularian, mechanical and realist - it has rightly been called the ‘Mechanical World View’6. In this new world view, there was simply no place for the entities that Aristotelianism utilised to explain events in the world: hylomorphism, immaterial substances, natures, substantial forms, and final causes were all banished from the philosophical firmament. Galileo reached back to pre-Socratic atomistic sources, and to more recent medieval nominalist sources, for his account of matter. As a student he had read Democritus, Lucretius, and possibly other early atomists such as Leucippus the teacher of Democritus. For them colour and taste were opinions, mere names; what existed in the world was atoms and the void, and atoms had neither colour nor taste. They held a material monist position - all matter was an aggregate of invisible and indivisible ‘atoms’ each of which was made of the same material, and differing 7
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among themselves only in size and shape. It was the particular aggregate of atoms that gave bodies their tangible properties; a body’s properties were not produced or caused by its Form. When new substances are created from different materials, their immutable atoms are just rearranged in different ways; there is no change of Form, because there was no Form to change. This atomistic ontology was so comprehensively rejected by Aristotle in this Physics and his Metaphysics that it disappeared from the philosophical firmament for over a thousand years until it was revived by some thinkers on the margins of medieval philosophy such as William of Ockham and Nicholas of Autrecourt. Galileo makes explicit his atomism, or corpuscularianism, when he says: Those materials which produce heat in us and make us feel warmth, which are known by the general name of ‘fire’, would then be a multitude of minute particles having certain shapes and moving with certain velocities. Meeting with our bodies, they penetrate by means of their extreme subtlety, and their touch as felt by us when they pass through our substance is the sensation we call ‘heat’. …I do not believe that in addition to shape, number, motion, penetration, and touch there is any other quality in fire corresponding to ‘heat’. (ibid) Galileo’s ontology was simply inconsistent with Scholastic metaphysics and thus with the medieval world view built upon it. Galileo’s distinction between primary and secondary qualities was the beginning of the unravelling of this ‘Medieval Synthesis’ and its replacement by the ‘Mechanical World View’ and ultimately the ‘Scientific World View’. Newton, the greatest of all seventeenth-century scientists, was also a champion of the New Philosophy7. Beginning in his student days, Newton embraced Galileo’s mathematical methods, his Copernicanism, his experimentalism, his rejection of Aristotle’s physics, his rejection of Scholastic philosophy, and his embryonic atomism8. In the Preface of the Principia Newton identifies himself with the ‘moderns, rejecting substantial forms and occult qualities’ and endeavours ‘to subject the phenomena of nature to the laws of mathematics’ (Newton, 1729/1934, p. xvii). Much can be said about Atomism and its role in the Scientific Revolution, but for current purposes it is suffice to repeat Dilworth’s judgement that: The metaphysics underlying the Scientific Revolution was that of early Greek atomism. …It is with atomism that one obtains the notion of a physical reality underlying the phenomena, a reality in which uniform causal relations obtain. …What made the Scientific Revolution truly distinct, and Galileo …its father, was that for the first time this empirical methodology [of Archimedes] was given an ontological underpinning (Dilworth, 2006, p. 201). Whenever atomism was entertained in the medieval and renaissance period it provoked intense theological and religious attention, if not outrage; atomism was a 8
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red-flag to proponents of the established, church-endorsed, philosophical orthodoxy. Peter Gassendi adopted Epicurean atomism in the early seventeenth century, but bent it to the dictates of the Catholic Church in which he was a priest. Thus he said, contra Epicurus that the atoms are not eternal in time, they are not infinite in number, and their initial motion was not sui generis, but rather they were moved by God. The Islamic tradition also decried the new scientific worldview, and its Enlightenment champions. A representative Islamic reaction to the Scientific Revolution can be seen when one contemporary scholar writes that the new science of Galileo and Newton had tragic consequences for the West because it marked: The first occasion in human history when a human collectivity completely replaced the religious understanding of the order of nature for one that was not only nonreligious but that also challenged some of the most basic tenets of the religious perspective (Nasr, 1996, p. 130). Nasr repeats Western religious and romantic laments about the new science when he writes: Henceforth as long as only the quantitative face of nature was considered as real, and the new science was seen as the only science of nature, the religious meaning of the order of nature was irrelevant, at best an emotional and poetic response to ‘matter in motion’ (Nasr, 1996, p. 143). 5. THE ATOMISTIC HERESY
Just as science is associated with one or more worldviews, so too is religion; and both history and contemporary times bear witness to the fact that the worldviews of science and of religion do not always sit easily with each other. Worldview conflicts occasioned by disputes about Creation, Creationism, Teleology, Miracles, the existence of individual souls or spirits, and so on, have been comprehensively written upon, with just the past few years seeing bestsellers devoted to these conflicts (Dennett, 1995; Dawkins, 2006; Hitchens, 2007). A less written upon, but very illustrative, example of debate about compatibility of scientific and religious worldviews concerns atomism, the central ontological plank of the Scientific Revolution. Among the numerous Christian positions that atomism seemingly threatened, the most basic and important one was the revered Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Eastern Uniate teaching on Christ’s presence in the Eucharist; the doctrine of Transubstantiation. The Eucharist was the sacramental heart of the Catholic Mass, and the Mass was the devotional heart of the Church. Belief in the Real Presence of Christ, brought into being by the priest’s consecration of the communion host, underwrote devotional practice and doctrinal authority. Denial of the Real Presence was a capital offence. It was a litmus test in the Inquisition, where failure the belief meant a horrible death at the stake. 9
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Scholastic philosophy, with its Aristotelian categories of substance, accidents and qualities could bring a modicum of intelligibility to this central mystery of faith -at consecration the substance of bread changed to the substance of Christ’s body, but the accidents remained that of bread. So Christ became truly present, even though there was no sensible change apparent. Thomas Aquinas formulated the orthodox doctrine as: All the substance of the bread is transmuted into the body of Christ… therefore, this is not a formal conversion but a substantial one. Nor does it belong to the species of natural mutations; but, with its own definition, it is called transubstantiation (Summa Theologica III, q.75, a.4, in Redondi, 1988, p. 212). This Thomist formulation, along with the Aristotelian philosophical apparatus required for its interpretation, was affirmed as defining Catholic orthodoxy at the Council of Trent in 1551. Although Galileo was, in 1615, warned not to hold or teach the Copernican doctrine of a moving earth, it was only after The Assayer and its endorsement of atomism, was published in 1623 that he faced serious theological charges. The charge of Atomism against Galileo with its direct implications of heresy, was publicly made by Father Grassi, a prominent Jesuit professor of mathematics and astronomy at the Collegio Romano. In a book published in Paris in 1626 he wrote: I must now reply to the digression on heat in which Galileo openly declares himself a follower of the school of Democritus and Epicurus. … … I cannot avoid giving vent to certain scruples that preoccupy me. They come from what we have regarded as incontestable on the basis of the precepts of the Fathers, the Councils, and the entire Church. They are the qualities by virtue of which, although the substance of the bread and wine disappear, thanks to omnipotent words, nonetheless their sensible species persist; that is, their color, taste, warmth, or coldness. Only by the divine will are these species maintained, and in miraculous fashion, as they tell me. … Instead, Galileo expressly declares that heat, color, taste, and everything else of this kind are outside [inside?] of him who feels them, and therefore in the bread and wine, just simple names. Hence, when the substance of the bread and wine disappears, only the names of the qualities will remain. In the host, it is commonly affirmed, the sensible species (heat, taste, and so on) persist. Galileo, on the contrary, says that heat and taste, outside of him who perceives them, and hence also in the host, are simple names; that is, they are nothing. One must therefore infer, from what Galileo says, that heat 10
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and taste do not subsist in the host. The soul experiences horror at the very thought (Redondi, 1987, p. 336). Underlining the gravity of this charge against Galileo, Father Grassi adds that Transubstantiation ‘constitutes the essential point of faith or contains all other essential points’ (Redondi, 1987, p. 336). Descartes’ matter theory was likewise condemned in 1671 because its categories did not allow an intelligent rendering of the doctrine of Transubstantiation. John Hedley Brooke, an historian sympathetic to claims about the positive contribution of religion to science, recognized the problem that atomism posed ‘especially for the Roman Catholic Church, which took a distinctive view of the presence of Christ at the celebration of the Eucharist’ (Brooke, 1991, p. 141). He writes: With an Aristotelian theory of matter and form, it was possible to understand how the bread and wine could retain their sensible properties while their substance was miraculously turned into the body and blood of Christ. ….But if, as the mechanical philosophers argued, the sensible properties were dependent on an ulterior configuration of particles, then any alteration to that internal structure would have discernible effects. The bread and wine would no longer appear as bread and wine if a real change had occurred (Brooke, 1991, p. 142). On the face of it the whole influential tradition of Roman Catholic Thomistic and Scholastic teaching, which had enormous cultural and personal impact in Catholic Europe, Latin America, the Philippines, and elsewhere, was in flat contradiction to the worldview of science. Adjustments had to be made on one side or the other. This is a rich, fertile and engaging example of the impact of science on culture, and of culture’s responses and reactions to such impact. 6. OPTIONS FOR RECONCILING WORLDVIEWS
Examination of the Atomism heresy might seem arcane, but there are benefits to be derived; some issues, relationships and tensions are more obvious when viewed in the calmer light of history than in the often partisan glare of the present. The Atomism versus specifically Roman Catholic and Orthodox religious debate of the seventeenth century brings into focus a number of enduring philosophical, religious and cultural issues, among which are at least the following: 1. Does the Christian religion, make metaphysical claims? And are such claims best expressed in any particular philosophical system? 2. Is there a need for religious claims to be made intelligible or reasonable? 3. How adequate is Scholastic Thomism for the interpretation of Christian doctrine? 4. Should philosophical systems be judged by their theological adequacy or compatibility? 5. Does the Church have the authority to proscribe philosophical systems? 11
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These issues were argued within the Christian churches; they were debated in the Enlightenment; and are still debated9. For example, the author of one work titled Christian Metaphysics straightforwardly argues that: The thesis which I submit to the critical examination of the reader is that there is one Christian philosophy and one only. I maintain, in other words, that Christianity calls for a metaphysical structure which is not any structure, that Christianity is an original metaphysic. ...[it is] a body of very precise and very well-defined theses which are properly metaphysical … (Tresmontant, 1965, pp. 19–20). Such a position might be labelled ‘privileged’ in as much as the metaphysics comes from outside of science, not from within. This was the situation mentioned above when Gassendi modified the atomism of Epicurus to have it accord with Christian belief. Privilege for such metaphysical positions is usually is derived from Revelation, Theology, Philosophy, Intuition or perhaps Politics. Such privileged metaphysical views can be found enunciated by advocates of Judaic, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist and a host of lesser religions; as well as of indigenous belief systems. These traditions would formulate the above five issues in their own terms. And if ‘Marxism-Leninism’ is substituted for ‘Thomism’, and ‘The Central Committee’ is substituted for ‘Church’ then the above list of issues is applicable to the situation that pertained in the Soviet Union and its satellites; with the Lysenko case being the most public and scandalous reminder of how enduring are the issues10. Where there is such incompatibility between scientific and religious metaphysics and worldviews - as in the case of Atomism developed above - the options usually taken to reconcile the differences are to claim that: 1. Science really has no metaphysics; that it makes no metaphysical claims. This is the option made famous by the Catholic positivist Pierre Duhem. 2. The metaphysics of science is false; at least any such purported metaphysics that is inconsistent with religious beliefs. This is the option advocated by the Scholastic tradition discussed above; by Tresmontant and Nasr who are quoted above; and by philosophical theologians such as Plantinga (2000), Mascall (1956), and numerous others. 3. There can be parallel, equally valid, metaphysics. This is an old option given recent prominence by Stephen Gould in his NOMA formulation (Gould, 1999). All these options have their problems, but this is not the place to elaborate them; they are fully elaborated by contributors to the Science & Education special issue devoted to ‘Science, Worldviews and Education’ (Vol. 18, Nos. 6–7, 2009). As far as education is concerned, the important thing is to have students first recognise what are the options, and second carefully examine them and their implications and ideally take up a personal, if provisional, position on the matter. 12
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7. CONCLUSION
Science has contributed immensely to our philosophical and cultural tradition, this is part of the ‘flesh’ of science; too often, unfortunately, science teaching presents just the ‘bare bones’ of science –this is one reason why, notoriously, advanced ‘technical’ science is so often associated with religious and ideological fundamentalism and bigotry. The cultural flesh needs to be part of any serious science programme, and indeed this is now required in many contemporary curriculum statements. These requirements present an open cheque for historical and philosophical studies in science education; but for the cheque to be cashed teachers need the relevant knowledge, interest and enthusiasm for such studies. Unfortunately they are poorly covered in teacher education programmes. In a good liberal education students will learn about the philosophical dimensions of science, beginning with the routine matters listed early in this paper - matters of conceptual analysis, epistemology, ethics and so on. They will also learn about the metaphysical, especially ontological, dimensions of science, some of which have been discussed above. They should also be introduced to, and hopefully make decisions about the constitution and applicability of the scientific outlook, habit of mind or the scientific temper - is a scientific outlook required for the solution of social and ideological problems? And finally students should engage with the questions of science and worldviews, and study options for reconciling seeming conflicts in this area. All of this makes science classes more intellectually engaging, it promotes ‘minds-on’ science learning, and it might help inoculate students against snake-oil merchants who peddle various ‘metaphysical’ schemes and wonders –if students have all ready engaged with serious metaphysical questions and debates, and have been exposed to genuine wonders about the world and science’s coming to know something about it– they might be less likely to fall for whatever passing fantasies are doing the internet and television rounds. In these three areas –philosophy, metaphysics and worldviews– teachers will need to guide and inform students, provide them with materials, and structure discussion and debate. These educational goals should not just be the responsibility of the science teacher; they should be realised by informed and competent curricula coordination across the subjects of science, philosophy and history. But it does not mean that students should learn the correct options, or that teachers should give them correct answers. Immanuel Kant famously said that the motto of the Enlightenment was ‘Have courage to use your own reason!’ (Kant, 1784/2003, p. 54). A century earlier, John Locke expressed this motif as a principle for liberal education in his 1689 Enlightenment classic, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, where he said: The floating of other men’s opinions in our brains makes us not one jot more knowing, though they happen to be true. What in them was science is in us but opiniatertry, whilst we give up our assent only to reverend names, and do not, as they did, employ our own reason to understand those truths which gave them reputation. 13
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And then proceeded memorably to say: Such borrowed wealth, like fairy money, though it be gold in the hand from which he received it, will be but leaves and dust when it comes to use (Locke, 1689/1924, p. 40). The same advice is applicable today. NOTES 1
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This paper is based on a longer version that is to appear in Science & Education, vol.18, nos. 5–6, 2009. The special issue is devoted to ‘Science, Worldviews and Education’. Some useful studies on the philosophical dimension of science are Smart (1968), Wartofsky (1968), Buchdahl (1969), Amsterdamski (1975), Trusted (1991), and Dilworth (2006). See for instance: Boltzmann, Theoretical Physics and Philosophical Problems (1905/1974), Helmholtz’s Science & Culture (1995), Mach’s The Science of Mechanics (1893/1960), Duhem’s The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory (1906/1954), Planck’s Where is Science Going? (1932), Eddington’s The Philosophy of Physical Science (1939), Jean’s Physics and Philosophy (1943/1981), Bohr Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge (1958), Heisenberg Physics and Philosophy (1962), Schrödinger My View of the World (1964), Born My Life & My Views (1968), and Bohm Wholeness and the Implicate Order (1980). See for instance: Bridgman Reflections of a Physicist (1950), Margenau The Nature of Physical Reality (1950), Rabi Science the Centre of Culture (Rabi, 1967), Bunge Philosophy of Science (Bunge, 1998), Chandrasekhar Truth and Beauty (Chandrasekhar, 1987), Campbell What Is Science? (Campbell, 1921/1952), Holton Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought (Holton, 1973), Cushing Philosophical Concepts in Physics (Cushing, 1998), Rohrlich From Paradox to Reality (Rohrlich, 1987), Shimony Search for a Naturalistic World View (Shimony, 1993) and Weinberg Facing Up: Science and Its Cultural Adversaries (Weinberg, 2001). Beyond the substantial and careful writers listed above it needs to be acknowledged that there is a veritable legion of insubstantial and careless writers whose books are nevertheless best sellers. These authors simply muddy the waters, and bring discredit to the programme of understanding the overlap of science and philosophy. For historical and philosophical elaboration of the mechanical world view see Dijksterhuis (1961/ 1986), Harré (1964), and Westfall (1971). Numerous works are available on Newton’s philosophy and metaphysics, among them are McMullin (1978), Stein (2002), McGuire (1995) and Hughes (1990). Although an atomist, Newton distanced himself from Descartes’ interpretation of the theory. For Newton’s early scientific and philosophical formation see Herivel (1965). For representative literature on this topic of ‘Christian Philosophy’ see Trethowan (1954) and Tresmontant (1965). For discussion of the suitability of Thomism as a vehicle for the interpretation of Christian doctrine, see McInerny (1966) and Weisheipl (1968). See Graham (1973), Joravsky (1970), Lecourt (1977), and Soyfer (1994).
REFERENCES American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). (1989). Project 2061: Science for all Americans. Washington, DC: AAAS. (Also published by Oxford University Press, 1990) American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). (1990). The liberal art of science: agenda for action. Washington, DC: AAAS. Amsterdamski, S. (1975). Between experience and metaphysics. Dordrecht: Reidel. Bernal, J. D. (1939). The social function of science. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 14
WORLDVIEW COMPONENTS OF SCIENCE Birch, L. C. (1990). On purpose. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press. Bohm, D. (1980). Wholeness and the implicate order. London: Ark Paperbacks. Bohr, N. (1958). Atomic physics and human knowledge. New York: Wiley. Boltzmann, L. (1905/1974). Theoretical physics and philosophical problems. Dordrecht: Reidel. Born, M. (1968). My life & my views. New York: Scribners. Bridgman, P. W. (1950). Reflections of a Physicist. New York: Philosophical Library. Brooke, J. H. (1991). Science and religion: Some historical perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Buchdahl, G. (1969). Metaphysics and the philosophy of science. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Bunge, M. (1998). Philosophy of science (2 Vols.). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Campbell, N. R. (1921/1952). What is science? New York: Dover. Chandrasekhar, S. (1987). Truth and beauty: Aesthetics and motivations in science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Collingwood, R. G. (1945). The idea of nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Collins, F. S. (2007). The language of God: A scientist presents evidence for belief. New York: Free Press. Cushing, J. T. (1998). Philosophical concepts in physics: The historical relation between philosophy and scientific theories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dawkins, R. (2006). The God delusion. London: Bantam Press. De Wulf, M. (1903/1956). An introduction to scholastic philosophy: Medieval and modern (P. Coffey, Trans.). New York: Dover Publications. Dennett, D. C. (1995). Darwin’s dangerous idea: Evolution and the meanings of life. London: Allen Lane, Penguin Press. Dijksterhuis, E. J. (1961/1986). The mechanization of the world picture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Dilworth, C. (2006). The metaphysics of science. An account of modern science in terms of principles, laws and theories (2nd ed.). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Duhem, P. (1906/1954). The aim and structure of physical theory (P. P. Wiener, Trans.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Eddington, A. (1939). The philosophy of physical science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gould, S. J. (1999). Rock of ages: Science and religion in the fullness of life. New York: Ballantine Books. Graham, L. R. (1973). Science and philosophy in the Soviet Union. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Haldane, J. S. (1928). The sciences and philosophy. London: Hodder & Stoughton. Harré, R. (1964). Matter and method. London: Macmillan & Co. Heisenberg, W. (1962). Physics and philosophy. New York: Harper & Row. Helmholtz, H. von. (1995). Science and culture: Popular and philosophical essays (C. David, Ed.). Chicago: Chicago University Press. Herivel, J. (1965). The background to Newton’s ‘Principia’. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hitchens, C. (2007). God is not great: How religion poisons everything. New York: Hachette Book Group. Holton, G. (1973). Thematic origins of scientific thought. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Hughes, R. I. G. (1990). Philosophical Perspectives on Newtonian Science. In P. Bricker & R. I. G. Hughes (Eds.), Philosophical perspectives on Newtonian science (pp. 1–16). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hull, D. L. (1988). Science as a process: An evolutionary account of the social and conceptual development of sciences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Jeans, J. (1943/1981). Physics and philosophy. New York: Dover Publications. Joravsky, D. (1970). The Lysenko affair. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kant, I. (1784/2003). What is Enlightenment? In P. Hyland (Ed.), The enlightenment: A sourcebook and reader. London: Routledge. Lecourt, D. (1977). Proletarian science? The case of Lysenko. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Locke, J. (1689/1924). An essay concerning human understanding (A. S. Pringle-Pattison, Ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. Mach, E. (1883/1960). The science of mechanics. LaSalle, IL: Open Court Publishing Company.
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MATTHEWS Margenau, H. (1950). The nature of physical reality: A philosophy of modern physics. New York: McGraw-Hill. Martin, R. N. D. (1991). Pierre Duhem: Philosophy and history in the work of a believing Physicist. La Salle, IL: Open Court. Mascall, E. L. (1956). Christian theology and natural science: Some questions in their relations. London: Longmans, Green & Co. Mayr, E. (1982). The growth of biological thought. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. McGuire, J. E. (1995). Tradition and innovation: Newton’s metaphysics of nature. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. McInerny, R. M. (1966). Thomism in an age of renewal. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. McMullin, E. (1978). Newton on matter and activity. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Monod, J. (1971). Chance and necessity: An essay on the natural philosophy of modern biology. New York: Knopf. Nasr, S. H. (1996). Religion and the order of nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. National Research Council (NRC). (1996). National science education standards. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Newton, I. (1729/1934). Mathematical principles of mathematical philosophy (A. Motte, Trans., F. Cajori, Rev.). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Planck, M. (1932). Where is science going? New York: W.W. Norton. Plantinga, A. (2000). Warranted Christian belief. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Poincaré, H. (1905/1952). Science and hypothesis. New York: Dover Publications. Polanyi, M. (1958). Personal knowledge. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Rabi, I. I. (1967). Science the centre of culture. New York: World Publishing Company. Redondi, P. (1988). Galileo heretic. London: Allen Lane. Rohrlich, F. (1987). From paradox to reality: Our basic concepts of the physical world. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schrödinger, E. (1964). My view of the world. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shimony, A. (1993). Search for a naturalistic world view. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Smart, J. J. C. (1968). Between science and philosophy: An introduction to the philosophy of science. New York: Random House. Soyfer, V. N. (1994). Lysenko and the tragedy of Soviet science (L. Gruliow & R. Gruliow, Trans.). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Stein, H. (2002). Newton’s metaphysics. In I. B. Cohen & G. E. Smith (Eds.), The Cambridge companion to Newton (pp. 256–302). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tresmontant, C. (1965). Christian metaphysics. New York: Sheed and Ward. Trethowan, I. (1954). An essay in Christian Philosophy. London: Longmans, Green & Co. Trusted, J. (1991). Physics and metaphysics: Theories of space and time. London: Routledge. Wartofsky, M. W. (1968). Conceptual foundations of scientific thought: An introduction to the philosophy of science. New York: Macmillan. Weinberg, S. (2001). Facing up: Science and its cultural adversaries. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Weisheipl, J. A. (1968). The revival of Thomism as a Christian philosophy. In R. M. McInerny (Ed.), New themes in Christian philosophy (pp. 164–185). South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Westfall, R. S. (1971). The construction of modern science: Mechanisms and mechanics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wilson, E. O. (1998). Consilience: The unity of knowledge. London: Little, Brown & Co.
Michael R. Matthews School of Education, University of New South Wales, Australia e-mail:
[email protected]
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STATHIS PSILLOS
2. IS THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE THE WASTELAND OF FALSE THEORIES?
1. INTRODUCTION
These instructions are intended to provide guidance to authors of Imagine you live in 1823 and you are about to design an advanced course on the theory of heat. About fifty years ago, Lavoisier and Laplace had posited caloric as a material substance —an indestructible fluid of fine particles— which was taken to be the cause of heat and in particular, the cause of the rise of temperature of a body, by being absorbed by the body. No doubt, you rely on the best available theory, which is the caloric theory. In particular, meticulous and knowledgeable as you are, you rely on the best of the best: Laplace’s advanced account of the caloric theory of heat, with all its sophistication, detail and predictive might. You really believe that the best science teaching should be based on the best theories that are available. But you also believe that the best theory that is available is not really the best unless it has a claim to truth (or truthlikeness, or partial truth and the like). For what is the point of teaching a theory about the deep structure of the world unless it does say something or other about this deep structure? The course goes really well. Your notes are impressive. They are soon turned into a textbook with lots of explanatory detail and fancy calculations. Alas! The world does not co-operate. There are no calorific particles among the things there are in it. Heat is destroyed when work is produced. The advanced theory is challenged by alternative theories, anomalies and failed predictions. There is agony, but in your lifetime, the caloric theory gets superseded and is left discredited in the wasteland of false theories. Decades come by. You are not around anymore. Your grandchildren go to school and then to the university; they follow some new-fangled courses on the history of science. And there it is. The once powerful caloric theory of heat is now only a chapter in the history of science textbook. Why is this not the fate of all (or most) of the theories we come up with? Why aren’t current theories, despite their explanatory and predictive successes, just chapters in the hitherto unwritten history of science books? Why is science education not just future history of science education plus some problem-solvers? This might well be a fate we have to live with. Or, we might be able to say something different, viz., that science is a mixture of continuity and change and that there is reason to believe that parts of current scientific theories, like parts of past scientific theories, will survive radical theory-change and form (and keep on forming) a stable network of theoretical principles and explanatory hypotheses that P.V. Kokkotas et al., (eds.), Adapting Historical Science Knowledge Production to the Classroom, 17–36. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
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constitute the backbone of our evolving, but by and large true, scientific image of the world. The aim of this paper is to motivate this alternative, especially in connection with issues related to science education. It is an appeal to render science education sensitive to the philosophical issues that can be drawn from a close look at the history of science. Section 2 is a brief outline of the caloric theory of heat. Section 3 is a little note on a methodological principle by means of which theories are judged — use-novelty. Section 4 offers a rather detailed exploration of Laplace’s advanced caloric theory of heat and explains its shortcoming in light of the foregoing methodological principle. Section 5 shows that this kind of criticism of Laplace’s theory has had an actual historical actor —the self-taught physicist John Herapath— and is not, therefore, available only by hindsight. Section 6 raises the question: where is the caloric theory now?; to which it offers the simple but painful answer: in the history books. It then paves the way for the discussion of the Pessimistic Meta-Induction, whose proper analysis and significance are given in Section 7. Section 8 draws on the material presented above to raise another important question: what is wrong with science education? To which it offers the answer that science education seems blind to the fact of theory-change in science and this obscures the importance of change as well as of continuity. History and philosophy of science can certainly help science education to avoid this blindness. 2. THE CALORIC THEORY OF HEAT
In the last quarter of the eighteenth century, French scientists, most notably Pierre Simon Laplace and Antoine Lavoisier posited caloric as a material substance — an indestructible fluid of fine particles— which was taken to be the cause of heat (Lavoisier, 1789, p. 1–2). Despite the theory’s success in giving qualitative explanations of several heat phenomena1, the caloric theory faced important experimental anomalies, most notably that caloric seemed to have no weight, and the generation of heat by friction, which contradicted the fundamental assumption of the caloric model, viz., that caloric is an indestructible fluid and that heat per se is a conservative quantity (cf. Davy, 1799, p. 9–23; Thompson (Count Rumford), 1798). Moreover, the caloric theory was not the one and only theory of heat available. According to the proponents of the rival dynamical theory —most notably Humphry Davy and Count Rumford— the cause of heat was not a material fluid but rather, the very motion of the molecules that constitute a substance. In this sense, heat was nothing over and above the motion of the constituents of a body. In fact the dynamical conception of heat was able to explain both major foregoing anomalies that the caloric theory faced (cf. Thompson (Count Rumford), 1799). The caloric theory could cope with these anomalies —for instance, by positing that the calorific particles were superfine and weightless. But as Joseph Black — a Scott advocate of the caloric theory— pointed out, all these attempts were rather ad hoc: their only justification was that they could save the caloric theory from 18
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refutation. In fact, Black (1803, p. 46) gave one of the first elegant accounts of ad hocness in his following remark: Many have been the speculations and views of ingenious men about this union of bodies with heat. But, as they are all hypothetical, and as the hypothesis is of the most complicated nature, being in fact a hypothetical application of another hypothesis, I cannot hope for much useful information by attending to it. A nice adaptation of conditions will make almost any hypothesis agree with the phenomena. This will please the imagination, but does not advance our knowledge (emphasis added). In his lectures, Black presented both then available theories of heat and, although he stressed that “the supposition” that heat is a material fluid appeared the “most probable”, he (1803, p. 44) added that: neither of these suppositions [i.e. the material and the dynamical] has been fully and accurately considered by their authors, or applied to explain the whole facts and phenomena related to heat. They have not, therefore, supplied us with a proper theory or explication of the nature of heat. Interestingly enough, Lavoisier and Laplace had an attitude similar to Black’s. After presenting both current theories of heat, they suggested that the theory of experimental calorimetry was independent of both theoretical considerations concerning the nature of heat. They noted: We will not decide at all between the two foregoing hypotheses [i.e. material vs. dynamical theory of heat]. Several phenomena seem favourable to the second, [i.e. the mechanical theory] such as the heat produced by the friction of two solid bodies, for example; but there are others which are explained more simply by the other [i.e. material theory of heat] —perhaps they both hold at the same time. So, (...) one must admit their common principles: that is to say, in either of those, the quantity of free heat remains always the same in simple mixtures of bodies. (...) The conservation of the free heat, in simple mixtures of bodies, is, then, independent of those hypotheses about the nature of heat; this is generally admitted by the physicists, and we shall adopt it in the following researches” (1780, p. 152–153). 3. A NOTE ON AD HOCNESS
Recall what Black said above: “A nice adaptation of conditions will make almost any hypothesis agree with the phenomena. This will please the imagination, but does not advance our knowledge”. This, for all practical purposes, can be taken to be what makes a theory (or a modification of a theory) ad hoc vis-à-vis a set of phenomena that theory is meant to explain. The charge of ad hocness is an epistemic charge. It is meant to illustrate a cognitive shortcoming of a theory —what Black captures by saying that an ad hoc theory “does not advance our knowledge”. An ad hoc theory is not a well-supported theory despite the fact that it may entail the laws that it is meant to explain. 19
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Clearly, there are two ways in which a known fact E can be accommodated in a scientific theory T. (1) Information about E is used in the construction of a theory T and T predicts E. (2) A phenomenon E is known the time that a theory T is proposed, T predicts E, but no information about E is used in the construction of T. Although the Lakatosian school has produced a fine-grained distinction between levels of ad hocness, (cf. Lakatos, 1970, p. 175; Zahar, 1973, p. 101), I shall concentrate on the most general case, namely: Conditions of ad hocness: A theory T is ad hoc with respect to phenomenon E if and only if either of the following two conditions is satisfied: (a) A body of background knowledge B entails the existence of E. Information about E is used in the construction of a theory T and T accommodates E. (b) A body of background knowledge B entails the existence of E. A certain already available theory T does not predict/explain E. T is modified into theory Tƍ so that Tƍ predicts E, but the only reason for this modification is the prediction/ explanation of E. In particular Tƍ has no other excess theoretical and empirical content over T. The key point here is that though theories do get support by explaining already known and established empirical laws, this support is a function of the way the theory is constructed and of the way it is related to the known laws. Simply put, if a known phenomenon E is accommodated within T in the way suggested by (1) above, E does not support T, whilst if it is accommodated in the way suggested by (2) above, E does support T. Following Earman (1992, chapter 4, section 8) we can speak of “use novelty”, where, simply put, a prediction P of a known fact E is use novel relative to a theory T, if no information about E was used in the construction of the theory which predicted it. So use-novelty is sharply distinguished from, and contrasted to, ad hoc accommodation. 4. ENTER LAPLACE
From the early 1780s until his death in 1827, Laplace was the dominant figure in theoretical physics in France. His programme, inspired and guided by Newton’s work, was the provision of a theoretical account of all natural phenomena in terms of attractive and repulsive (central) forces exerted between the particles (cf. Fox, 1974). In early 1820s Laplace was embroiled in a research project, aiming to give a theoretical basis and a quantitative explanation of the empirical laws of gases within the caloric theory of heat. This was a fine test for the caloric theory. Until then, the caloric theory had not been fully articulated mathematically and had not offered quantitative derivations and explanations of the empirical laws of heat. Not only did Laplace’s attempts aimed to show that Newtonianism could conquer one more territory —the thermal phenomena— but also to establish that the caloric theory of heat could offer adequate theoretical explanations of heat phenomena. Laplace first presented his mathematical theory before the French Academy of Sciences in September 1821 and came back to it in December 1822. He then 20
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published his researches in two articles in the Connaissance des Temps and reproduced them (with minor revisions) in the 12th book of his Traite de Mécanique Céleste in the early 1820s. The central assumption of Laplace’s account was that the so-called ‘repulsive power’ of heat —the power of heat in virtue of which a gas expands when heated— is due to repulsive forces among the particles of caloric. In particular, each molecule of ordinary matter attracts particles of caloric that form a caloric atmosphere around it. Yet, these caloric atmospheres repel one another. These repulsive forces tend to detach some quantity of caloric from each molecule and to create radiant caloric, which generates the repulsive power of heat (cf. 1823, p. 111–112)2. Contrary to these repulsive forces act the attractive forces between the molecules of matter, which are inversely proportional to the distance between two molecules. However, as we are about to see, Laplace took it that these attractive forces are insensible in gases and vapours. Using these central assumptions Laplace suggested that the force law between two molecules of a gas is H c2 ij(r) where c is the quantity of caloric retained by each molecule, H is a gas-specific constant depending on the repulsive force of heat and ij(r) is the attractive force exerted between the two molecules, where ij(r) v 1/r (1821, p. 278). He then calculated the repulsive force exerted on an envelope of a gas and equated it with the pressure P exerted by this envelope on surrounding layers of the gas. He found that P=2ʌHKȡ2c2
(1)
where 2ʌHK is a constant and ȡ is the density of the gas (op.cit., p. 280). Laplace had thereby managed to correlate the quantity of caloric contained in a gas with the macroscopic parameter of pressure and hence to provide a potential mechanism that connects variations in the macroscopic quantity of pressure with variations in the microscopic structure of heat and matter. The next problem was to specify a connection between the quantity of caloric contained in a gas with the macroscopic parameter of temperature (op.cit., p. 281). Laplace suggested that the quantity of caloric rays received at a surface, at a given instance, is solely a function of the temperature of the gas, and independent of the nature of surrounding bodies. Call this function Ȇ(T). The quantity of radiant caloric detached from a molecule m —due to the repulsive forces between the caloric c of the molecule m and the caloric atmospheres of neighbouring molecules— is ȡc2, that is, it is proportional to the quantity ȡc of the caloric of surrounding molecules and the quantity c of the caloric retained by molecule m. Since at any given moment, there is thermal equilibrium in the gas, it follows that qȆ(T) = ȡc2
(2) 21
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where q is a proportionality constant depending on the molecules of the gas. Incidentally, in arriving at this equation, Laplace neglected the quantity of free caloric emanated by surrounding bodies, since as he noted, its extreme velocity renders it insensible (1821, p. 281). Be that as it may, by means of (2) Laplace had managed to connect the macroscopic parameter of temperature with the microscopic structure of caloric. Given that temperature and pressure determine the macroscopic behaviour of gases, Laplace could now show how the observable behaviour of gases is caused by the micro-structure of caloric. Using (1) and (2), Laplace was ready to derive — within the framework of the caloric theory of heat— the laws of gases’ and in particular the Boyle-Marriotte’s law, Gay-Lussac’s law and the equation of the state. So far, so good. But there is a catch, which is relevant to the philosophical conclusions we might draw from this case. The catch is that there are certain respects in which Laplace’s derivation was ad hoc. Let us see why. Laplace’s derivation of the laws of gases rested on two explicit assumptions: First, the attractive force between two molecules of a gas located at insensible distances from each other is very small; in fact, negligible. Second, the only operative force is the repulsive force between the caloric atmospheres of the molecules of the gas (cf. 1821, p. 285). The first assumption enabled Laplace to get rid of the factor ij(r) and hence to derive equation (1) with no problem. This assumption is relatively uncontroversial. The second assumption however is by no means innocent. According to Laplace’s theory, the action between two molecules of a gas is actually the product of the following four forces: 1. The mutual repulsion of the quantities of caloric contained in caloric atmospheres around each and every molecule. 2. The attraction between the caloric atmosphere of the second molecule and the first molecule. 3. The attraction between the caloric atmosphere of the first molecule and the second molecule. 4. The mutual attraction between the two molecules. Yet, the derivation (and explanation) of the laws of gases rested only on the first force. Even though neglecting the attractive force between molecules may have been reasonable, excluding the other two forces (two and three above) was not obvious. Laplace (1821, p. 185) admitted this when he said: Yet, I do not dare assure that the second and third forces are insensible, especially concerning vapours, when a light compression reduces them to the liquid state. To make his model more realistic, Laplace went on to take into account the attractive forces exerted between the caloric atmosphere of a molecule m and the surrounding molecules of the gas, or vapour. However, here is the point where the ad hocness of Laplace’s attempts becomes rather transparent. Imagine, Laplace said, a cylindrical vase with indefinite height, containing a gas (1821, p. 285–286). Suppose also that the gas is pressed by a weight W put on the superior surface of the cylinder. Take, then, an infinitely thin horizontal plane A, at 22
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a distance from the superior surface of the cylinder, and suppose that the molecules of the gas are situated above this plane, at fixed positions. Let m be such a molecule, r its distance from the horizontal plane A, f its distance from another molecule m’ situated underneath the plane A at distance R from it, and s the distance between the points at which the perpendiculars from the two molecules cross plane A (cf. Figure 1).
Weight
m r
a f s
A R m'
Figure 1. Laplace’s model of caloric.
It is then evident that f = ¥(R+r)2 + s2. Generally, Laplace said, the repulsive action between the quantities of caloric retained by the two molecules m and mƍ is Hij(f), while the attractive action between the caloric atmosphere of m and molecule mƍ is Nij(f). The y-component of the total action between the two molecules will then be (Hc2 – Nc) ij(f) [(R+r)/f] where (R+r)/f is cos(a). Laplace was then able to calculate the repulsive action of the whole gas situated under the plane A on the molecule m and, moreover, the whole action of the gas above plane A on the superior surface of the cylinder. 23
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This action is counterbalanced by the pressure P of the weight placed on top of the superior surface. Hence, he derived P=2ʌȡ2(Hc2 – Nc)K
(1ƍ)
which is similar to (1) above, except that it also takes into account the attractive forces between the caloric atmosphere of a molecule m and the surrounding molecules. Laplace then invented an analogous equation for temperature. Take, he said, the action between two molecules m and mƍ at a distance r. If all forces are taken into account, this action will be Hcij(r)–Nij(r). Suppose that the calorific radiation of molecule m is proportional to the number of surrounding molecules, their forces — except the negligible ij(r)— and the quantities of caloric contained in each molecule. Then, this radiation will be proportional to ȡHc2 – ȡNc
(A)
In a state of thermal equilibrium quantity (A) will be equal to the quantity of caloric received at a surface; that is, ȡ(Hc2 – Nc) = qȆ(T)
(2ƍ)
This is similar to (2), except that it also takes into account the attractive forces exerted between the caloric atmospheres of molecules and the surrounding molecules. Then, by means of (1ƍ) and (2ƍ), Laplace was able to derive the laws of gases in the more realistic case where the attractive forces exerted between the caloric atmospheres of molecules and the surrounding molecules are taken into account. The similarity between equations (1ƍ) and (1) and (2ƍ) and (2) seems to suggest that the attractive forces between the caloric atmospheres of molecules and the surrounding molecules could be safely neglected as very weak compared to the repulsive forces between caloric atmospheres. However, two points are worth making: 1. In the derivation of (1ƍ), Laplace used the assumption that the attractive forces between the caloric atmospheres of molecules and the surrounding molecules are very weak. As we have seen, he took it that the total force that the molecule m is subjected to when the attractive force between the caloric of m and the molecule mƍ is taken into account is repulsive. This means that the attractive forces between the caloric of a molecule and the surrounding molecules are very weak, and in fact negligible compared to the repulsive forces between caloric atmospheres —hence, practically they do nothing to modify or weaken these repulsive forces. 2. In arriving at equation (1ƍ) Laplace neglected —without any reason— the effect on the pressure P of the molecules under plane A. As we shall are about to see, Laplace admitted this in his 1822 article. In fact, the only reason for formulating 24
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the equation of pressure as he did seems to be that (1’) could yield, together with equation (2’), the laws of gases only if it had this particular form. Laplace’s attempt to derive the laws of gases from the more realistic set of assumptions that both the attractive forces between the caloric of a molecule and the surrounding molecules are operative were ad hoc, and with no independent justification: the very fact that the attractive forces between the caloric of a molecule and the surrounding molecules must be negligible in order for the derivation to go through was used in showing that these forces were weak and negligible; and the very fact that the law of pressure must have a specific mathematical form if the laws of gases were to be derived, was used in the construction of this law. As noted already, Laplace returned to his theory a year later (cf. 1822). There, he explained again how equations (1) and (2) are constructed and, therefore, how the laws of gases can be derived within the caloric theory. But he made it clear that the derivation works only on the assumption that the repulsive forces due to the caloric atmospheres are the only forces that operate (1822, p. 291). More interestingly, he remarked that in his own derivation of the laws of gases when the attractive forces between the caloric of a molecule and the surrounding molecules are taken into account, he neglected the action of the molecules under the plane A and hence his equation (1ƍ) of the pressure P of the gas was not correct (1822, p. 296). He stressed that if the correct law of pressure is formulated, i.e. the one that, unlike (1’), takes also into account the pressure of the molecules under the plane A, then the three laws of gases cannot be derived (ibid.). How were, if at all, the laws of gases to be derived within the caloric theory? Laplace admitted that the only way to carry out the derivation was to admit beforehand that “the attraction of each molecule of a gas on other molecules and their caloric is insensible” (ibid.). Therefore, Laplace’s conclusion was, in effect, that unless the theory is modified in an ad hoc way, so that some forces are rendered negligible beforehand, the laws of gases could not be proved and explained within the caloric theory. 5. HERAPATH’S CRITICISM
The foregoing observation that Laplace’s constructions were ad hoc is not one merely drawn by hindsight. John Herapath (1790–1868)3, a then unknown physicist and self-taught schoolmaster from Bristol, in a paper that appeared in Philosophical Magazine in 1823, examined in detail Laplace’s constructions, argued against their fundamental assumptions, and criticised them, explicitly, for being ad hoc. In this paper, Herapath gave one of the first clear-cut formulations of what it is for a theory to be ad hoc with respect to a set of laws, as it is clear from his following statement: (...) the equations [Laplace] has produced are more the offspring of a previous knowledge of what they should be from the phenomena, than of that sound reason which his other works usual manifest (1823, p. 65). Herapath noted that Laplace’s equation (2) which connects the quantity of caloric emanated from each molecule with the macroscopic quantity of temperature, is not correct. Laplace, as we have seen, took it that the calorific radiation of a molecule 25
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is ȡc2 Yet, Herapath observed, in calculating the calorific radiation of a molecule one must also take into account the intensity of the repulsion of the surrounding caloric. Therefore, the calorific radiation of a molecule must be ȡc2vȥ(r), where ȥ(r) is a function of the intensity of repulsion of a particle of caloric, depending on the distance between the molecules4. In particular, the intensity of calorific radiation in a spherical envelope of radius r surrounding the radiating molecule will be ȥ3¥(Į/ȡ), where Į is a constant. Then, instead of Laplace’s equation (2), Herapath suggested that the correct equation should have been qȆ(t)=ȡc2 ȥ3¥(Į/ȡ)
(2”)
It is obvious that (1) and (2”) cannot yield the laws of gases, and hence the latter cannot be derived —nor be explained— within the caloric theory of heat, unless some important assumptions are dropped, in an unjustified way. Herapath stressed that Laplace was not justified in neglecting the intensity of calorific radiation ȥ3¥(Į/ȡ). In Laplace’s theory the calorific radiation is due to the repulsive forces between the caloric atmospheres of neighbouring molecules. Then, it is obvious that these forces must depend on the distance r between these caloric atmospheres— in fact, on the distance r between molecules. Laplace, Herapath added, did consider the function ȥ(r) (cf. Laplace, 1821, p. 287; Herapath, 1823, p. 64). But he subsumed it under the constant q in the equations (2) and (2’) (Herapath ibid.). However, this contradicted Laplace statement that the constant q is a factor dependent only on the nature of the molecules of the gas (1821, p. 281). Herapath concluded that Laplace’s principal and fundamental equations are erroneously deduced form his principles; and consequently that his subsequent conclusions [i.e. the laws of gases] are not consequences of what he first assumed (1823, p. 65)5. Herapath suggested that Laplace’s theory was ad hoc with respect to the known laws of gases. In effect, Laplace knew what he wanted to derive —that is, the known laws of gases— and he ‘cooked up’ the principles of the caloric theory so that these laws would follow suit. The known laws of gases were not use-novel visà-vis Laplace’s theory; they were accommodated within it in an ad hoc way. Herapath put this complaint in the following lengthy, but nice, quotation: Had the principles he [i.e. Laplace] sets out with been given him, namely, that there is such a thing as caloric, which, while strongly repulsive of its own, attracts and is attracted by other matter; which by some means radiates in extremely minute portions with great velocity; which attaching itself in considerable quantities to particles of mater overcomes their mutual attraction, and occasions them to stand at the greatest distance the envelope admits from each other; —had, I say, these things been given him [i.e. Laplace] without any knowledge of what the phenomena require, I would enture to appeal to himself, whether, with his mind so unacquainted, unbiased, and unprejudiced 26
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with the facts in question, his results would not have been very different from what they are (1823, p. 65). Herapath challenged Laplace that had he not known in advance the laws he wanted to derive, the principles of caloric theory would not have been able to yield them. Laplace, in effect, used these laws in the construction of his theory, in the sense that he modified its principles in such a way that they, eventually, yield the laws of gases. As noted earlier, Laplace was aware (in his second paper on the subject) that the attractive forces between the caloric of a molecule and the surrounding molecules had to be rendered negligible if the derivation were to go through. Herapath’s further point was that even if this were granted, the laws of gases could not be derived within the caloric theory, unless of course the latter was ‘forced’ to do so. 6. WHERE IS THE CALORIC THEORY NOW?
The fact is that the caloric theory of heat has long been abandoned. Its replacement with what came to be known as thermodynamics —pioneered by Rudolf Clausius and William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) and foreshadowed by Sadi Carnot— was an intricate and prolonged development. The key episode in this development was the admission that, contrary to what was implied by the caloric theory; heat was not a conservative quantity. After Clausius’s work in thermodynamics, it was established that heat is not a state-function of the macroscopic properties (volume, temperature and pressure) of a gas. On the contrary, when work is produced in a thermal cycle, the quantity of heat involved in this cycle does not uniquely depend on the initial and final states in which the substance undergoing the changes is found. As a result, heat is not conserved in all thermal processes. If heat is not a conservative quantity, its representation cannot be based on an indestructible fluid, as caloric was supposed to be. I have related this story elsewhere (cf. my 1994 and 1999, chapter 6). The point here is not to repeat it, but to answer the question in the section-heading in a straightforward manner: the caloric theory is currently in the history of science books and not in the science textbooks. The caloric theory is not part of the present corpus of established scientific theories; not an element in our evolving scientific image of the world. The world has simply no room for the caloric, despite the fact that a theory about it was the dominant theory for quite some time in the nineteenth century and despite the fact that it enjoyed explanatory and predictive success. Is this case atypical? Is it an one-off case in the history of science? If it were, there would be no cause for concern. If the advanced caloric theory of heat was a historical oddity, its consignment to the history of science books would present no problem to either philosophy of science or to science education. But it is far from a typical. In fact, a well-known argument in the philosophy of science, known as the Pessimistic Meta-Induction on the history of science, suggests that current theories too are likely to be abandoned later on and be replaced by others, which are radically discontinuous with the extant theories. If this is so, there is a special problem for science education —apart form any other philosophical problem they might arise. This is that current science will turn out to be chapters in future history 27
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of science books and hence that the teaching of current scientific theories is not the teaching of a relatively stable and, by and large true, image of the world and of its deep structure, but rather the teaching of born-to-be-abolished failed explanations and hypotheses. Before we examine in this problem for science education, let us take a closer look at the Pessimistic Meta-Induction (PMI). 7. THE PESSIMISTIC META-INDUCTION
Larry Laudan has argued that the history of science is full of theories which were once empirically successful and yet turned out to be false. Laudan’s argument can be summarised as follows (cf. 1981, p. 32–33): The history of science is full of theories which had been empirically successful for long periods of time and yet were shown to be false about the deep-structure claims they had made about the world. It is similarly full of theoretical terms featuring in successful theories which do not refer. Therefore, by a simple (meta-) induction on scientific theories, our current successful theories are likely to be false (or, at any rate, more likely to be false than true). Laudan has substantiated his argument by means of what he has called “the historical gambit”: the following list —which, Laudan says, “could be extended ad nauseam”— gives theories which were once empirically successful and fruitful, yet just false. Laudan’s list of successful-yet-false theories: – the crystalline spheres of ancient and medieval astronomy – the humoral theory of medicine – the effluvial theory of static electricity – catastrophist geology, with its commitment to a universal (Noachian) deluge – the phlogiston theory of chemistry – the caloric theory of heat – the vibratory theory of heat – the vital force theory of physiology – the theory of circular inertia – theories of spontaneous generation – the contact-action gravitational ether of Fatio and LeSage – the optical ether – the electromagnetic ether What is the target of Laudan’s argument? It is the realist explanation of the success of scientific theories in terms of the (approximate) truth of these theories. In particular, the target of PMI is the epistemic optimism associated with scientific realism, viz., the view that science has succeeded in tracking truth. One key view associated with scientific realism is the claim that mature and predictively successful scientific theories are well confirmed and approximately true of the world; hence, the entities posited by them, or entities very similar to those posited, inhabit the world (see my 1999 and my 2009 for a defence). Part of the defence of this epistemic optimism realist has come to be known as the ‘no-miracles’ argument6. 28
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Briefly put, this is an argument that mobilises the successes of scientific theories (especially their successful novel predictions) in order to suggest that the best explanation of these theory-driven successes is that the theories that fuelled them were approximately true —at least in those respects that were implicated in the generation of the successes. But if Laudan is right, then the realist’s explanation of the success of science flies in the face of the history of science: the history of science cannot possibly warrant the realist belief that current successful theories are approximately true. There has been some discussion of the exact structure of PMI. I have argued in detail elsewhere that it is a kind of reductio. The target is the realist thesis that: (A) Current successful theories are approximately true Laudan does not directly deny that current successful theories may happen to be truthlike. His argument aims to discredit the claim that there is an explanatory connection between empirical success and truthlikeness which warrants the realist’s assertion (A). In order to achieve this, the argument compares a number of past theories to current ones and claims: (B) If current successful theories are truthlike, then past theories cannot be Past theories are deemed not to be truthlike because the entities they posited are no longer believed to exist and/or because the laws and mechanisms they postulated are not part of our current theoretical description of the world. Then, comes the ‘historical gambit’: (C) These characteristically false theories were, nonetheless, empirically successful So, empirical success is not connected with truthlikeness and truthlikeness cannot explain success: the realist’s potential warrant for (A) is defeated. No-one can deny that Laudan’s argument has some force. It shows that, on inductive grounds, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is unlikely to be had in science. That is, all scientific theories are likely to turn out to be, strictly speaking, false. This is something that realists —as well as everybody else— have to concede. However, a false theory can still be approximately true or truthlike. These are notions that have resisted a formal explication, but we can say, intuitively, that a theory is truthlike if it describes a world which is similar to the actual world in its most central or relevant features. So, the realist needs to show that past successful theories, although strictly speaking false, have been truthlike. An obvious strategy that realists can follow is to try to reduce the size of Laudan’s list. If indeed only very few past theories make it to Laudan’s list of falsebut-successful theories, the historical gambit loses much of its putative force. One way to reduce the size of the list is to impose stringent criteria as to what theories should count as mature and genuinely successful. It has been argued (see my 1999, chapter 5) that the notion of empirical success should be more rigorous than simply getting the facts right, or telling a story that fits the facts. For any theory can be made to fit the facts —and hence to be successful— by simply ‘writing’ the right kind of empirical consequences into it. The notion of empirical success that realists 29
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should be happy with should such that it includes the generation of novel predictions which are in principle testable. Consequently, it is not at all clear that all theories in Laudan’s list were genuinely successful. The case of the advanced caloric theory of heat we have already discussed in some detail is a case in point. Despite its great sophistication, Laplace’s mature theory enjoyed empirical success only by being, ultimately, tailored to fit the empirical laws. Not only were there no novel predictions issued by the theory, but even the already known facts that it managed to accommodate, it accommodated them in an ad hoc way. The best strategy for blocking PMI is try to meet it head-on, by attacking its crucial premise (B). Without this premise the pessimistic conclusion does not follow, irrespective of the size of Laudan’s list. But how can premise (B) be defeated? In my (1999), I proposed the divide et impera strategy. The key idea is this. To defeat (B), it is enough to show that the genuine successes of past theories did not depend on what we now believe to be fundamentally flawed theoretical claims. Positively put, it is enough to show that the theoretical laws and mechanisms which generated the successes of past theories have been retained in our current scientific image. Accordingly, when a theory is abandoned, its theoretical constituents, i.e., the theoretical mechanisms and laws it posited, should not be (and were not) rejected en bloc. Some of these theoretical constituents are inconsistent with what we now accept, and therefore they have to be rejected. But not all are. Some of them, instead of having been abandoned, have been retained as essential constituents of subsequent theories. The divide et impera move suggests that if it turns out that the theoretical constituents that were responsible for the empirical success of otherwise abandoned theories are those that have been retained in our current scientific image, a substantive version of scientific realism can still be defended. So for the divide et impera move to work, we need to (i) identify the theoretical constituents of past genuine successful theories that essentially contributed to their successes; and (ii) show that these constituents, far from being characteristically false, have been retained in subsequent theories of the same domain. The success of the divide et impera strategy is in the details. One should look at specific past theories that meet the stringent standards of empirical success and show in detail how those parts of them that fuelled their empirical successes were retained in subsequent theories. In my (1999, chapter 6) I engaged in two detailed case-studies concerning the several stages of the caloric theory of heat and of the theories of the luminiferous ether7. A claim that has emerged with some force is that theory-change is not as radical and discontinuous as the opponents of scientific realism have suggested. It has been shown that there are ways to identify the theoretical constituents of abandoned scientific theories which essentially contributed to their successes, to separate them from others that were ‘idle’ —or as Kitcher (1993) has put it, merely ‘presuppositional posits’— and to demonstrate that the components that made essential contributions to the theory’s empirical success were those retained in subsequent theories of the 30
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same domain. Given this, the fact that our current best theories may be replaced by others does not, necessarily, undermine scientific realism. All it shows is that a) we cannot get at the truth all at once; and b) our judgements from empirical support to truthlikeness should be more refined and cautious in that they should only commit us to the theoretical constituents that do enjoy evidential support and contribute to the empirical successes of the theory. Realists ground our epistemic optimism on the fact that newer theories incorporate many theoretical constituents of their superseded predecessors, especially those constituents that have led to empirical successes. The substantive continuity in theory-change suggests that a rather stable network of theoretical principles and explanatory hypotheses has emerged, which has survived revolutionary changes, and has become part and parcel of our evolving scientific image of the world. Both Hasok Chang (2003, p. 910–912) and Kyle Stanford (2006) have challenged the move from substantive continuity in theory-change to approximate truth. It is argued that there is no entitlement to move from whatever preservation in theoretical constituents there is in theory-change to these constituents’ being truthlike. But that’s not quite right. What is right to say is that the mere demonstration of continuity in theory-change does not warrant the realist claim that science is ‘on the right track’. Claiming convergence does not, on its own, establish that current theories are true, or likely to be true. Convergence there may be and yet the start might have been false. But the convergence in our scientific image of the world puts before us a candidate for explanation. The generation of an evolving-but-convergent network of theoretical assertions is best explained by the assumption that this network consists of truthlike assertions. So there is, after all, entitlement to move from convergence to truthlikeness, insofar as truthlikeness is the best explanation of this convergence. Stanford has also claimed that the divide et impera move cannot offer independent support to realism since it is tailor-made to suit realism. According to him, it is the fact that the very same present theory is used both to identify which parts of past theories were empirically successful and which parts were (approximately) true that accounts for the realists’ wrong impression that these parts coincide. He (2006, p. 166) says: With this strategy of analysis, an impressive retrospective convergence between our judgements of the sources of a past theory’s success and the things it ‘got right’ about the world is virtually guaranteed: it is the very fact that some features of a past theory survive in our present account of nature that leads the realist both to regard them as true and to believe that they were the sources of the rejected theory’s success or effectiveness. So the apparent convergence of truth and the sources of success in past theories are easily explained by the simple fact that both kinds of retrospective judgements have a common source in our present beliefs about nature. This objection is misguided. The problem, as I see it, is this. There are the theories scientists currently endorse and there are the theories that were endorsed in the past. Some (but not all) of them were empirically successful (perhaps for long 31
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periods of time). They were empirically successful irrespective of the fact that, subsequently, they came to be replaced by others. This replacement was a contingent matter that had to do with the fact that the world did not fully co-operate with the then extant theories: some of their predictions failed; or the theories became overly ad hoc or complicated in their attempt to accommodate anomalies, or what have you. The replacement of theories by others does not cancel out the fact that the replaced theories were empirically successful. Even if scientists had somehow failed to come up with new theories, the old theories would not have ceased to be successful. So success is one thing, replacement is another. Hence, it is one thing to inquire into what features of some past theories accounted for their success and quite another to ask whether these features were such that they were retained in subsequent theories of the same domain. These are two independent issues and they can be dealt with (both conceptually and historically) independently. One should start with some past theories and —bracketing the question of their replacement— try to identify, on independent grounds, the sources of their empirical success; that is, to identify those theoretical constituents of the theories that fuelled their successes. When a past theory has been, as it were, anatomised, we can then ask the independent question of whether there is any sense in which the sources of success of a past theory that the anatomy has identified are present in our current theories. It’s not, then, the case that the current theory is the common source for the identification of the successful parts of a past theory and of its (approximately) true parts. Current theories constitute the vantage point from which we examine old ones —could there be any other?— but the identification of the sources of success of past theories need not be performed from this vantage point. 8. WHAT IS WRONG WITH SCIENCE EDUCATION?
These instructions are intended to provide guidance to authors of Bluntly put, it is that it is oblivious to the complex philosophical lessons that can be drawn from the history of science. Unless we resolve for the view that current science teaching is future history-of-science teaching, science education should be sensitive to the fact that science as we know it is a mixed bag of continuity and change. Science education seems blind to the fact of theory-change in science and this obscures the importance of change as well as of continuity. The responses to PMI outlined above suggest that the current scientific image of the world (which is what science teaching is about) is a hard-won image which has emerged out of a clash between truth and falsity; continuity and break. The continuity depicted in the current scientific image of the world is indeed hard-won, amidst false starts, failed hypotheses, idle and ad hoc explanations. This continuity represents whatever elements of past theories have a right to be called truthlike by having essentially contributed to the successes of otherwise abandoned theories and by having been retained in subsequent theories. This continuity signifies (at least on the realist reading suggested above) that what nowadays is taught in science courses is not destined to be part of the history of science books in two or three centuries from now. 32
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What are science students being taught now? It’s not enough to say they are being taught our best current guess about the deep-structure of the world. Laplace did not think of his theory as his best guess! He, like us today, thought of his theory as unveiling the deep and unobservable structure of the world. Guesses come and go. Theories are based on evidence and are meant to describe the world as it, more or less, is. An alternative would be to think of what is now taught as a set of practical recipes or problem-solvers; a rack filled with tools, as Pierre Duhem once put it. But this instrumentalist approach to science faces a number of problems, most of which are well-known. For one, it does not tally with the very idea that science has pushed back the frontiers of ignorance and error; for another, it does not even start to account for the fact that theories yield successful novel predictions and are used as premises in explanations of singular events. The question remains: what is taught now? Is it practical recipes + future chapters of the history of science books? Or is it chapters of an evolving-but-changing scientific image of the world? This kind of question (or dilemma) was first raised in a serious way in the dawn of the twentieth century, just before the two major revolutions that shook up physics. It took the form of the ‘bankruptcy of science’ debate in France. In his address to the 1900 International Congress of Physics, Henri Poincaré (1902, p. 173) put the point thus: The man of the world is struck to see how ephemeral scientific theories are. After some years of prosperity, he sees them successively abandoned; he sees ruins accumulated on ruins; he predicts that the theories in vogue today will in a short time succumb in their turn, and he concludes that they are absolutely in vain. This is what he calls the bankruptcy of science. But he went on to correct the view of ‘the man of the world’. Poincaré says: “His scepticism is superficial; he does not understand none of the aim and the role of scientific theories; without this he would understand that ruins can still be good for something”. What then are ruins good for, apart from reminding us the glorious past and days of bygone splendour? There are two options, really. One: If theories are merely instruments for the co-ordination of empirical laws and the prediction phenomena, it is no problem that their theoretical parts might well be mere speculations which subsequently get abandoned and are destined to be chapter in hitherto unwritten history-of-science books. As Poincaré put it, after all, “Fresnel’s theory enables us to [predict optical phenomena] as well as it did before Maxwell’s time”. Two: There is continuity in theory-change and this is not merely empirical continuity; substantive theoretical claims that featured in past theories and played a key role in their successes (especially in novel predictions) have been incorporated (perhaps somewhat re-interpreted) in subsequent theories and continue to play an important role in making them empirically successful. This is the option that Poincaré himself favoured8. The key point is that option number two is not only living, but actually the one that renders science teaching intelligible and compelling. 33
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How exactly science education should accommodate the philosophical lessons drawn from the history of science is itself a complex matter that I cannot discuss here. I will only suggest that part of the very idea of science education should be the cultivation and development of what might be called scientific conscience. This is not more theoretical or practical knowledge, but rather a set of methodological skills that constitute the scientific spirit: critical appraisal of one’s own theory; sensitivity to the strengths and limitations of scientific inquiry; openness to criticism and correction; responsiveness to epistemic values and theoretical virtues; sensitivity to the historical complexity and the philosophical implications of the scientific enterprise. Here is a case where scientific conscience becomes transparent. When we think about scientific theories and what they assume about the world we need to balance two kinds of evidence. The first is whatever evidence there is in favour (or against) a specific scientific theory. This evidence has to do with the degree on confirmation of the theory at hand. It is, let us say, first-order evidence, say about electrons and their having negative charge or about the double helix structure of the DNA and the like. First-order evidence is typically what scientists take into account when they form an attitude towards a theory. It can be broadly understood to include some of the theoretical virtues of the theory at hand (parsimony and the like) —of the kind that typically go into plausibility judgements about theories. The second kind of evidence (let’s call it second-order evidence) comes from the past record of scientific theories and/or from meta-theoretical (philosophical) considerations that have to do with the reliability of scientific methodology. It concerns not particular scientific theories but science as a whole. (Some) past theories, for instance, were supported by (first-order) evidence, but were subsequently abandoned; or some scientific methods work reliably in certain domains but fail when they are extended to others. This second-order evidence feeds claims such as those that motivate the Pessimistic Induction. Actually, this second-order evidence is multi-faceted —it is negative (showing limitations and shortcomings) as well as positive (showing how learning from experience can be improved). This is a philosophical problem. But science education won’t educate good scientists unless it makes them aware that in judging scientific theories, they should try to balance these two kinds of evidence. And this means that science education won’t train good scientists unless it trains them in history and philosophy of science. NOTES 1 2
3 4
5
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For a detailed account of the causal role that the caloric was called to play, see Fox (1971). According to Chang (2004, 72) this Laplacian assumption modified considerably Lavoisier’s original picture of the caloric. For a brief account of Herapath’s contribution to the kinetic theory of gases, see Mendoza (1961). Herapath uses ij(r) for this function, but this notation has been also used for the attractive force between two molecules of the gas. Herapath did also object to Laplace’s equation (1), which connected the pressure of a gas with the quantity of caloric upheld by its molecules. His chief point was that (1) unjustifiably neglects the attractive forces in virtue of which each molecule attracts its own caloric (1823, p. 62).
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7
8
It is based on Putnam’s claim that realism ‘is the only philosophy of science that does not make the success of science a miracle’. Chang (2003) has challenged some of the details of my case-study of the caloric theory. The discussion of Laplace’s advanced theory presented above is meant, among other things, to meet some of Chang’s criticisms concerning the actual historical development of the caloric theory. Though Poincaré took it that that there is an inherent limitation in what of the world can be known: its structure as opposed to how things are in themselves. This limitation was the child of Poincaré’s adherence to some form of empiricism and some form of neo-Kantianism. It has been known as structural realism and need not concern us here (see my 2009).
REFERENCES Black, J. (1803). Lectures on the elements of chemistry (J. Robison, Ed.). Edinburgh — all page references are from Roller (1950). Chang, H. (2003). Preservative realism and its discontents: Revisiting caloric. Philosophy of Science, 70, 902–912. Chang, H. (2004). Inventing temperature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Davy, H. (1799). An essay on heat, light, and the communication of light. In The collected works of H. Davy (Vol. 2, pp. 1–86). London: Smith, Elder, and Co. Cornhill (1839). Earman, J. (1992). Bayes or bust? A critical examination of bayesian confirmation theory. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Fox, R. (1971). The caloric theory of gases. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Fox, R. (1974). The rise and fall of Laplacian physics. In R. McCormmach (Ed.), Historical studies in physical sciences. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Herapath, J. (1823). Observations on M. Laplace’s communication to the Royal Academy of Science, “Sur l’Attraction des Sphères et sur la Répulsion des Fluides Élastiques”. Philosophical Magazine, 62, 61–66. Kitcher, P. (1993). The advancement of science. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lakatos, I. (1970). Falsification and the methodology of scientific research programmes. In I. Lakatos & A. Musgrave (Eds.), Criticism and the growth of knowledge. Cambridge University Press. Laplace, P. S., & Lavoisier, A. (1780). Mémoire sur la Chaleur. Ouevres Complètes de Laplace (Vol. 10). Paris: Gauthier-Villars. Laplace, P. S. (1821). Sur l’Attraction des Sphères et sur la Répulsion des Fluides Élastiques. In Connaissance des Temps pour l’année 1824 —reprinted in Ouevres Complètes de Laplace (Vol. 13, pp. 273–290). Paris: Gauthier-Villars. Laplace, P. S. (1822). Développement de la Théorie des Fluides Élastiques et Application de Cette Théorie a la Vitesse du Son. In Connaissance des Temps pour l’année 1825 —reprinted in Ouevres Complètes de Laplace (Vol. 13, pp. 291–301). Paris: Gauthier-Villars. Laplace, P. S. (1823). Sur l’Attraction des Sphères et sur la Répulsion des Fluides Élastiques. In Traite de Mécanique Céleste (Livre XII, Chapitre II) —reprinted in Ouevres Complètes de Laplace (Vol. 5). Paris: Gauthier-Villars. Laudan, L. (1981). A confutation of convergent realism. Philosophy of Science, 48, 19–49. Lavoisier, A. (1789). Traite Elémentaire de Chimie. Paris —English trans. as Elements of chemistry, by R. Kerr (1790), reprinted by Dover (1965). Mendoza, E. (1961). A sketch for a history of the kinetic theory of gases. Physics Today, 14, 36–39. Poincaré, H. (1902). La science et L’Hypothèse. (1968 reprint). Paris: Flammarion. Psillos, S. (1999). Scientific realism: How science tracks truth. London: Routledge. Psillos, S. (2009). Knowing the structure of nature. London: Palgrave. Roller D. (1950). The early development of the concepts of temperature and heat: The rise and the decline of the caloric theory. In J. B. Conant (Ed.), Harvard case histories in experimental science. Harvard University Press.
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PSILLOS Stanford, P. K. (2006). Exceeding our grasp: Science, history, and the problem of unconceived alternatives. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Thompson, B. (Count Rumford) (1798). An inquiry concerning the source of the heat which is excited by friction. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 88, 80–102. Thompson B. (Count Rumford) (1799). An inquiry concerning the weight ascribed to heat. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 89, 179–194. Zahar, E. (1973). Why did Einstein’s programme supersede Lorentz’s. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 24, 95–123, 223–262.
Stathis Psillos Department of Philosophy and History of Science, University of Athens Panepistimioupolis (University Campus), Athens 15771, Greece e-mail:
[email protected]
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WILLIAM F. MCCOMAS
3. THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND THE FUTURE OF SCIENCE EDUCATION A Typology of Approaches to History of Science in Science Instruction
1. INTRODUCTION
In the continuing campaign to enhance science instruction one battle we are winning relates to the inclusion of elements of the nature of science (NOS) in official recommendations designed to guide the development of the science curriculum. Increasingly, standards documents in the U.S. states (which effectively control what is taught within their borders), the U.S. national science education standards (NRC, 1996) (which does not have the force of law but is regularly consulted in planning science instruction by the individual states) and many other nations now include explicit requirements to include the nature of science in plans for science learning. We seem to have responded positively to the 1970 call from Carey and Stauss who stated that, “if the teacher’s understanding and philosophy of science are not congruent with the current interpretations of the nature of science, ... then the instructional outcomes will not be representative of science” (p. 363). There is little doubt that NOS should have a central place in the science curriculum and it is time that teachers blend both NOS and more traditional content to ensure that students come to understand what science is and how it functions. The term “nature of science” is a label for the description of elements that define how science operates at a level appropriate for science instruction. This description draws upon insights from the history, sociology and philosophy of science combined with research from the cognitive sciences such as psychology into a rich description of what science is, how it works, how scientists operate as a social group and how society itself both directs and reacts to scientific endeavors (McComas, Clough, & Almazroa, 1998, p. 4). The picture of science provided under the NOS label is designed for K-16 learners rather than as instructional objectives for those who will become historians or philosophers of science. P.V. Kokkotas et al., (eds.), Adapting Historical Science Knowledge Production to the Classroom, 37–53. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
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Another front in the NOS campaign that seems to have been secured is that of defining the range of NOS-related concepts necessary and sufficient to inform K-12 science instruction. Fortunately, consensus has begun to emerge regarding the definition of the individual NOS aspects. Osborn, Collins, Ratcliffe, Millar and Duschl (2003), McComas (1998, 2008), Lederman (2002), for instance, have offered quite parallel sets of NOS content recommendations including elements such as the distinctions between law and theory, the role of creativity in science, the role of history, cultural and social elements, and the necessity of empirical evidence in scientific research. Even as we consider the agreement on the place and character of NOS in science instruction, we face what might be final NOS battle. This last challenge is how to include the nature of science in science instruction. Of course there have been many suggestions for way to meet the instructional demand, but nothing as yet has caught on in any systematic fashion. This chapter will focus on the issue of instruction by examining role that might be played by the use of the history of science in various forms in helping students understand the scientific enterprise. We will consider a proposed taxonomy based on a review of the ways in which the history of science has been used in the past while considering what role these strategies might play in the future of science teaching. The premise of this chapter is that history of science can be both a vehicle to convey important lessons about how science functions and a destination in its own right. HOS lessons can humanize the sciences with their inclusion of the personalities that have shaped the direction and products of the scientific enterprise. In this fashion, HOS can meet the challenge from the National Science Education Standards to show “science as a human endeavor” (NRC, 1996). At the same time, carefully selected HOS content can also be used in another way to tell the tale of how science works, what its rules and traditions are, and how knowledge is established in the sciences. 2. RATIONALES FOR THE USE OF THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE (HOS) IN SCIENCE INSTRUCTION INTRODUCTION
Advocacy for the inclusion of history of science in the science classroom is not new. More than a century and a half ago, the Duke of Argyll in his Presidential Address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1855) stated 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.” (quoted in Matthews, 1992, p. 11). In the United States a hundred years later, the Educational Policies Commission Report on Education for All American Youth again raised the promise of the use of HOS (1944) stated … These scientists are thought of as living men [sic], facing difficult problems to which they do not know the answers, and confronting many obstacles rooted in ignorance and prejudice. In imagination, the students watch the scientists at work, and look particularly for the methods which they use in attacking their problems… 38
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In 1947 the authors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science President’s Scientific Research Board suggested that “Much more use should be made of the history of science with its adventure and dramatic action, which appeal strongly to young people’s interests and arouse their imagination” (Steelman, 1947, p. 86). Even today, the current National Science Education Standards (NRC, 1996) include an explicit section on the history and nature of science primarily to illustrate the role played by humans, the nature of scientific knowledge and historical perspectives of science. The Standards make the specific proposal that HOS may be useful in this regard with the recommendation that Through the use of short stories, films, video, and other examples, elementary teachers can introduce interesting historical examples of men and women (including minorities and people with disabilities) who have made contributions to science. These stories can highlight how these scientists worked –that is, the questions, procedures, and contributions of diverse individuals to science and technology (p. 141). The introduction of historical examples will help students see the scientific enterprise as more philosophical, social and human (p. 170). Use of the history of science will show that “many individuals have contributed to the traditions of science…” that “science has been practiced by different individuals in different cultures…” and reveal “how difficult it was for scientific innovators to breakthrough the accepted ideas of their time to reach the conclusions that we currently take for granted” (p. 171). Recommendations for the use of history of science in science instruction continued and included, but are not limited to, those by Eichman (1996), Sherratt (1982, 1983), Matthews (1994), and most recently Hodson (2008). However, in spite of these recommendations, there is very little inclusion of the history of science either in textbooks or in classroom discourse. Unfortunately, for most students science is presented in its “final form”. This label was coined by Duschl (1990) to describe the common phenomenon by which we share the current understanding of science with learners but rarely discuss the development of that understanding. This tradition may seem efficient but it depersonalizes the scientific enterprise, results in textbooks that are much less interesting than they might be otherwise and removes a fertile source of material that could be used to help students see the rules of the game of science in context (Allen & Baker, 2001). In the past sixty years, a variety of approaches to the inclusion of the history of science have been proposed and these will be discussed in subsequent sections of this chapter. Accompanying these approaches is an impressive number of justifications for the use of HOS which are offered as a group in Table 1 but are drawn primarily from Sherratt (1982, 1983), Matthews (1994), Monk and Osborne (1997), Rasmussen (2007), Rudge and Howe (2009) and Wider (2006). 39
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Table 1. Rationales offered from a variety of sources in support of the inclusion of the history of science in science teaching Inclusion of the History of Science in Science Instruction potentially can: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.
14. 15.
Increase student motivation Increase admiration for scientists Help students develop better attitudes toward science Humanize the sciences Demonstrate that science has a history Assist students in understanding and appreciating the interaction between science and society Provide authentic illustrations for the way science actually functions Reveal both the link and distinction between science and technology Help to connect the science disciplines by showing the commonalities Make instruction more challenging and thus will enhance reasoning Provide opportunities for the development of higher order thinking skills Contribute to a fuller understanding of basic science content Help to reveal and dispel classic science misconceptions (this rationale is linked to what is called historical recapitulation in which some learners are seen to proceed through stages of misconceptions that are occasionally linked to incorrect ideas held by scientists in the past) Provide an interdisciplinary link between science and other school subjects with a particular emphasis on bridging the gap between the “two cultures” (humanities and sciences) Improve teacher education by helping teachers with their own science learning
Readers should understand that these rationales do not pertain to the incorporation of all particular HOS approaches in science teaching only that, as a group, these justifications have been offered to support the use of the history of science in the classroom. These rationales come from a variety of sources; some are frequently mentioned by various authors, a few have been validated by research studies while others lack such support and exist primarily as suggestions. In reviewing the various HOS instructional methods it is clear that there are as many distinct types as there are rationales for the incorporation of HOS in instruction. As we move forward in recommending the use of HOS it is now necessary to provide some definitions about exactly what is meant by a HOS-based curriculum, a task that we will consider in the next section. 3. WHY PROPOSE A CLASSIFICATION SCHEME FOR HOS CURRICULUM AND INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGNS?
The classification plan or typology proposed here is designed to do several things. First, there is the goal to provide a range of approaches and examples for the way in which HOS may be used in science instruction. This goal builds on some earlier work in this regard by Allchin (1997). The next element considered in the design of this proposal is the assumption that not all HOS educational approaches are the same, are not as easily integrated into instruction, do not all make the same demands on teachers and students and will not necessarily produce the same impact on students. 40
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As the proposal, the author is acutely aware that some may disagree with the distinctions made between types and that too is to be encouraged. An NOS typology is a worthy and perhaps even necessary first step in establishing a framework for examining and discussing the roles, advantages and disadvantages of each of these instructional types. This proposed taxonomy is based on several factors starting with a review of actual HOS instructional models that have been used in preference to ones that are possible or ideal. Even with this apparent limitation, it seems that almost every conceivable way to integrate HOS into science instruction has been attempted; the degree of success of these attempts has generally not be measured well. Another element that factors into the taxonomy offered here addresses the cognitive and affective impact that is likely made by the method. One can assume that watching a film is different from reading an original manuscript. Even here there can be no a priori judgment about the ultimate kind of impact that each presentation type might make. In fact, it is reasonable to suggest that the impact may lie in the eye of the beholder; some students may react more positively to some instructional approaches than others while other learners may have quite a different response to the same technique. The classification scheme is also based in part on what might be called the “distance” from the primary source material. The question is asked how much of the original work of the scientist is encountered by the student in comparison to the view of a scientist’s achievement as interpreted by others. We will consider how much of the source material is encountered by students. This will become clear when examining, for instance, the distinction between having students read original works by Darwin and examining a case study on the history of evolution as a scientific principle. Finally there is the distinction built into the taxonomy which accounts for those approaches featuring a “hands-on” aspect of use of HOS. In some HOS approaches, students are asked to (re)conduct or in some other way personally experience a noteworthy experiment or a series of experiments from the history of science. Readers are cautioned not to assume that the taxonomy is based on a hierarchy of effectiveness or rigor. This would be useful, but the simple fact is that in most cases we do not have sufficient empirical evidence of the effectiveness with respect to any particular application of the history of science as an instructional technique. For instance, there is no implication that recreating a historical experiment is “better” than reading the report of that experiment in the words of the scientist who conducted the work. Rather, in developing the plan offered here, the issue is one of difference. This taxonomy defines and distinguishes one HOS approach from another with the presumption that these distinct approaches probably do impact students in different ways. At each level of the taxonomy examples will be provided to illustrate either the approach itself or the source material for such an approach. No attempt has been made to include every illustration of every technique appearing in the literature, but the goal is to provide enough detail for readers to evaluate why one HOS instructional plan is distinct from another. One aspect of the HOS approach that is not captured by this taxonomy is that of integration and synergy. For instance, there is no classification provided for an 41
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approach which has students reenact a classic experiment and read the scientists’ report. One could infer that such an approach would be different from the use of either method in isolation from the others that might be combined with it. There is also no useful way to categorize an approach that uses a video case study approach linking biographical elements of individual scientists such as Galileo with an overview of the science of mechanics. Perhaps there is an advantage in proposing an additional level for such “mixed” approaches. The challenge in the development of any taxonomy is to avoid making everything a special case or providing such all encompassing categories that no distinctions can be made; this, of course, is the classic dilemma of “lumping and splitting”. The plan provided here is offered simply as a way to review and organize the various HOS approaches discovered thus far in a review of the literature and, as with all such plans, is open to critique and modification. 4. A HISTORY OF SCIENCE INSTRUCTIONAL TAXONOMY
To introduce the scope and scale of the proposed typology, consider the plan provided in Table 2. Each level is discussed in more detail in the subsequent sections of this chapter. Table 2. A proposed taxonomy for the kinds of HOS approaches applied in science instruction during the past 60 years
1.0
Interactions with original works (or selections) in the history of science 1.1 Original works in their entirety (may include additional commentary) 1.2 Original works abstracted (may include additional commentary) 2.0 Case studies, stories and other similar illustrations of the history of science (including those with original written materials) 2.1 Case studies (with original content) 2.2 Science stories 2.3 Shorter illustrations, vignettes and examples 3.0 Biographies and autobiographies of scientists and their discoveries 3.1 Autobiography of a Scientist 3.2 Biography of Scientist (Written) 3.3 Biography of Scientist (Dramatic Presentation) 4.0 Book length presentations of some aspect of the history of science 4.1 Account of the General History of Science 4.2 History of a Particular Scientific Discipline 4.3 History of a Particular Scientific Sub-discipline such as genetics, evolution or quantum physics 4.4 History of a Single Discovery of Event (such as an eclipse, the problem of longitude, appearance of Halley’s Comet, etc.) 4.5 Accounts of classic experiments 5.0 Role playing and related activities with respect to historical personages 6.0 Textbook inclusions related to the history of science 7.0 Experimental reenactments and other “hands-on” approaches for engagement with historical aspects of science
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Domain 1.0: First hand interactions with original works This level of the taxonomy essentially represents the “Great Books” (Bloom, 1994) approach to the history of science in which students read the actual accounts of science as written by the scientists themselves and then engage in guided discussions regarding what they have read. Such accounts are most likely limited to the original papers appearing in scientific journals but in rare cases, might also consist of a review of working documents (such as laboratory notebooks, etc.). The classification at this level is further subdivided in recognition of the fact that students may read the original works in their entirety, may read abstracts of those works, may encounter a single paper or read sets of related papers from the same scientist or scientists associated with the same discovery or phenomenon. Such original works are available in collections with commentaries such as found in the “critical editions” produced by some publishers. An example includes the Norton Critical Edition of the discovery of the structure of DNA which includes a selection of related papers (Watson & Stent, 1980) or an original seminal work alone such as that written by Watson and Crick (1953). Many scientists (Einstein and Darwin for example) are represented by extensive collections sometimes called “paper projects” that have so completely documented the life and times of individuals through their own writing that it is almost possible to know what a famous scientist was doing on a daily basis; such is the case with Darwin for instance (http://darwin-online.org.uk) whose works have been digitized and are easily accessible on line. At the upper levels of the classification plan, students (presumably with help from teachers) make sense of what they have read without relying on the interpretation provided by an interceding authority (such as a historian or other interpreter). In our increasingly wired world it is now possible to download important papers and entire books making this approach somewhat easier than it was just a few years ago. Even so, teachers are reminded of the impact on the affective domain that may be made by actual objects and whether students could have the opportunity to see an original paper or an actual book from an important episode in the history of science (called realia). A visit to the rare books section of a library may be able to put students in “touch” with the history of science directly. The additional levels of the taxonomy are provided to make the distinction between works that are encountered in their original form and those encountered either as abstracts or with some additional commentary from experts. Illustrative of this approach are contributions such as What’s the Matter? Readings in Physics (Whitefield, 2007), Biology: It’s People and its Papers (Baumel & Berger, 1973) and Kampourakis and McComas (2009a). Domain 2.0: Case studies, stories and other similar illustrations of the history of science (may include interaction with original written materials and laboratory experiences) The case study or case method approach to instruction has been attempted in many disciplines and science is no exception. For instance, there even exists a center for the use of case studies in the teaching of science (http://library.buffalo.edu/libraries/ projects/cases/case.html) with an extensive set of such studies along with rationales 43
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for their use (Herreid, 1994). The explicit use of the history of science has also been used in a case method format. Much of the early inspiration and advocacy for the use of the history of science in science instruction came from James B. Conant, scientist and president of Harvard University who expressed the view that “… it is my contention that science can best be understood by laymen through close study of a few relatively simple case histories…” (1947, p. 1). Conant’s passion for the use of history of science resulted in what is the most noteworthy example of the case approach, the Harvard Case Studies in Experimental Science (Conant & Nash, 1948). The titles of the cases are provided in Table 3. Table 3. The seven case studies included in the Harvard cases in experimental science (Conant & Nash, 1948) – – – – – – –
Robert Boyles Experiments in Pneumatics (64 pgs) The Overthrow of the Phlogiston Theory: The Chemical Revolution of 1775–1789 (52 pgs) The Early Development of the Concepts of Temperature and Heat; The Rise and Decline of the Caloric Theory (98 pgs) The Atomic-molecular Theory (108 pgs) Plants and the Atmosphere (114 pgs) Pasteur’s and Tyndall’s Study of Spontaneous Generation (54 pgs) The Development of the Concept of Electric Charge: Electricity from the Greeks to Columb (98 pgs)
Later, Conant’s student and later fellow Harvard professor, Leo Klopfer (1964), adapted the case study approach for use in high schools with the History of Science Cases (HOSC). Each of these units included the exploration of a major scientific idea through the examination of excerpts of historical documents and experimentation carried out either by students themselves or as a demonstration by the teacher (Lind, 1979). Table 4 features a list of the nine titles proposed or developed for HOSC each of which was represented by individual guides for teachers and students. The overarching goals for HOSC were to show students the methods used by scientists, the means by which science advances and the conditions under which it flourishes, Table 4. The cases developed (or proposed) for the History of Science Cases (HOSC) (Klopfer, 1964). Note there is a good chance that some of these planned titles were never published – – – – – – – –
– – 44
The Cells of Life The Chemistry of Fixed Air Fraunhofer Lines Frogs and Batteries The Discovery of Halogen Elements Air Pressure The Sexuality of Plants Rejection of Atomic Theory The Speed of Light
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the personalities and human qualities of science, the interplay of social, economic, technological, and psychological factors with the progress of science and the importance to science of accurate and accessible records, constantly improved instruments, and free communication between scientists (Klopfer, 1964). Strategies at the level of Science Stories (2.2) of the typology include “science stories” a term coined by Clough and Olson (2004) and further developed by Clough (2008). Such narratives are written specifically for instructional purposes without much original material. Roach (1995) and Roach and Wandersee (1993) pioneered this approach in the use of short stories to share important lessons about science purpose-written stories. Sometimes scientists’ dialogue is created for dramatic and instructional purposes. The goal is generally for students to learn a very specific lesson about how science works or about science content and the stories have been crafted with such goals in mind. Current examples include those by Clough (2008) and Klassen (2006). Even shorter HOS illustrations (Level 2.3) can be used to make points within existing lessons. An example of this approach would be for a teacher to tell the story of how Kekule imagined a chain of snakes one biting the tail of another to form a circle inspiring him to conclude the some hydrocarbons formed ring structures rather than the linear chains that was thought to be the only option. The story is perfectly suited for a chemistry teacher to make the point that creativity plays a major role in scientific discovery. Of course, this approach requires that teachers have such examples from which they may draw in instruction. McComas (2008b) and Kampourakis and McComas (2009b) further illustrate this technique and provide such examples. Domain 3.0: Biographies and autobiographies of scientists and their discoveries Here we find the life and research of scientists reported directly. The three types within this strategy will be discussed as a group even though there is likely a difference in impact on students linked to the way in which the information is delivered and to the “voice” of the author. There are countless examples of this HOS approach with first person narratives such as those by Charles Darwin (2002) Autobiographies, James Watson (1996) The Double Helix and Richard Feynman (2005) The Meaning of it All and biographies such as Galileo’s Daughter (Sobel, 1999), Einstein (Issacson, 2007), Rosalind Franklin (Maddox, 2002) and Issac Newton (Gleick, 2003). Fingon and Fingon (2009) share an effectively updated version of the traditional strategy of having student’s present scientists’ biographies guided by a rubric for evaluation of these presentations. Dagher and Ford do provide a cautionary note associated with the use of this strategy in reporting that some biographies written for younger children “were characterized by a relative absence of description of how science arrived at their knowledge...” (p. 377). A strategy to reading about the life and work of a scientist is that of a dramatic presentation delivered on stage or in recorded format. An excellent example of this is the play QED by playwright Peter Parnell on the life of Richard Feynman. This play brought science and its history to life for theatre-goers (and presumably for students too) as actor Alan Alda starred as the eccentric physicist. In 1996 the 45
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movie Infinity dramatized the earlier life of Feynman during his time as a young scientist working on the development of the atomic bomb during the Manhattan Project. The only caution in using such dramatizations is the degree to which these products depart from the truth. Finally, there are many products have been produced exclusively for the education market that present the lives and work of scientists in video format. Many of the products of the PBS NOVA series include historical recreations. Recent examples include Einsteins’ Big Idea, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, Newton’s Dark Secret and Galileo’s Battle for the Heavens (Public Broadcasting System (PBS). Other noteworthy examples of this genre include the series of eight modules, entitled MindWorks (Becker, 2000) that extend, complement, and enrich existing curricular materials on various subjects (Table 5) and the Mechanical Universe Project produced by the California Institute of Technology (1985) that provides explanations of many concepts in physics frequently accompanied by recreations of the actual personages, events and experiments with actors in period costumes. Even without viewing the Mechanical Universe segments in their traditional fashion it would be possible to extract these dramatic recreations as classroom illustrations of the history of science. In conclusion, there seems to be no particular strategy reported in the literature for the way in which biography and autobiography can be used in the science classroom but this approach to the history of science would seem to stand as distinct from some of the others. Table 5. The video titles produced by Becker (2000) as part of the MindWorks project featuring recreations of Kinematics (Galileo: Falling Objects) Dynamics (DuChatelet and Voltaire: Collisions) Thermodynamics (Count Rumford: Heat) Statics & Structures (Ferris and the Ferris Wheel) Electricity & Magnetism (Woods: Communication / Railway Telegraphy) Light & Color (Newton and Wickins: Refraction of Light and Color) Atoms & Matter (Curie and Huggins: Radioactivity) Tomorrow’s Challenges (Shirley and the Mars Pathfinder Mission)
Domain 4.0: Book length presentations of some aspect of the history of science The impact of the strategies in this category relate to those just discussed but have been separated because of their focus. Instead of featuring the work of a single individual with emphasis on the “life, times and work” of that individual from a biographical perspective there are more generalized discussions. The subcategories have been arranged from those that are most generic (such as a narrative account of science itself as might be found in the three book series The Story of Science (Hakim, 2005), to historical treatments of the history of a discipline (such as biology as exemplified by The Epic History of Biology; Serafini, 2001) to a subdiscipline (such as molecular biology like The Eighth Day of Creation; Judson, 1996) or even the history of a specific event (Longitude; Sobel, 1995, is an excellent example of 46
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this genre). A somewhat less related category, accounts of classic experiments, is also included here. There is little research to show how materials in this category of the history of science are used and what impact such use would have on students but original materials have been applied successfully in a wide number of other areas of instruction (for example Bowler & Morus, 2005). Domain 5.0: Role playing and related activities with respect to historical personages Admittedly, this level of the typology is the most tentative. Since there are a few inclusions in the literature to the use of direct and indirect role playing activities in science instruction and because such techniques seem unique from the others provided here, this category was established. Instructional techniques in this category would include those in which students take on the roles of historical personages in the history of science to act out, debate or respond to questions as those persons. This may or may not involve having students dress up as the personages they portray. One could imagine students writing a play or otherwise reenacting the trail of Galileo more fully to understand and communicate the central issues of that debate. This would be characterized as a direct application of the use of role playing in the history of science. Alternatively, the teacher, or even an actor might dress up as a famous scientist and take on the character of that person to give lectures and respond to questions as that person. Mendel, Darwin, Newton, Einstein and other such distinctive scientists have all been the focus of this technique. Regrettably, nothing of substance has been found in the literature regarding the impact of the application of this strategy or on any robust discussion for how this might be used in a general way but the technique would seem to hold some promise. Domain 6.0: Textbook inclusions related to the history of science This category is offered to reflect a reality rather than an ideal state for the use of HOS in science teaching. Presently, relatively little NOS/HOS content is contained in textbooks and in classroom discussions. Typically, the few major scientific discoveries explicitly tied to those who made the contributions are discussed from such a human historical perspective. Galileo, Newton, Einstein, Darwin and Watson/ Crick are commonly mentioned even as the specifics of their work (often the most interesting and illustrative parts) are omitted. A number of studies substantiate this point. However, Leite (2002) did a particularly good job in describing how to look for the historical content in textbooks –physics in her case– and reported the finding that in the books examined the historical content did not give students and adequate image of scientists and their work. When scientists are mentioned, their contributions are limited to a few sentences, perhaps a picture, and birth and death dates –usually in a side bar in the textbook. Even this positioning almost guarantees that students and teachers alike will ignore the potential offered by such content. While this use of HOS is not particularly robust or compelling, it should be acknowledged as a way to account for as many possibilities of the incorporation of HOS as possible. One exception to the current state of inclusion of the history of science in science texts was the Project Physics 47
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curriculum developed in the 1960’s and updated as Physics, the Human Adventure (Holton & Brush, 2001). This project, which had as a co-author science historian Gerald Holton, deliberated included a rich historical treatment along with discussion of the science of physics (Holton, 1969, 2003). While there have been studies of what history content is mentioned in science texts there have been no comprehensive examinations of what use teachers make of such content or what impressions students have of this dimension of science teachers. It is probably not too great a conclusion to reach that HOS inclusion in science textbooks makes almost no impact on students or teachers unless it is explicitly woven into the curriculum. That is likely to happen only in the classrooms of teachers who already possess a strong interest in the subject. Domain 7.0: Experimental reenactments and other “hands-on” approaches for engagement with various historical aspects of science The final level in our proposed classification plan is that of the use of classic or historical experiments in the teaching of science. Of course, investigations such as the electrostatic effect of rubbing various fabrics on a glass rod are done frequently, but in the majority of cases are not tied to specific persons or events in the history of the discovery of static electricity. The kinds of investigations that are considered for inclusion in this domain of the classification plan are those that are explicitly linked to the history of science. This aspect of history of science teaching is confounded by the reality that rarely are these hands-on approaches done in isolation from other techniques. Consider the History of Science Cases, discussed earlier in this chapter; they too used engaged students in conducting experiments but blended this with reading about the scientist and the work being pursued. However, given the special nature of hands-on investigations and the unique impact that they may make, it seems reasonable to include such approaches in their own domain in the taxonomy. Resources of the use of this approach are relatively limited. Several books feature discussions of experiments that could be used as source material for either reading about or actually conducting (re-conducting) some of these classic experiments. The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments in Science (Johnson, 2009), Great Experiments in Physics (Shamos, 1987) and Great Scientific Experiments (Harre, 1981) are among the most useful. An extensive compendium of classroom-ready classic experiments covering all of the sciences has been released as Historical Science Experiments on File (Walker, 1993). A number of educators have used various permutations of experimental reenactments. Kipnis (1996) developed what he calls the historical investigative approach and applied it to the study of optics and electricity. Heerring at the University of Oldenburg (2000, 2003) has become the expert in the construction of exact replicas of many important devices in the history of physics for use in teacher education programs. Most recently, Cavicchi (2008) has found that such an approach had “value in recovering some of the interrelatedness inherent in the history and reintroducing the wonder of science phenomena to students today” (p. 717) 48
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but adds that “the history of science with its experimental legacy has yet to be plumbed as an educational resource for countering the fragmenting of science knowledge” (p. 719). 5. CONSIDERING THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE IN SCIENCE EDUCATION
Even if we agree on the general structure of the proposed taxonomy there are at least three additional major elements of HOS instruction worth considering. These would include some focus on the curriculum, pedagogy and the affective domain illustrated in a model provided in Figure 1. From a curricular perspective it would seem that HOS can only be effectively included in instruction if it is integrated within rather than appended to instruction, if HOS is somehow alighted with standards and other curricular goals and if the focus of HOS (and HOS derived learning) is featured in science assessment so that students take it seriously.
Figure 1. Three educational considerations (level of engagement, level of explicitness and level of integratedness) related to the inclusion of the history of science in science instruction. The letters are included for illustration purposes only. “A” represents a HOS approach with a high level of implicit treatment of HOS and medium levels of both engagement and integratedness. “B” represents high levels of all three elements.
The pedagogical element of this model is quite straightforward, HOS-derived learning must be discussed explicitly (rather than implicitly) (Abd-El-Khalick and 49
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Lederman, 2000ab; Rudge and Howe (2009). As with nature of science itself, if the ideas that teachers hope to share through a history of science approach are only implied it is very likely that the will be ignored. Lastly, there is an affective domain consideration. If the HOS content and instructional approach is not engaging, interesting and developmentally appropriate it will likely not be responded to positively by students and, in turn, by teachers. If teachers alone value the incorporation of HOS in science instruction there is a very good possibility that the innovation will not last since students themselves will reject it. With the press of time and demands of coverage presently on the science curriculum, ideas most likely to inform curriculum development are those that work. Figure 1 provides some direction in predicting what combination of dimensions HOS will be effective in the classroom. 6. CHALLENGES FACED IN INCORPORATING HOS IN SCIENCE INSTRUCTION
There exists a long heritage both of advocacy for (McComas, 1997) and innovation in the incorporation of the history of science in science instruction and even instructive criticism (Allchin, 2003 and Kindi, 2005). Even as we laud the depth of scholarship and practical suggestion for the incorporation of history of science in science teaching, it must be stated that this approach to science teaching remains uncommon and generally untested for a number of reasons. First, science teacher education programs must be upgraded to include the effective use of HOS as part of generating appropriate PCK. Perhaps with guidance from the taxonomy, we must have a new focus on curriculum models for the effective and engaging inclusion of HOS into the science classroom. Finally, we should devote some of our research initiatives to the examination of the role and nature of HOS in the service of science teaching. Little has been done to determine the degree to which HOS should be included as an instructional imperative or in gauging the relative effectiveness of the various techniques for its use in school science teaching. We do not know what elements of HOS are effective for what science teaching purposes. We must consider the roles to be played by recapitulation (reenactment) vs. reconstruction (the writing of history for instructional purposes). We should be concerned that exposure to “old” science may be problematic as we try to communicate “current” science (Lind, 1979). As we conclude this review of methodologies for the use of history of science it seems clear that the inclusion of science history in science instruction should be a high priority. We must humanize sciences by revealing to students the diverse and interested people who have contributed to science in the past and continue daily. We should consider again the multitude of ways that educators and scholars have suggested that we incorporate HOS and consider which ones make sense in our new world of standards and benchmark tests. The challenge may be to integrate HOS in subtle yet appropriate ways that do not make large demands on classroom time and on teacher knowledge but there is little doubt that the science curriculum would be enriched and enlivened if we can demonstrate to students where science comes from who has contributed to its development. 50
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank Carole Lee and Kostas Kampourakis for their many helpful additions and corrections to the manuscript. Nevertheless, all opinions and errors are of course the responsibility of the author. REFERENCES Abd-El-Khalick, F., & Lederman, N. (2000a). The influence of history of science courses on students’ views of nature of science. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 37, 1057–1095. Abd-El-Khalick, F., & Lederman, N. G. (2000b). Improving science teachers’ conceptions of the nature of science: A critical review of the literature. International Journal of Science Education, 22, 665–701. Allchin, D. (1997). The power of history as a tool for teaching science. In A. Dally, T. Nielsen, & F. Reiss (Eds.), History and philosophy of science: A means to better scientific literacy? (pp. 70–98). Loccum: Evangelische Akadamie Loccum. Allchin, D. (2003). Scientific myth conceptions. Science education, 87, 329–351. Allen, G., & Baker, J. (2001). Biology: scientific process and social issues. Maryland, MD: Fitzgerald Science Press. Baumel, H. B., & Berger, J. J. (1973). Biology: Its people and its papers. Washington, DC: National Science Teachers Association. Becker, B. (2000). Mindworks. San Francisco: WestEd. Bloom, H. (1994). The western canon: The books and school of the ages. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company. Bowler, P. J., & Morus I. R. (2005). Making modern science: a historical survey. Chicago and New York: The University of Chicago Press. Carey, L. R., & Stauss, A. N. (1970). An analysis of the understanding of the nature of science by prospective secondary science teachers. Science Education, 52(4), 358–363. California Institute of Technology. (1985). The mechanical universe and beyond. Retrieved April 30, 2009, from http://www.learner.org/resources Cavicchi, E. M. (2008). Historical experiments in students’ hands: Unfragmenting science through action and history. Science & Education, 17, 717–749. Clough, M. (2008). A very deep question: Just how old is the earth? Part of a new series of “science stories”. Unpublished Document, Iowa State University, Ames, IA. Clough, M. P., & Joanne, K. O. (2004). The nature of science: always part of the science story. The Science Teacher, 71, 28–31. Conant, J. B. (1947). On understanding science. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Conant, J. B., & Nash, L. K. (1948). Harvard case histories in experimental science (Vols. I and II). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Dagher, Z., & Ford, D. (2005). How are scientists portrayed in children’s science biographies. Science & Education, 14, 377–393. Darwin, C. (2002). Autobiographies. New York: Penguin Group. DeBoer, G. E. (1991). A history of ideas in science education: Implications for practice. New York: Teachers College Press. Duschl, R. A. (1990). Restructuring science education: The importance of theories and their development. New York: Teachers College Press. Education Policies Commission Report. (1944). Education for all American youth. National Education Association of the United States. Eichman, P. (1996). Using history to teach biology. The American Biology Teacher, 58, 200–202. Feynman, R. P. (2005). The meaning of it all: Thoughts of a citizen scientist. New York: Basic Books. Fingon, J. C., & Fingon, S. D. (2009). What about Albert Einstein? Using biographies to promote students’ scientific thinking. Science Scope, 32, 51–55.
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MCCOMAS Gleick, J. (2003). Isaac Newton. New York: Pantheon Books. Hakin, J. (2005). The story of science: Newton at the center. Arlington, VA: NSTA Press. Harre, R. (1981). Great scientific experiments. Twenty experiments that changed our view of the world. Chelmsford, MA: Courier Dover Publications. Herreid, C. F. (1994). Case Studies in science-A novel method of science education. Journal of College Science Teaching, 23, 221–229. Heering, P. (2003). History-science-epistemology: On the use of historical experiments in physics teacher training. In W. F. McComas (Ed.), Proceeding of the 6th international history, philosophy and science teaching group meeting. Denver, USA. [File 58 on CD ROM from IHPST.ORG]. Heering, P. (2000). Getting shocks: Teaching secondary school physics through history. Science & Education, 9, 363–373. Hodson, D. (2008). Towards scientific literacy: A teacher’s guide to the history, philosophy and sociology of science. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Holton, G. (1969). Harvard project physics: A report on its aims and current status. Physics Education, 4(1), 19–25. Holton, G. (2003). The project physics course, then and now. Science & Education, 12, 779–785. Holton, G., & Brush, S. G. (2001). Physics, the human adventure: From Copernicus to Einstein and beyond. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Howe, E. M., & Rudge, D. W. (2005). Recapitulating the history of Sickle-Cell Anemia Research: Improving students’ NOS views explicitly and reflectively. Science & Education, 14(3), 423–441. Isaacson, W. (2007). Einstein: His life and universe. New York: Simon and Schuster. Johnson, G. (2009). The ten most beautiful experiments. New York: Knopf. Judson, H. F. (1996). The eight day of creation. Cold Springs Harbor, NY: Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory Press. Kampourakis, K., & McComas, W. F. (2009a, in review). Charles Darwin and the human elements of science: Creativity, social influences and subjectivity. Under review by Science & Education. Kampourakis, K., & McComas, W. F. (2009b). Using the history of biology to illustrate core nature of science ideas. Proceedings of the 5th Greek conference on history, philosophy & teaching of natural sciences: “The great scientific theories in the teaching of natural sciences”, Nicosia, Cyprus. Kindi, V. (2005). Should science teaching involve the history of science? An assessment of Kuhn’s view. Science & Education, 14, 721–731. Kipnis, N. (1996). The “historical-investigative” approach to teaching science. Science & Education, 5, 277–292. Klassen, S. (2006). The application of historical narrative in science learning: The Atlantic cable story. Science & Education, 16, 335–352. Klopfer, L. E (1964). History of Science Cases (HOSC). Chicago: Science Research Associates. Kragh, H. (1994). An introduction to the historiography of science. New York: Cambridge University Press. Lederman, N. G. (2002). The state of science education: Subject matter without context. Electronic Journal of Science Education [On-Line], 3(2), December. http://unr.edu/homepage/jcannon/ejse/ ejse.html. Leite, L. (2002). History of science in science education: Development and validation of a checklist for analyzing the historical content of science textbooks. Science & Education, 11, 353–359. Lind, G. (1979). The History of Science Cases (HOSC): Nine units of instruction in the history of science. European Journal of Science Education, 1(3), 293–299. Maddox, B. (2002). Rosalind Franklin: The dark lady of DNA. New York: HarperCollins. Matthews, M. (1992). History, philosophy and science teaching: The present rapprochement. Science & Education, 1, 11–47. Matthews, M. R. (1994). Science teaching, the role of history and philosophy of science. New York: Routledge. McComas, W. F., Clough, M. P., & Almazroa, H. (1998). A review of the role and character of the nature of science in science education. In W. F. McComas (Ed.), The nature of science in science education: Rationales and strategies (pp. 3–39). Kluwer/Springer Academic Publishers. 52
THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE McComas, W. F. (2008a). Proposals for core nature of science content in popular books on the history and philosophy of science: Lessons for science education. In Y. J. Lee, & A. L. Tan (Eds.), Science education at the nexus of theory and practice. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. McComas, W. F. (2008b). Seeking historical examples to illustrate key aspects of the nature of science. Science & Education, 17(2/3), 249–263. McComas, W. F. (1997). The discovery and nature of evolution by natural selection: Misconceptions and lessons learned from the history of science. American Biology Teacher, 59, 492–500. Monk, M., & Osborne, J. (1997). Placing the history and philosophy of science on the curriculum: a model for the development of pedagogy. Science Education, 81(4), 405–424. National Research Council. (1996). The national science education standards. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Osborne, J., Collins, S., Ratcliffe, M., Millar, R., & Duschl, R. (2003). What “ideas-about-science” should be taught in school science? A Delphi study of the expert community. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 40, 692–720. Public Broadcasting System (PBS). Science programming on air and online. http://pbs.org/ wgbh.nova/. Rasmussen, S. C. (2007). The history of science as a tool to identify and confront pseudo-science. Journal of Chemical Education, 84, 949–951. Roach, L. E. (1995). Putting people back in science: Using historical vignettes. School Science and Mathematics, 95, 365–370. Roach, L. E., & Wandersee, J. H. (1993). Short story science. The Science Teacher, 60, 18–21. Rudge, D. W., & Howe, E. M. (2009). An explicit and reflective approach to the use of history to promote understanding of the nature of science. Science & Education, (online first article). Serafini, A. (2001). The epic history of biology. Boulder, CO: Perseus Publishing Company. Shamos, M. (1987). Great experiments in physics. New York: Dover Publications. Sherratt, W. J. (1982). History of science in the science curriculum: An historical perspective Part I: Early interest and role advocated. School Science Review, 64, 225–236. Sherratt, W. J. (1983). History of science in the science curriculum: An historical perspective. Part II: Interest shown by teachers. School Science Review, 64, 418–424. Sobel, D. (1995). Longitude: The true story of along genius who solved the greatest problem of his time. New York: Walker and Co. Sobel, D. (1999). Galileo’s daughter: A historical memoir of science, faith, and love. New York: Walker and Co. Steelman, J. R. (1947). Manpower for research: Volume 4 of science and public policy. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Walker, R. (1993). Historical science experiments on file. New York: Facts on File, Inc. Watson, J. D. (1996). The double helix: A personal account of the discovery of the structure of DNA. New York: Simon and Schuster. Watson, J. D., & Crick, F. H. C. (1953). Molecular structure of nucleic acids: A structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid. Nature, 171, 737–738. Watson, J. D., & Stent, G. S. (Ed.), (1980). Double helix: A personal account of the discovery of the structure of DNA. New York: W.W. Norton and Company. Wider, W. (2006). Science as story communicating the nature of science through historical perspectives on science. American Biology Teacher, 68, 200–205. Whitfield, D. H. (2007). What’s the matter? Readings in physics. Chicago: Great Books Foundation.
William F. McComas Parks Family Professor of Science Education University of Arkansas College of Education and Health Professions Project to Advance Science Education (PASE) e-mail:
[email protected] 53
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4. TEXTBOOKS OF THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES AND THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE ǹ Problematic Coexistence
That the use of episodes from the history of science and technology is particularly beneficial to the teaching of the sciences has been well documented and there have been interesting proposals of how to further elaborate a trend that has already been welcomed by many teachers and textbook writers. No one doubts the positive effects of historically informed science textbooks. All too often, historical notes interspersed throughout the text books, photographs of old instruments or of well known scientific figures, short biographies, stories about priority disputes, anecdotes from the lives of scientists, even excerpts from original texts, excite the imagination of students and give the opportunity to many teachers to make their teaching more lively and effective. There are two questions worth pursuing from the point of view of a historian of science. The first is whether such historically informed textbooks play any role in making students understand what history of science is. The second question is whether pedagogic expediency is always in tandem with the scholarship of history of science? Might it be the case that what one wants to achieve in pedagogic terms may be in conflict with what one wants to convey in historical terms? In order to discuss these questions we need to make some preliminary comments. One of them is the need to clarify what we mean by history of science. This is not a “definition” of what history of science is, but rather, a way of clarifying the difference between references to episodes from the past of the sciences, and history of science, as practised by the members of the community of historians of science. For many decades since the end of the 19th century, the great majority of historians and philosophers of science believed that the development of the sciences was the gradual appearance of a pre-existing objective structure of nature, and that the origins of the sciences had no effect on their character. In other words, they believed that what we have come to refer to as science was something independent of human activities. This view has been radically modified since the 1970s. Few, if any, would deny that the sciences have come into being as a result of complicated intellectual and social processes, and their character has been deeply influenced by the scientists’ ideological orientations, their cultural environment, their philosophical beliefs as well as their ontological commitments. History of science is the history of the people who tried to investigate and understand the structure and function of nature. At the same time, however, history of science studies the institutions that have been created in specific historical conditions where the sciences were nurtured and P.V. Kokkotas et al., (eds.), Adapting Historical Science Knowledge Production to the Classroom, 55–59. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
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various of its theoretical practices and experimental techniques had been established. Though these institutions many people attempted to convince others of the truth of their ideas about nature, and to legitimise the ways they went about understanding nature. The sciences have been formed and molded by the ideas, techniques and practices devised by people in order to further investigate nature, its entities, the principles they postulated and the laws they discovered, the institutions they created and the applications they thought up. But the development of the sciences has also been influenced by the different philosophical, aesthetic, religious, and political outlooks and social practices of those who were actively involved in the scientific enterprise. It is for these reasons that history of science views science as a social and cultural phenomenon, and historians of science are obliged to study the history of the sciences within their spatial, temporal and cultural contexts. The attempt to describe what historians of science and technology do, is not an attempt to project that all historians (should) follow a particular historiographic approach of how they would go about doing history of science. What is being emphasised is that independent of what aspects each historian of science chooses to bring to surface, and independent of what aspects each historian of science thinks are relevant for an understanding of the development of the sciences, they are all aware that the historical study of the sciences involves a complex framework comprised of all these parameters. Another point is that historians of science pose and attempt to answer questions. In all the articles appearing in professional journals and conference proceedings, in all the books and seminar talks, there is always a specific set of questions being posed and arguments constructed in order to answer the question(s). This is exactly what makes the decisive difference between, say, an article in an encyclopaedia and an article in a professional journal. In an article in an encyclopaedia what is important is that the facts are correct. In an article in a professional journal, the facts have to be correct, of course. But the rules of the discipline, the rules that the members of the community of historians of science agree by consensus, is that the author is obliged to raise questions and follow a series of rules of how to answer them. Again what is implied here is not a historiographically homogeneous approach, but rules such as the careful reading of published and unpublished material not through the prism of presentism, but by trying to understand how these texts were read at the past, the study of the correspondence, the study of the resistances against the new proposals, etc. What is being emphasised here is that there are serious differences between what is considered as texts of history of science and those texts where historical aspects of science appear. In a way, the differences may be analogous to the differences between the textbooks of a scientific discipline and the popular books about that particular discipline. No one demands rigour from a popular account. No one would accept as textbook that lacks rigour. Another set of issues which is relevant for answering the questions we raised, is to understand the character of textbooks vis a vis the historical development of the sciences. In no text book do we find the expressions of a particular theory or experiment as it was originally formulated. The aim of a textbook writer is to articulate the archetypal form of a particular theory and try to express it in a way 56
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that is free of any of its local origins or any of its idiosyncratic characteristics. What characterises textbooks, is the presentation of, say, a theory in such a manner as to provide some kind of continuity with what preceded it and what will follows. Hence, science textbooks by the sheer way they organise their material, express a kind of historical narrative. Or, to be more exact, they imply a historicity, since, otherwise there is the danger that various parts will appear to be extraneous and disjointed – something rather catastrophic for a textbook. The way a textbook is organised is dictated by pedagogic considerations. The aim of a textbook is to assist the teacher and the student to get the best possible grasp of the particular discipline depending on the age group or the level of background of a particular audience. Perhaps the efficiency of a textbook is gauged by how coherent the whole framework is. This is not to criticize textbooks in general, since their role is to teach the particular sciences. And textbook writers are morally justified to distort history, if through such a distortion they feel that they can create a pedagogically more efficient textbook. Let us take an example. In the great majority of text books the Special Theory of Relativity is introduced through the “negative” result of the Michelson Morley experiment. The story, roughly, is as follows. The discovery of the electromagnetic waves by Hertz which were predicted by Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism, gave credence to the view that, like all waves, the electromagnetic waves, and, hence, light which was shown by Maxwell to be a form of electromagnetic wave, travel through a medium - the ether. Though the properties of this medium were turning out to be more and more “unphysical”, the scientific community had much to gain in its symbiosis with the problematic ether (which could be elucidated one day, as it happened so many times in the past) than to abandon it. However, independent of the properties of the medium, it was, on principle, possible to measure the relative velocity of the earth and the ether. It was a value that would appear as a second order effect, something that became possible after the improvement of the interferometer by A. A. Michelson. In a series of carefully conducted experiments, started in 1887 in collaboration with E. Morley, what was expected to be a finite value (the relative velocity of the earth with respect to the ether) turned out to be zero. The unexpected zero value was repeatedly found in the subsequent redesigned experiments, whereas its theoretical explanation, within the framework of classical mechanics and electromagnetism, brought about serious problems. The presentation of the Special Theory of Relativity, in most textbooks, continues as follows. In 1905, and in order to get out of the deadlock created by the zero result of the Michelson-Morley experiment, Einstein postulated two new axioms that should be valid for any theory: that the velocity of light is the maximum velocity and is, thus, a constant of nature, and that every theory should be invariant under a particular set of transformations. This approach explained the zero result of the Michelson-Morley experiment and, furthermore, rendered the ether irrelevant for electromagnetism. And the presentation of the Special Theory of Relativity continues by introducing all the novelties of the theory etc. Such an introduction to the Special Theory of Relativity appears to be faithful to history. Furthermore, it follows a schema particularly dear to the physicists’ view 57
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of history: that there is a fundamental theory (electromagnetism), one of its crucial predictions is verified (electromagnetic waves), an experiment is performed to further test the possibilities provided by the theory (Michelson-Morley experiments), there is an unexpected result (zero relative velocity between the earth and the ether), there is new theory (Special Theory of Relativity) which explains everything preceding it and also provides an explanation for what was an anomaly within the framework of the previous theory. Such a positivist view of history is at the core of many science textbooks: Theory - predictions - experiments to test the predictions difficulty - a hypothesis which solves the difficulty without affecting the explanation of other experimental results - new theory - new experiments. Such an approach, however, is in serious conflict both with the historical facts as well as with historical scholarship. As to the historical facts, in the actual 1905 paper of Einstein, there is no reference to the Michelson-Morley experiment, and, at the very best, one can consider that there is an indirect reference to it, without such a reference playing any crucial role in the construction of the theory. Furthermore, through the work of historians of science, and more specifically that of Gerald Holton1, who have systematically studied this issue, there is a consensus that though Einstein knew of the experiment, he did not give to it any significance at all. In fact, Einstein thought that what was problematic in electromagnetic theory was the “asymmetric” explanation of what appeared to be symmetric phenomena. The motion of a conductor with respect to a magnet and, inversely, the motion of a magnet with respect to a conductor have exactly the same effect: the induction of an electric current in the conductor. According to electromagnetic theory these two phenomena had different kinds of explanations. In the first case the appearance of the current was considered to be the result of the appearance of an electromotive force at the ends of the conductor, whereas for the second case the current appears because of the appearance of an electric field where the conductor is. According to Einstein the two phenomena should have had essentially the same explanation, since the only thing that mattered was the relative motion between the magnet and the conductor. What we see here is that the pedagogically effective presentation gives us a particular view on the way science develops. What is historically inexact is far easier communicate. To try to introduce the Special Theory of Relativity by sticking to the approach of the original paper of Einstein is a particularly trying job; it is far more effective to adopt the method where the Special Theory of Relativity provides a way out of the deadlock of the Michelson Morley experiment. Might it be the case that a physics textbook may not be able to teach physics as well as history of physics? The example we discussed above might be considered as the easy case. Historical issues are more often than not, complicated matters that transcend the ways facts are presented and are rearranged. Let us take another example. If asked to respond to the question as to whose jurisdiction the atom is, the great majority of students will answer that it is the physicists’. The atom is an entity that is studied by the physicists, and the physics of the atom has come to express the label identifying the particular discipline which deals with the atom. All this is absolutely true. Yet, it was not so for many decades. The atom was postulated by Dalton in 1803 in order to provide an explanatory framework for all the chemical laws and rules that had 58
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been empirically derived. The atom was an entity which played a theoretical role and at the same time it defined an ontology for chemistry. Notwithstanding the various disputes among the chemists as to its role and character, the atom was from the beginning of the 19th century in the chemists’ jurisdiction. The periodic table itself could not be grasped without recourse to atomism. So what happened from the beginning of the 19th century to the beginning of the twentieth when the atom became the physicists’ entity? The move over was a slow and very complicated process of appropriation of the atom by the physicists. This involved public negotiations through presidential addresses and commemorations, forceful statements in articles and encyclopedia entries (one is reminded of the entry “atom” to the 9th edition of Encyclopedia Britannica whose author was Maxwell where there is no mention of Dalton and atoms are considered as the vortex atoms of Lord Kelvin!), mathematical treatments of the atom that were so foreign to the chemists’ culture, institutional developments, university courses etc. One can go on to discuss the details of these processes of appropriation, but the point to be underlined is clear: one of the more interesting things historians of science do is to study changes of viewpoints, changes of mentalities, practices of subcultures. It is these aspects of the historical development of the sciences that are particularly difficult to be incorporated in science textbooks. History of science has gone a long way. It has not only unearthed a wealth of information about the past of the sciences. It has developed its own multifarious methods of how to deal with the past of the sciences, and, most, importantly, it has kept in pace with what historians do: ask questions and provide answers. History of science is not a discipline which provides a narrative of the past where facts and events simply follow the “correct” order. History of science is almost exclusively concerned with explanations. Hence, it has considerably distanced itself from its own past when scientists tried to write the correct narratives, tried to present the past as it “really was”. What, perhaps, we need to do is to encourage the writing of historically informed textbooks. But let us have no self-deceptions that one can grasp even the basics of history of science through a science textbook. In exactly the same way that one cannot learn science from a history of science textbook. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank Prof. P. Kokkotas of Athens University, for inviting me to the 7th International Conference on History of Science and Science Education, where some aspects of this article have been presented. NOTES 1
G. Holton, “Einstein, Michelson and the ‘Crucial’ Experiment”, ISIS, vol. 60, 1969, pp.133–197.
Kostas Gavroglu Department of History and Philosophy of Science University of Athens, Athens, Greece 59
PANAGIOTIS KOKKOTAS AND AIKATERINI RIZAKI
5. DOES HISTORY OF SCIENCE CONTRIBUTE TO THE CONSTRUCTION OF KNOWLEDGE IN THE CONSTRUCTIVIST ENVIRONMENTS OF LEARNING?
1. INTRODUCTION: ATTEMPTS TO INTRODUCE HISTORY OF SCIENCE (HOS) IN SCIENCE EDUCATION
Over the last twenty years, an increasing interest has been developed in what concerns the contribution of HOS to the teaching of science in all levels of education. This interest has been expressed with: a) the creation of the International History, Philosophy and Science Teaching Group b) the organization of European and International Conferences (Paris 1988; Tallahassee-Florida 1989; Cambridge 1990; Madrid 1992; Szombathely 1994; Minneapolis 1995; Bratislava 1996; Pavia 1999; Calgary 2007; Notre Dame 2009) and c) the publication of the Journal: Science & Education. The interest in the use of HOS in teaching science is not new. For example, Ernest Mach claimed that the use of HOS as a vehicle to obtain a genuine understanding of modern scientific contents, to appropriately face new problems and prompt further progress in science, is unique (Galili & Hazan, 2001). Mach argued that: A person who has read and understood the Greek and Roman authors, has felt and experienced, more than one who is restricted to the impression of the present. He sees how men, placed in different circumstances, judge quite differently the same things from what we do today. His own judgments will be rendered thus more independent (Mach, 1886/1986, p. 347 cited by Galili & Hazan, 2001). This opinion of Mach becomes more significant in the context of science teaching. Since 1927 and until recently the prevailing view for using HOS in science teaching was that of Haywood (1927). Although he believed in the importance of the historical approach to science teaching, he had the certainty that students will not benefit as much from it in their examinations. Even today the situation remains much the same (Matthews, 1994), since many teachers don’t use HOS in their teaching. Furthermore, it is accepted that present and past science textbooks make only passing reference to HOS. Where history is included, it all too often becomes fictionalized conveys the Whig view on history (Brush, 1974). Monk & Osborne (1997) describe Whig view as a historical approach which interprets the past in terms of present ideas and values, elevating in significance all incidents and work that have contributed to the formation of current society, rather than attempting to P.V. Kokkotas et al., (eds.), Adapting Historical Science Knowledge Production to the Classroom, 61–84. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
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understand social context of the era and the contingent factors that contributed its production. The contribution of HOS in teaching science even in the form of the Whig view could be accepted to the extent, it serves science education. Furthermore, whiggism, according to Nickels’s point, is invaluable in the practice of science; it is the condition for conducting good research (Nickels, 1992, p. 98). Another direction for the exploitation of HOS in science teaching is that described by Kuhn, who distinguishes between HOS for scientists (textbook history) and HOS for historians and philosophers. The importance of Kuhn’s distinction rests on his intention to advance and recommend the orderly and heroic history of scientists as a myth that will entice and blind them (Kindi, 2005). According to her, Kuhn by recognizing the significance of textbook history in science education highlights the importance of the ‘bad’ history of textbooks, since this history is an indelible condition of scientific practice and it is conductive to forming the scientist’s course of action. Kuhn perceives science as a practice and not as a set of propositions forming a theory. The systematic use of HOS in science education started in the USA at the middle of the 20th century. HOS in education was used by Conant in his work: Harvard Case Histories in Experimental Science (Conant, 1957). Another attempt to introduce HOS in teaching secondary school science was made by Klopher (1964–1966) in his project: “History of Science Cases for Schools”. Perhaps the most integrated approach arguing for the introduction of History and Philosophy of Science (HPS) in science teaching is the Harvard Project Physics Course (HPPC) developed by Rutherford, Holton and Watson (1970). This project had a humanistic orientation and aimed to attract and motivate students of secondary education in the study of physics (Bruch, 1989). Even today this aim has not been achieved in all European countries. For this reason the European Union (EU) calls for proposals for projects with humanistic orientation to be produced in order to attract and motivate a wider range of students to study physics or science at post secondary and university levels. Over the last decades in the USA and the EU research programs dealing with the nature of science (NOS) and (HOS) have been developed. For example three important reports for science education have been introduced: Science for All Americans (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1989), Benchmarks for Science Literacy (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1993), and the National Science Education Standards (National Research Council, 1996). This inclusion of HOS in science education is justified on the following grounds: a) HOS is both a tool for teaching science well, and b) HOS is a part of the substance of science literacy (Rutherford, 2001). In two of the reports mentioned above an integrated program containing natural and social sciences, mathematics and technology has been developed in an interdisciplinary way, using cases of HOS and reflecting on the values of the educational paradigm: Science Technology Society (DeBoer, 1991, p. 178–184). In this paper we attempt to answer the question whether HOS contributes to better quality science teaching and how accomplishes it. For technical reasons our study is restricted only to constructivist environments and especially to individual and socioconstructivism. 62
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2. FROM BEHAVIORISM AND DISCOVERY LEARNING TO CONSTRUCTIVIST THEORIES
The most well known theories of learning in science education still in use are: behaviorism, discovery learning, constructivist theories, and sociocultural approaches to learning. Behaviorism was the prevailing theory of learning in science education over the last century. This theory is still in practice in many countries of the world. For behaviorism a stimulus (S) from the environment produces a response (R) from the organism, and with repetition, a S-R bond formed so that a given S is almost inevitably associated with a given R. Behaviorism was largely based on animal experimentation in laboratories and was extensively practiced in ancient Greece, where it was believed that “repetition is the mother of every learning”. Learning in behaviorism is defined as the change of the behavior of the subject due to knowledge gained. For this theory knowledge is objective and transmittable. The rigid prescriptive nature of beheviorism was consistent with and supported by the positivist or empiricist view of the nature of knowledge and knowing made popular by Bacon, Hume and later by Pearson (1900) and other philosophers of the Vienna School (Novak, 1993). According to Novak the failure of these ideas to describe and predict how scholars produce knowledge and how humans learn allowed new views of knowledge as paradigm construction (Kuhn, 1962) and evolving populations of concepts (Toulmin, 1972). The epistemology of the discovery of knowledge by scientists and consequently the discovery of learning by students are best described by von Glasersfeld. According to him, to most traditional philosophers true knowledge is a commodity supposed to exist as such, independent of experience, waiting to be discovered by a human knower. It is timeless and requires no development, except that the human share of it increases as exploration goes on (von Glasersfeld, 2001). In discovery learning, knowledge is regarded as objective and independent of the learner. Both the above theories regard students’ minds as empty vessels, ignoring their previous knowledge. As the beheviorist theory of learning, so discovery learning failed to describe and predict how humans learn and how knowledge is produced. Therefore, it was gradually replaced by new theories, very well rooted in epistemology, i.e. constructivism and sociocultural theories of learning. Both these theories reject the traditional epistemological claims about knowledge as an objective representation of reality. 3. THE CONSTRUCTION OF MEANING AND KNOWLEDGE IN CONSTRUCTIVIST THEORIES
There is a belief shared by most psychologists who study learning, that from birth to death individuals construct and reconstruct the meaning of events and objects they observe. It is an ongoing process, and a distinctly human process. This reality has been recognized by educators for at least the last two millennia, but it was only relatively recently that scholars developed methods and tools for the characterization of personal meanings. Foremost among these tools have been Piaget’s (1926) clinical interview; Kelly’s (1955) repertory grid for eliciting personal constructs and Novak’s concept maps (Novak, 1993). 63
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The psychological processes by which an individual constructs his/her own new meanings are essentially the same as the epistemological processes by which new knowledge is constructed by the professionals in a discipline (Schwab, 1964; Toulmin, 1972). A better understanding of the individual’s acquisition and organization of knowledge leads to an understanding of the structure of the knowledge constructed by scholars in a discipline. In both cases, knowledge construction is a complex product of the human capacity to build meaning (Novak, 1993). Constructivism can be connected to Plato and to Aristotle and later to Kant, Giambattista Vico, and in the 20th century to Dewey. More recently, different researchers have identified different forms of constructivism. For example, Steffe and Gale distinguished six different core paradigms of it: social constructivism, radical constructivism, social constructionism, informationprocessing constructivism, cybernetic systems, and sociocultural approaches to mediated action (Steffe & Gale, 1995, p. xiii). We believe that the most important of the constructivist theories are: a) individual constructivism –e.g. Piagetian constructivism or von Glasersfeld’s constructivismradical constructivism b) social-constructivism and c) sociocultural theories1. In recent years there has been a shift from perspectives that adopt individual constructivist assumptions (Tobin, 1993; Von Glasersfeld, 1995; Mintzes, Wandersee & Novak, 1998) to socioconstructivist, sociocultural ones (Lemke, 2001; Wells, 1999). We are of the opinion that the contribution of HOS to science learning varies in reference to the theory of learning used. For example HOS is used differently in a behaviorist learning environment than in a discovery, constructivist, or a sociocultural one. Also the role of the teacher as well as that of the student is different in each of the above learning environments. Individual constructivism is rooted in the Piagetian theory of structuralism and is regarded by some educators as an epistemology, focusing on the nature, methods, and limitations of knowledge. It is a model of knowing in which the mental representations that people construct are regarded as learning with no necessary correspondence to an objective and a priori scientific ontology (Cobb, 1994a, 1994b). In the same category belongs also the radical constructivism of von Glasersfeld (1988, 1999), who has stressed that the construction of knowledge is a personal concern and its function is to organize the experiential world. According to von Clasersfeld (1988, p. 83) “Cognition serves the experimental world, not the discovery of an objective reality”. Furthermore for him every individual constructs his/her on own reality and the notion of objectivity where observations could be made without an observer is a delusion. For radical constructivism the question: “What is knowledge?” is meaningless. On the contrary of great interest is the question: “How is knowledge generated?”, which ought to be the subject of investigations. We are not passively floored by information from the outside; we actively construct our world (Glasersfeld, 1995). Radical constructivism, as its name suggests, by applying the idea of viable constructions also to itself rather than proposing a dogmatic world-view, is consistent in its claim (Riegler, 2001). Furthermore, von Glasersfeld, by introducing the notion of ‘functional fit’, clearly defines what it means to know in a radical constructivism context. It possess ways and means to acting and thinking that allow one to attain 64
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one’s own goals, rather than to posses a true representation of reality. Radical constructivism is associated with knowledge of the experiential world of which von Glaserfeld is most commonly concerned. Also, this type of constructivism tends to have a focus on individual self regulation, similar to the Piagetian view, and the building of conceptual structures. This view is concerned with mostly cognitive processes. O’Loughlin argues that the above version of constructivism is problematic because: a) it ignores the subjectivity of the learner and the socially and historically situated nature of knowing; b) it denies the essentially collaborative and social nature of meaning making; and c) it privileges only one form of knowledge namely, the technical rational (O’Loughlin, 1992). In individual constructivism, the learning of science has to do with the students and the teacher seeing and coming to see in certain ways. In social constructivism, the fundamental hypothesis is that the mental representations of the students and the teacher are regarded as socially constructed. Social constructivism emerged out of radical and Piagetian constructivism and is concerned with the contributions of social interactions to the construction of the self which includes a construction of “who I am,” including the self as a science learner (Atwater, 1996). According to Gergen (1995) social construction begins with language as its fundamental presupposition. He argued that meaning in language is achieved through social interdependence and it is context-dependent. Language basically aids communal functions and for him there is only a social mind, not an individual one. Social constructivism attributes prevailing role to language in what concerns meaning making and the legitimisation of knowledge. In this form of constructivism the socially and culturally situated nature of mental activities is of prime importance. Vygotsky could be regarded as a social constructivist. Amongst the most contemporary scientists is Rosalind Driver who would be mostly associated with this version of constructivism. In all forms of constructivism people construct their own knowledge. Perhaps the main distinction between individual and social constructivism is the following: “in individual constructivism, the focus is on cognition and the individual; in social constructivism, the focus is on language and the group”. Attempts have been made to integrate these two different perspectives (e.g., Cobb, 1994a). Millar and Driver (1987) stressed that scientific knowledge is personally and socially constructed, rather than objective and revealed, science theories are provisional, rather than absolute and unchanging. They maintained that science learning depends on the representations a student brings to a situation and the characteristics of the learning situation itself. Learning occurs when students interact with others, so, their ideas become modified, extended or changed in the process. The implication of this epistemology for learning is that what students observe or predict about natural phenomena and the approaches they take in problem solving and experimenting depend crucially on the way they construct their world. Whereas, Driver, et al (1994) emphasized the social aspect of constructivism when they stated: Scientific knowledge is symbolic in nature and socially negotiated. The objects of science are not the phenomena of nature but constructs that are advanced by the scientific community to interpret nature (p. 5). 65
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Fosnot (1996) proposes a theory of constructivism that describes knowledge as temporary, developmental, non objective, internally constructed, and socially and culturally mediated. According to Vygotsky, the fundamental assumption of development and learning is that higher mental functions in the individual derive from social life (Vygotsky 1978, p. 128). Leach & Scott (2003, p. 99) by using Vygotsky’s view of internalization argue that language and other semiotic mechanisms provide the means for scientific ideas to be discussed by people on the social (or intermental) level. The process of internalization (Vygotsky, 1987) is where individuals appropriate and become able to use for themselves (on the intramental level) conceptual tools first encountered on the social level. The products of internalization will be different for different individuals. Following the process of internalization, language provides the tools for individual thinking. Central to this view is the interdependence between language and thought. It is not true that language offers some ‘neutral’ means for communicating personally and internally generated thoughts; language provides the very tools through which those thoughts are first rehearsed on the intermental level and then processed and used on the intramental level. A main characteristic of Vygotsky’s view of human mental development is that higher order functions develop out of social interaction. Unlike Piaget, Vygotsky argues that a child’s development cannot be understood by the study of the individual. We must also study the social environment in which the individual has developed. Vygotsky (1934/1986) described learning as being embedded in social events and occurring as a child interacts with people, objects, and events in the environment. According to Tharp and Gallimore (1988): Through participation in activities that require cognitive and communicative functions, children are drawn into the use of these functions in ways that nurture and ‘scaffold’ them (p. 6). The objective of social constructivism is to understand the construction of knowledge in terms of social interaction. Social constructivists recognize the importance of contextual values. Much of a person’s actions (including the knowledge and intentions of the person) can be understood only in terms of the norms of the society in which that person is a member. Students’ cultural realities, including concepts of self and social roles, are constructed through social interactions (Bauersfeld, 1995, in Atwater, 1996). Cobb (1995) asserts that learning is a social activity that cannot be reduced to a psychological construct. In our opinion Piagetian constructivism focuses on individual knowing, whereas social constructivism focuses in collaborative knowing. The word knowing should be used to indicate the subjective meaning of the person and the word knowledge should be used to “indicate socially negotiated and accepted forms of language” (Smith, 1995, p. 24). Students from various cultures, regardless of class, disability, or ethnicity, construct their own knowledge socially (Novak, 1985; Strike & Posner, 1985). Hence, “cognitive abilities” are socially transmitted, socially constrained, socially nurtured, and socially encouraged (Day, French & Hall, 1985). Cobb (1994a) maintained that 66
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the critical issue for researchers is the quality of those socially and culturally situated constructions of students’ science conceptions. According to Bingle & Gaskell (1994), there are two kinds of science knowledge: (a) “ready-made science knowledge,” which is taken for granted and seen as undisputed and unrelated to the specific contexts of its development and includes scientific facts or “statements about reality” and (b) “science-in-the-making knowledge”, which is statements about scientific knowledge that are viewed as contestable and unstable claims. In our opinion “ready- made science knowledge” is not really knowledge but it is just information consisting of memorized facts and rules, which is difficult to be exploited by the learner. Ready-made science knowledge’ is at the bottom of Bloom’s hierarchical system of the taxonomy of educational objectives (Bloom, 1956). We argue that learning is a voluntary and pleasant activity and as such it needs contexts that are attractive to students and allow them through on-going personal reflection and verbal and written discourse to become “socialized to a greater and lesser extent into practices of the scientific community” (Driver et al., 1994, p. 8). Stinner (1996) believes that such contexts should provide opportunities for personal reflections and problem solving as well as participation in group discussions and experimental activities. 4. THE CONTRIBUTION OF HOS TO THE CONSTRUCTION OF KNOWLEDGE IN CONSTRUCTIVIST THEORIES
The interest for using HOS in science teaching in relation to the arguments which question how it could advance the conceptual change are based on two assumptions: a) the similarity between the conceptions of students and of those of scientists or philosophers of the past, and b) the parallelism between the development of students’ understanding and the evolution of scientific concepts in HOS (Masson & VazquezAbad, 2006). 4.1 The Use of HOS for the Detection of Misconceptions There are many empirical researches, which support the thesis of the relation between students’ and past scientists’ or philosophers’ conceptions. For example it was found in a comparative bibliographic study of the conceptions of early philosophers and those of children relating to the role of light on the one hand and the role of eye on the other in the process of vision, contacted by Dedes (2005), that the historical models and the alternative conceptions of children, regarding the process of vision have a number of common ideas. He noticed that the Pythagorean, atomist and mathematician philosophers, irrespective of the adoption of emission or reception theories, do not recognize any role for the external light. For them vision is possible either with the exclusive emission of visual rays or with the reception of images. Evidently pupils who adopt interpretations (any systematic relationship between light, object and eye e.g. ‘we see because our eyes have the ability to see’) and interpretations (the passage of light from the source to the object without 67
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providing any further detail of the role played by light in the visual process) as well as children who advocate the first scheme among those where directionality is suggested, appear to come to the same conclusion. We see an abstract, ambiguous and unspecified process, in which light plays no role. Galileo’s dialogs (Azcarate, Doncel & Romo, 1988) could be used as a good example offered by the HOS of how to deal with students’ alternative ideas. On the basis of these findings the role of HOS obtains a new significance, namely how it could help educators not only anticipate students’ misconceptions but also to assist them to teach effectively science to them. According to Monk and Osborne (1997) the studies on children’s misconceptions show that this thinking is more akin to preparadigmatic thinking. They quote (Wandersee, 1985): ….often (the studies) harbour misconceptions which were similar to views held at one time or another during historical development of that science conceptthus making the history of science a useful heuristic device for anticipating some students’ conceptual difficulties (Monk and Osborne, 1997, p. 413). According to our view teachers studying the evolution of scientific concepts could have an indication about the difficulties students face when they study these concepts. Consequently teachers taking into account the above difficulties could organize effective learning environments for their students. In this case the difficulties themselves could not be regarded as real obstacles but as means to be used for fruitful learning. Aristotelian thinking and children’s thinking are similar, since both emphasize the nature of essence of objects and teleological nature of causality. Aristotle believed that heavier objects fall faster than lighter ones a notion that children also believe. Other researchers have announced findings similar to the above. For example Sequera and Leite (1991) identified some analogies of content between historical and alternative ideas. Moreover the same findings indicated that HOS can anticipate students’ alternative ideas, can give physics teachers some insight on how to deal with these ideas, and provides some teaching materials and approaches, which can be used in the classroom in order to change students’ ideas under the perspective of a constructivist theory of learning. Alternative ideas on mechanics are very resistant to change (Pozo, 1987) and can be found in students even after several years of formal teaching of Newtonian physics. Besides, pre-Newtonian concepts of mechanics also had a strong appeal to scientists and were at least as resistant to change as students’ concepts are (Clement, 1982). 4.2 The Relation of Ontogenesis and Phylogenesis In relation to the second argument i.e. the parallelism among the development of children’s understanding and the evolution of scientific concepts in HOS the terms of ontogenesis and phylogenesis describe this evolution. Ontogenesis refers to the evolution of an individual’s thought, whereas phylogenesis refers to the evolution of scientific ideas in human history. Many researchers have pointed to such correspondences (McDermott, 1984; Viennot, 1979; Vosniadou & Brewer, 1987, etc). 68
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This view is reinforced by the opinion of Duhem, who claimed that there is an analogy between the development of scientific knowledge and the growth of individual understanding of nature (Duhem, 1954). Niaz (2000) in a research aiming to establish a relationship between students’ understanding of gases and its parallels in HOS found that their reasoning represents a form of idealization process used frequently by scientists to understand complex phenomena. Furthermore, idealization according to him enables students as well as scientists to separate the ideal or scientific object of knowledge from real objects and is considered to be the defining characteristic of modern non-Aristotelian science (McMullin, 1985; Niaz, 1993; Matthews, 1994). He quotes Matthews (1994) that: History and Philosophy of Science can make the idealization of science more understandable, and can explain them as scientific tools of trade, or instruments (idealized lattices in this case) whereby the complex concrete world can be investigated (p. 212). There is also the opposite view which supports that ontogenesis and phylogenesis do not go in parallel. Namely, that it is not supported by the evidence of detailed examinations of the historical evolution of scientific concepts that ontogenesis recapitulates/ complements phylogenies. For example, Wiser and Carey (1983) verified this view by exploring the elaboration of the concepts of heat and temperature, also Wandersee (1985) when he examined students’ understanding of photosynthesis, and Vosniadou and Brewer (1987) when they investigated the development of the concept of the Earth as a round sphere where ‘down’ is toward the center of the Earth. All the above researchers found that there are important differences between children’s thinking and the phylogenetic origins of these concepts. Nersessian (1989) trying to explain these differences argued that these could be attributed to metaphysical, epistemological and sociological factors, which play an important role in the formation of a representation. 4.3 The Use of HOS for the Design of Learning Constructivist Environments In our view the contribution of HOS in science teaching and learning has three main dimensions. The exploitation of HOS is used for the design and development of: i. educational activities for students’ conceptual change, ii. environments for understanding the nature of science (NOS) and iii. affective tools (e.g. stories, vignettes, role-playing) for science teaching. 4.3 i The exploitation of HOS for students’ conceptual change. In this section we shall study the use of HOS for the creation of educational activities such as crucial experiments, teaching models, and simulations for students’ conceptual change. We shall also present indicative examples of how the HOS could be used in the process of teaching and learning science. As we have seen in the previous paragraph we can find students’ misconceptions as well as the evolution of them by using the HOS. Based on this fact we can design learning environments aiming to achieve students’ conceptual change, as an individual’s process in the case of the personal constructivism, or as an interactive process in the case of social constructivism. 69
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From the study of the historical sources i.e. the arguments, the means and the methods, which helped the scientists change their views, we could choose materials to be used for the design and development of the educational content which can contribute to the conceptual change of students. Such an example is the teaching model of Monk and Osborne (1997). We could say that their model is a transformation of the teaching model of Driver and Oldham (1985). Actually in the phase of elicitation of students’ ideas in the above mentioned model, where the ideas of the groups of students are presented, Monk and Osborne added the “historical study” to be presented by the teacher. The “historical study” includes material from HOS as described in this paragraph. So, in this teaching approach students have the opportunity to use the language in a figurative and flexible manner so that they might recognize that the role of the scientist is not just to discover the ‘facts of science’ but also to construct them. In this sense students could perhaps better understand the NOS. Moreover students will become aware that there are often parallelisms between their thought and earlier scientific thought. This is a possibility which has been provided to students in order for them to be able to articulate and clarify their own understanding and interpretation of the phenomenon in question (ibid). We argue that a teaching model based on discussion is proper for the effective teaching difficult concepts, such us the laws of Newton where students’ conceptions have been constructed over many years and have meaning for them due to their experience. In this case, it is important that the students will be encouraged to discuss their ideas with their teacher and colleagues in order to clearly perceive their own misconceptions when compared to the Newtonian ideas. This teaching strategy has been advocated over the last decades by researchers and educators concerned with the students’ conceptual change. However, it is interesting to point out that a similar strategy was already used by Galileo (Clement, 1982), in order to show that his theory was more accurate than the prevalent ideas of the time. It has been argued that HOS can provide incentives for and support students’ attempts to reconstruct their views because it offers fitting material to illustrate the modification and revision, the rejection and reinstatement of models, their relativity and dependence on the spirit of the age. Pupils can critically view historical models more easily than their own (Lind, 1980, cited by Sequeira & Leite, 1991, p. 55). Rudge and Howe (2009) have also proposed their own teaching model, which exploits HOS for students’ construction of current scientific views. This model suggests to teachers a new way to use HOS to explore the prior conceptions of their students and to provide opportunities to them to think along the lines that past scientists did, as an exercise in thinking like scientists, rather than studying exactly what happened historically. It gives to students the opportunity to construct their own scientific knowledge. They think that the HOS is the best instrument to help students overcome misconceptions they have about scientific concepts. Students are invited to study the sorts of considerations that led the scientists to overcome similar misconceptions. The fact that the conceptions usually change from complex to more complex forces the teachers to teach science qualitatively. 70
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As Confrey (1990) argues, discussions on historical conceptions have the advantage to show to students an evolutionary sequence of their conceptions towards actual scientific conceptions. The comparison of students’ concepts with those of HOS gives the potential to students to understand their advantages and disadvantages in specific contexts by exposing the differences between ways to think before and after (Monk & Osborne, 1997). We believe that on the basis of this view the role of HOS obtains a new perspective, i.e. HOS offers the possibility to teachers, educators, and designers of the curriculum to anticipate the evolution of student’s misconceptions on the basis of the evolution of scientific ideas. These findings are in accordance with Piaget’s work, focusing on the phylogenesis of science concepts and HOS (Piaget & Garcia, 1987). Binnie (2001) argues that the development of contemporary conceptions of electricity, magnetism and electromagnetism do not appear in a linear progression in the HOS. Students observe phenomena in order to explain their observations in terms of a model usually engaged in discourse. The models that they construct at first are later modified, altered, or expanded in order to explain new phenomena. Given that HOS could provide the strategic knowledge of the way scientific concepts are constructed, change or spread (Izquierdo, 1995), we argue that on this basis HOS could contribute to the development of the necessary educational material by science teachers to be used by students for the construction of their knowledge. As a characteristic example of the exploitation of HOS for the development of educational material for the teaching of the concept of energy at the 6th grade of primary school we mention the Rizaki and Kokkotas proposal (2010, in press). The historiographic study of the concept of energy offered all these characteristics, such as the unifying and the causal characters of the concept of energy which constitute the core of the development of the educational material for the teaching of this concept. Because science is fundamentally–among other things- a cognitive activity, we believe that HOS not only could be used for the design of educational material, but it could also help teachers devise the methodology so that it can be introduced in the teaching process with the aim solving realistic scientific problems. An indicative case is the one used by Nersessian (1995) who applied her analysis on historical episodes in order to understand the way the representational resources are utilized during the process of problem-solving through which new concepts emerge. She supports the view that the cognitive dimension of analogies, thought experiments, and metaphors is central, in the sense that it is these tactics which suggest the inferential reasoning, which, from the existing representations, produces new ones (Yamalidou, 2001). HOS could make people more conscious about the idealization of science, as it worked in the case of Galileo, and help students discern the explanation of the phenomena on the basis of experience and idealizations (Matthews, 1994). As an example of this one can mention the dialogues of Galileo with del Monde (see the paper of Stefanidou & Vlachos in this volume). The dialogues could help students recognize that science is a cooperative activity and not an effort of isolated individual scientists. Furthermore, the presentation of the argumentations in the classroom and their employment in the teaching process, in parallel with students’ alternative 71
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ideas, facilitates them to construct their own scientific knowledge. The exposure of the students to HOS may help them make sense of scientific claims, and the reconstruction of scientific ideas Gallili and Hazan (2000). Another case for the use of HOS for the design of educational material is the experimental simulations: for example Masson and Vázquez-Abad (2006) proposed a new way to integrate HOS in science education to promote conceptual change by introducing the notion of historical microworld, which is a computer-based interactive learning environment in built reference to the particular historical conceptions. Historical microworlds developed not only to help students understand scientific conceptions of the past, but also to understand the weakness of their own conceptions. Our project “The Science Teacher e-Training (STeT)”, funded by European Union, seeks, using the advantages of ICT technologies, to broaden the supply of training opportunities to science teachers by using HOS in science teaching. This can be achieved since the program brings HOS and science education into productive contact and meets the training needs of teachers by making teaching more cooperative and, related to historical and cultural factors. The program can enable teachers to plan learning experiences in science lessons that empower their students and also enhance the computer literacy of teachers and build their skills in using multimedia-based resources and strategies in their teaching (Kokkotas et al., 2009). HOS offers a greater possibility for the design of educational material and the exploitation of the historical instruments-replicas (e.g. Heering, 1994; Riess, 1995). Experimental work, based on the original experiments can be readily performed in most classrooms and enhance the excitement of discovery (Binnie, 2001). 4.3 ii Making use of HOS for the understanding of the nature of science (NOS). HOS was used as a source for the development of education material for the teaching of science methodology in order for students to develop cognitive skills (Kipnis, 1996, Arons, 1990; Dunn, 1993). In what it concerns these attempts, until some years ago, the interest around HOS was how it could be used for the exploitation of inquiry practices of scientists, aiming at the introduction of students in science methodology. Over the last few years the constructivist approach in science teaching and the understanding of scientific inquiry has acquired an increasing interest for its epistemological dimension. This means that there is a need not only for the understanding of the empirical processes of inquiry, but also of concepts and theories, to the degree that they shape the explanation of the results. The use of HOS could contribute to this direction since it helps students understand the nature of science methodology. Indeed this is so since it compares different methodologies and offers the possibility to students to accept that there is not only one scientific method. For example when students compare the different contexts of scientific methodology they establish the view that there are different scientific methods, which lead them to better understand the nature of science (Stinner, 1995a). When students are studying experiments and the methodology of science, both of which originate from HOS, they discuss about the scientific inquiry, realize the controversies and the incomplete nature of scientific knowledge (Matthews, 1992). 72
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Monk and Osborne (1997) propose the use of HOS, whose focus is always the conceptual explanation and its justification, would not only support the learning of science but also the learning about science. They think that the process approach gives the strong impression that scientific investigation is an empirical process in which the rigid application of the standard rules of knowing will lead inexorably to the derivation of certain knowledge of the ‘laws of science’. They also think that the study of scientific ideas in their original context of discovery will help students develop their conceptual understanding. For them neither the study of process nor the study of the products of science can provide either an adequate account of science or an adequate education in science without the incorporation of some HOS. According to Kipnis (1998) experiments by themselves do not produce any new knowledge: they are useful only if students learn how to put together experiment and theory. With this approach, students understand how and why theories emerge and replace their predecessors. It can be emphasized that the process of scientific progress is fluid and constantly changing and should never be taught as a set of immutable facts (Binnie, 2001). As Kyle (1997, p. 852) noticed, and we agree with him, “…students ought to experience the how of scientific enquiry, rather than merely being exposed to what is known about and by science”. In this context our interpretation of the “how of scientific enquiry” includes the intellectual struggles faced by scientists within the relevant historical context. HOS could contribute to the understanding of the nature of the content of science not only when students ascertain its evolutionary nature but also its creativity. Especially, when they study current theories and concepts in comparison to those which were valid in the past (by discussing theories at length, including their origin, development and the replacement by other theories), they have the opportunity to understand the evolutionary procedure of these theories and concepts and also of science itself (Kipnis, 1998). When students are engaged in the development of educational material which encompasses the history of the formulation of a scientific theory they can perceive its creative potentiality. In our opinion a characteristic example could be the study of Einstein’s theory of relativity based on the history of its formulation. This could help students grasp not only its originality but also the notion that science does not proceed inductionally. In this context they could understand what science is. The study of Einstein’s thought experiments, as well as of experiments in general, as they function in science, according to Bevilacqua and Ganneto (1996) offers the possibility to students to understand that these are used not only to falsify a theory but also to argue about its correctness. Students, using educational material from HOS, could understand the different explanations of a phenomenon given by the scientists in different times in the past. A concrete example of this is the Pavia Project Physics where students facing the different explanations of the natural phenomena realize that there is not only one truth, but one acceptable view for the explanation of the same phenomenon in each period of time. According to our view this fact helps students adopt the opinion that scientific knowledge does not represent the objective reality. 73
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Gallili and Hazan researched in students’ conceptions about light and vision and proposed a broader approach to science teaching which accompanies HPS to teaching science, replaces the traditional focus on the “correct” –for now scientific contents and problem solving training. As such, it reflects a cardinal change in the philosophy of education. History-based instruction uncovers the non-linear process by which current scientific knowledge was attainted. A special feature, which soundly contrasted their course from a typical one, was its essential incorporation of historical contents: the ideas, views and conceptions which constituted the early understanding of light and vision. They presented the assessment which concerns the course’s impact on the students’ views about science and some related technological and cultural issues. According to their research strong differences were found between the views elicited in the experimental group and parallel data regarding students in the control group. This study demonstrated the advantage of utilizing historical materials in a way which is additional to their intention: to improve students’ disciplinary knowledge and to affect their views about science (Gallili & Hazan, 2001). A concrete example for using HOS in science teaching offers our project “The MAP prOject”, funded by the European Union. “The MAP prOject”, was an inservice training program for primary and secondary school science teachers, for promoting the learning of physics based on HOS. It aimed to exploit authentic historical events on the topic of falling bodies (Aristotle’s, Galileo’s and Newton’s theories on falling bodies), by using students’ conceptions about the Nature of Science (NOS), the Nature of Learning (NOL) and the Nature of Teaching (NOT). This program is based on social constructivist learning principles using a variety of teaching strategies (e.g. group work, simulations) that utilize historical scientific materials on the issue of falling bodies (Kokkotas et al., 2009). Although there are many proponents of the contribution of HOS to the improvement of students’ NOS views (e.g., Duschl, 1990; Matthews, 1994; Monk & Osborne, 1997; Wandersee, 1992), there are also other researches, which suggest different findings. For example, the research contacted by Adb-El-Khalick and Lederman (2000) examined the effect on college students’ conceptions about the NOS and studied three different courses whose curriculum used HOS. The research findings do not indicate empirical support to the assertion that coursework in HOS would improve students’ NOS views. 4.3 iii The use of HOS for the development of affective tools (e.g. stories, vignettes, role- playing). The use of HOS in science teaching aiming to raise the interest of students and cultivate their emotions, gradually gets more attention from educators, science researchers and science teachers. HOS obtains a new role in the context of viewing science as a human activity (Nielsen & Thomson, 1990). This view was introduced in Danish secondary schools in the 1988–1990 reform of the physics curriculum, where elements of the History and Philosophy of Science were incorporated in the teaching process (Thomsen, 1998). Stinner and Teichmann (2003, p. 214) have developed dramatic settings to illustrate confrontations (for example, ‘Copernicus and the Aristotelians’, ‘Newton 74
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discusses the nature of light with Robert Hooke’ in the HOS classes at the University of Manitoba). The Manitoba group believes that new ideas in science become more accessible through dramatization. We also argue that the dramatization of events based on the HOS offers the opportunity to students to develop positive attitudes and be motivated for science learning, especially when they play roles of scientists. Today, we acknowledge that science teaching needs revision because school science ignores the needs of students to obtain skills for investigation processes and for the cultivation of their imagination and inspiration. For the improvement of this situation the abandoning of the academic tradition in the primary and secondary science education curriculum is proposed, and at the same time its connection with the human element (AAAS, 1990; UNESCO, 2000). In this context the exploitation of HOS could have a vital role in science education. Some writers argue that the humanizing and clarifying influence of HOS brings the science to life and enables students to construct relationships that would have been impossible in the traditional decontextualized way in which science has been taught (Jung, 1994; Kipnis, 1996; Koul & Dana, 1997). Such a teaching approach could probably help students appreciate science as a value-laden procedure where values such as objectivity, curiosity, the pursuit of truth, intellectual honesty, humility and commitment to human welfare are central (Stevenson & Byerly, 2000). Students are helped to perceive that scientific knowledge is not as objective as it is presented in science textbooks, since it is the outcome of a human endeavor full of successes but also of failures. If we accept that knowledge is indeed a human construction then not only the prior conceptions of the learner but also his/her sentimentalities such as fears, anxieties, hopes and expectations should be taken into account in the teaching process (Egan, 1990). Other writers and science education researchers e.g. Arons (1989) and Luth (1990) have elaborated on the notion of using a ‘story line’ approach to the teaching of science, via the construction of historical vignettes. These are stories that describe a brief episode from the life of a scientist, which characterizes the HPS, demonstrates scientific attributes, and provides students with a historical perspective of the topic illustrated. Arons (1989) argued that good science stories that have intrinsic interest and show connections that are not to be found in textbooks. Egan (1988, 1989a) has also proposed a procedure based on the story form. According to research based on the ‘constructivist nature of human sense making’ (Egan, 1986) the story metaphor is more appropriate in describing what we learn about the world. Stinner (1996, p. 263) presents a program of activities placed around contextual settings, where science stories and contemporary issues of interest are recommended in order to facilitate the passage of children from the early apprehension of the world to a personal scientific knowledge rooted in language and to the comprehension of organized scientific knowledge. We believe that stories from HOS and storytelling as a teaching strategy can contribute to the humanizing of teaching, the improvement of the climate in science classrooms among students and student-teachers and the development of positive 75
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attitudes towards science learning. In this context the understanding of science concepts can be improved. Noddings and Witherell (1991) write: We learn from stories. More important, we come to understand – ourselves, others, and even the subjects we teach and learn. Stories engage us. … Stories can help us to understand by making the abstract concrete and accessible. What is only dimly perceived at the level of principle may become vivid and powerful in the concrete. Further, stories motivate us. Even that which, we understand at the abstract level, may not move us to action, whereas a story often does (p. 279–280). Nevertheless, science teaching with the use of stories is not an easy process. According to Egan it is quite complex and difficult to convey in a condensed fashion (Egan, 1979, 1986, 1992, 1997, 2005). This is true since it has as a prerequisite that the teacher creates an affective environment and engages his/her students in discourse. Given that stories facilitate understanding, stimulate engagement and produce motivation and even help us to understand ourselves, the appropriate use of the story form in science teaching can, indeed, become an heuristic teaching device that is not only attractive, but also self-sustaining (Klassen, 2006). Furthermore, stories constitute a natural and effective way of thinking and can be used as a means of communication and cultural expression (Manna & Minichiello, 2005). We believe that HOS could be an important resource from which we can get appropriate material for composing stories in science education, because it links concepts, theories, phenomena and events of science with the scientists who lived, worked and were affected from the specific sociocultural environment of their era. But, it should be realized that the place of history is neither to make only a conceptual point nor just to place entertaining vignettes in the text but also to introduce the humanistic element and aspects of the NOS into the process of learning science (Klassen, 2006). However, we emphasize that the story should be chosen in a manner that shows respect to the originators and portrays them in a fair and balanced way. Specifically, storytelling helps the understanding of science concepts, and consequently to the construction of knowledge, since it helps the development of romantic understanding due to the fact that it makes students experience curiosity, mystery and even wonder. Some writers argue that romantic understanding is an alternative to conceptual understanding, on the following grounds a) it represents a different way of making sense of the world and of human experience through an attraction to their exotic, strange and mysterious features and the desire to transcend everyday reality, b) it gives the idea that knowledge is a human construction that, cannot be even considered outside of the context of its construction, c) it makes use of the students’ imagination and d) it has an aesthetic dimension (Egan, 1990; Hadzigeorgiou, 2005). Thus, romantic understanding could stimulate the development of inspiration which has a cognitive and an emotional dimension and can also lead students to some kind of action and the development of a special interest for science in general or a specific topic in particular. Stories and storytelling also develop the students’ anticipation. Dewey (1934) talked about anticipation and argued that consummation 76
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does not wait in consciousness for the whole undertaking to be finished. It is anticipated throughout and is recurrently savoured with special intensity (p. 55). Therefore students should have ample opportunities to experience anticipation and this can be added to the experience of mystery and wonder that a good story usually creates, so the anticipation can help the development of romantic understanding. Teachers can use narratives into which scientific ideas are embedded (Hadzigeorgiou & Stefanich, 2001; Stinner, 1995b) and which provide students with opportunities for “reconnecting the knowledge with the transcendent qualities of the individuals who produced it” (Egan, 1990, p. 139). Anticipation can also be experienced if the students can study the life of the great scientists and dramatize important events of it. Narration as an art of speech can facilitate the development of students’ imagination since: The development of imagination is linked to the development of speech, to the development of child’s social interaction with those around him, to the basics of the collective social activity of the child’s consciousness (Vygotsky, 1987, p. 346). So, the extension in narration helps the development of romantic understanding since imagination is one of its characteristics. According to Vygotsky (1998): imagination is...a function which is linked to emotional life, the life of drives and attitudes, is linked to intellectual life ...everything that requires artistic transformation of reality, everything that is connected with interpretation and construction of something new, requires the indispensable participation of imagination. In our opinion, imagination as the basis of all creative activity is an important component of all aspects of cultural life, enabling artistic, scientific and technical creation alike. In this sense, everything around us that was created by the hand of man, the entire world of human imagination and creation is based on this imagination (Vygotsky, 2003, p. 9–10). Vygotsky considered the development of imagination as necessary for the technical, scientific creativity of children as it is for the arts. The arts and sciences are not divided and both demand the need for the cultivation of imagination in our school curriculum (Gajdamaschko, 2005). Vygotsky proposed the development of imagination through the mechanism of acquisition of cultural tools in the curriculum that could become the content of the children’s imaginative activities. In addition, Egan suggested “story” as congruent with Vygotskian requirements for cognitive tools because, stories are crystallized in culture and therefore they could be used as mediator’s tools for engaging the imagination of children (Egan, 1992, p. 56). Furthermore, narratives with stories from HOS used in science education assigns tasks to children for the development of the imagination. Another important ability 77
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which is developed concurrently with imagination is the ability to transfer the function from one object into other. This ability is very closely connected to the development of symbolic function in a child which means that the development of imagination could help the development of abstract thought (Vygotsky, 1978) and also in the understanding the abstract concepts in science. From the arguments developed above, it is deduced that stories and storytelling strategy develop: the inspiration, the anticipation, the imagination and the romantic understanding of students. The bridge between romantic understanding and science education are inspiration, imagination and anticipation. Students in developing romantic associations with people, events and ideas are inspired as, they are presented with questions that challenge their beliefs. Additionally stories present the human element and unfold strange and mysterious situations. This inspiration can lead to worthwhile experiences since it unites feeling with knowledge in a context of action and secure the continuity of experiences. If we accept that romantic understanding not only paves the way for conceptual understanding, but it can also be a prerequisite for such an understanding (Hadzigeorgiou, 2005), we can strongly argue that storytelling is an important pedagogical strategy which can contribute to the development of both conceptual and romantic understanding. Although many researchers propose the adoption of stories and storytelling for teaching, a few empirical researches in the literature proved their effectiveness in science teaching. For example Maria & Johnson (1989) examined the effectiveness of narrative in learning related to scientific reasons for seasonal change on seventh and fifth graders in different types of texts. Expository and soft expository texts (a hybrid of narrative and expository text) were used. The researchers concluded that the subjects understood the scientific explanation of seasonal change better with the soft expository text which included narrative than with the expository text. Kokkotas, Malamitsa and Rizaki (2008) proposed a storytelling teaching model for teaching science. The researchers in their model used the real stories from HOS together with other activities, such as experiments, discourses and, role playing in a constructivist environment. Students were able to use the information from the storytelling, and engage in discourse with their peers in order to answer the questions related to the design of the experimental activities. The outcome was that the students answered all the questions designed and elaborated all the experimental activities very efficiently without guidance. The researchers concluded that storytelling could help the students understand the scientific concepts. Narrative and storytelling could also be used effectively in virtual environments of various models of information and communication technologies, which enable children to be story constructors and storytellers with collaborative multimedia environments (Mott & Lester, 2006). These researchers propose an inquiry- based learning environment for middle school students by using narrative in teaching and learning. In these environments narrative and storytelling could be accompanied with a variety of tools such as role-playing, autobiographical writing and, simulations. Bostrom in his research examined teachers’ and students’ narrative in an effort to make school chemistry more meaningful to students. He asserted that narrative made chemistry more pluralistic, giving the opportunity to the lived experiences of 78
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the teachers and students to interact with the scientific facts. Such an approach, suggests a role of narrative as an instructional tool (Bostrom, 2006, in Avraamidou & Osborne, 2009). 5. IMPLICATIONS FOR SCIENCE TEACHING
We hope that from the text above it has become apparent that the role of HOS in science teaching has obtained a greater significance among science educators, researchers and science teachers, since it contributes in various ways to the construction of knowledge. According to constructivist theories of learning knowledge can not be transmitted from the teacher to the student, but can be constructed by the latter on the basis of his/hers conceptions and his/her interactions with others and language. The use of HOS in the construction of knowledge creates new perspectives for science teaching, the design and development of curricula, the initial education and the in-service training of science teachers and their practices in the classrooms. Especially, the design and development of curricula is necessary in order to utilize the conceptions of the scientists of the past, their controversies, their unanimous decisions, the cooperative character of the development of science, the nature of science etc. and contributes to a better understanding of science concepts by students. The incorporation of HOS in science teaching, as described above, contributes to the unfolding of its character as a human activity. Furthermore the inclusion in the curriculum of stories from the life and work of scientists in the form of narrative could contribute to the emotional development of the students, something that may result to the development of their romantic understanding and constitute the bridge to conceptual understanding. The trend towards the incorporation of HOS in science teaching marks the change of the orientation of initial teachers’ education and their in- service training so that they will become able to employ these practices in the context of socioconstructivist environments of learning. Of course, there is a need to research further the different ways of the introduction of HOS into the teaching practices. For example: “In what ways do the narratives support science learning?”, “How do the narratives improve conceptual understanding?”, “What are the possibilities of the exploitation of HOS in the teaching of science in order to contribute to the understanding and the development of science?”… NOTES 1
Our paper is restricted to individual and socio- constructivism theories only.
REFERENCES Abd-El-Khalick, F., & Lederman, N. (2000). The influence of history of science courses on students’ views of nature of science. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 37(10), 1057–1095. American Association for the Advancement of Science. (1993). Benchmarks for science literacy. New York: Oxford University Press. American Association for the Advancement of Science. (1989). Science for all Americas. New York: Oxford University Press. 79
KOKKOTAS AND RIZAKI Arons, A. B. (1989). Historical and philosophical perspectives attainable in introductory physics courses. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 20(2), 13–23. Arons, A. B. (1990). A guide to introductory physics teaching. New York: John Wiley. Atwater, M. M. (1996). Social constructivism: Infusion into the multicultural science education research agenda. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 33, 821–837. Avraamidou, L., & Osborn, J. (2009). The role of narrative in communicating science. International Journal of Science Education, 31(12), 1683–1707. Azcarate, C., Donel, M. G., & Romo, J. (1988). Galileo Galilei, la nueva ciencia del motimiato. De Catalunya, Bellatorra: Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona y Universitat Politencina. Bauersfeld, H. (1995). The structuring of the structures: Development and function of mathematizing as a social practice. In L. P. Steffe, & J. Gale (Eds.), Constructivism in education (pp. 137–158). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Bevilacqua, F., & Gianneto, E. (1996). The history of physics and European physics education. Science & Education, 5, 235–246. Bingle, W. H., & Gaskell, P. J. (1994). Scientific literacy for decision making and the social construction of scientific knowledge. Science Education, 78, 185–201. Binnie, A. (2001). Using the history of electricity and magnetism to enhance teaching. Science & Education, 10, 379–389. Bloom, B. S. (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives, the classification of educational goals. New York: McKay: Handbook I: Cognitive Domain. Bostrom, A. (2006). Sharing lived experience. How upper secondary school chemistry teachers and students use narratives to make chemistry more meaningful. Unpublished Ph Disseratation, Stockholm University Press, Stockholm. Brush, S. G. (1974). Should the history of science be rated X? Science, 183, 1164–1172. Brush, S. J. (1989). History of science and science education. Interchange, 20(2), 60–70. Clement, J. (1982). Students’ preconceptions in introductory mechanics. American Journal of Physics, 50(1), 66–71. Cobb, P. (1994a). Constructivism in mathematics and science education. Educational Researcher, 23, 4. Cobb, P. (1994b). Where is the mind? Constructivist and sociocultural perspectives on mathematical development. Educational Researcher, 23, 13–20. Cobb, P. (1995). Continuing the conversation: A response to Smith. Educational Researcher, 24(6), 25–27. Conant, J. (1957). Harvard case histories in experimental science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Confrey, J. (1990). A review of research on student conceptions in mathematics, science and programming. Review of Research in Education, 16, 3–56. Day J. D., French, L. A., & Hall, I. K. (1985). Social influences on cognitive development. In D. L ForrestPressley, G. E. MacKinnon, & T. G. Waller (Eds.), Metacognition, cognition, and human performance (Vol. 1, pp. 33–56). Theoretical perspectives. New York: Academic Press. DeBoer, G. (1991). A history of ideas in science education: Implications for practice, teachers. New York: College Press. Dedes, C. (2005). The mechanism of vision: conceptual similarities between historical models and children’s representations. Science & Education, 14, 699–712. Dewey, J. (1934). Art as experience. New York: Perigree. Driver, R., & Oldham, V. (1985). A constructivist approach to curriculum development. Studies in Science Education, 13, 105–122. Driver, R., Asoko, H., Leach, J., Mortimer, E., & Scott, P. (1994). Constructing scientific knowledge in the classroom. Educational Researcher, 23(7), 5–12. Duhem, P. (1905/1954). The aim and structure of physical theory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Dunn, R. (1993). Empires of physics - a new initiative in science education. School Science Review, 75, 135–137. Duschl, R. A. (1990). Restructuring science education. New York: Teachers College Press. Egan, K. (1988). Primary understanding. New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul. 80
CONSTRUCTION OF KNOWLEDGE Egan, K. (1986). Teaching as story telling. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Egan, K. (1989). The shape of the science text: A function of stories. In S. de Castell, A. Luke, & C. Luke (Eds.), Language, authority and criticism: Readings on the school textbook (pp. 96–108). New York: The Falmer Press. Egan, K. (1990). Romantic understanding. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Egan, K. (1992). Imagination in teaching and learning. Chicago: University of Chicago. Egan, K. (1997). The educated mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Egan, K. (2005). An imaginative approach to teaching. San Francisco: Jossey - Bass. Fosnot, C. T. (Ed.), (1996). Constructivism: theory, perspectives, and practice. New York: Teachers College Press. Gajdamaschko, N. (2005). Vygotsky on imagination: Why an understanding of the imagination is an important issue for schoolteachers. Teaching Education, 16(1), 13–22. Galili, I., & Hazan, A. (2001a). Experts’ views on using history and philosophy of science in the practice of physics instruction. Science & Education, 10, 345–367. Gallili, I., & Hazan, A. (2000). The influence of an historically oriented course on students’ content knowledge in optics evaluated by means of facets- schemes analysis. American Journal of Physics, 68, 3–15. Gallili, I., & Hazan, A. (2001). The effect of a history-based course in optics on Students’ views about science. Science & Education, 10, 7–32. Gergen, K. J. (1995). Social construction and the educational process. In L. P. Steffe, & J. Gale (Eds.), Constructivism in education (pp. 17–40). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Hadzigeorgiou, Y., & Stefanich, G. (2001). Imagination in science education. Contemporary Education, 71, 23–28. Hadzigeorgiou, Y. (2005). Romantic understanding and science education. Teaching Education, 16, 23–32. Haywood, H. (1927). Fundamental laws of chemistry. School Science Review, 9, 92. Heering, P. (1994). The replication of the torsion balance experiment, the inverse square law and its refutation by early 19th-century German physicists. In C. Blondel & M. Dorries (Eds.), Restaging Coulomb. Usages, controverses et réplications autour de la balance de torsion (pp. 47–67). Firenze: Leo S. Olschki. Izquierdo, M. (1995). Cognitive models of Science and the teaching of science, history of science and curriculum. In D. Phillos (Eds.), European research in science education-Proceeding of the second Ph D. summer school, art of text. Thessaloniki. Jung, W. (1994). Toward preparing students for change: A critical discussion of the contribution of the history of physics in physics teaching. Science & Education, 3, 99–130. Kelly, G. A. (1955). The psychology of personal constructs. New York: Norton. Kindi, V. (2005). Should science teaching involve the history of science? An assessment of Kuhn’s view. Science & Education, 14, 721–731. Kipnis, N. (1996). The ‘historical-investigative’ approach to teaching science. Science & Education, 5, 277–292. Kipnis, N. (1998). Theories as models in teaching physics. Science & Education, 7, 245–260. Klassen, S. (2006). A theoretical framework for contextual science teaching. Interchange, 37(1–2), 31–61. Klopfer, L. (1969). The teaching of science and the history of science. International Journal of Science Education, 6, 87–96. Kokkotas, P., Malamitsa, K., & Rizaki, ǹ. (2008). Story telling as a strategy for understanding concepts of electricity and electromagnetism. In Proceedings of the Munich conference “The second international conference on story in science teaching”. Available at http://scied.org/Story-08-Proc.htm Kokkotas, P., Piliouras P., Malamitsa, K., & Stamoulis, E. (2009).Teaching physics to in-service primary school teachers in the context of the history of science: The case of falling bodies. Science & Education, 18, 609–629. Kokkotas, P., Piliouras, P., Malamitsa, K., Kokkotas, V., Stamoulis, E., Maurogiannakis, M., et al. (2009). The pedagogogical foundations of science teachers professional development. In P. Kokkotas & F. Bevilacqua, (Eds.), Professional development of science teachers, teaching science using case 81
KOKKOTAS AND RIZAKI studies from the history of science. Amazon: Electronic Book. https://www.createspace.com:443/ 3362423. Koul, R., & Dana, R. (1997). Contextualized science for teaching science and technology. Interchange, 28(2–3), 121–144. Kuhn, T. S. (1962). The structure of scientific revolutions. In International encyclopedia of unified science (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kyle, W. C. (1997). Assessing students’ understanding of science. Journal Research Science Teaching, 34, 851–852. Leach, J., & Scott, P. (2003), Individual and sociocultural views of learning in science education. Science & Education, 12, 91–113. Lemke, J. L. (2001). Articulating communities: Sociocultural perspectives on science education. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 38, 296–316. Luhl, J. (1990). The history of atomic theory with it societal and philosophical implications in chemistry classes. In D. E. Hergit (Eds.), More history and philosophy of science in science teaching (pp. 266–273). Tallahassee, FL: University of Florida Science Education Dept. Mach, E. (1886/1986). On instruction the classics and the sciences. In Popular scientific lectures. La Sale, IL: Open Court Publishing Company. Manna, C., & Minichiello, G. (2005). Imagination without images. Teaching Education, 16(1), 51–60. Maria, K., & Johnson, J. M. (1989). Correcting misconceptions: Effects of type of text. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the National Reading conference, Austin, TX. Masson, S., & Vazquez-Abad, J. (2006). Integrating history of science in science education through historical microworlds to promote conceptual change. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 15(3), 257–268. Matthews, M. (1994). Science teaching: The role of history and philosophy of science. London: Routledge. Matthews, M. R. (1992). History, philosophy and science teaching: The present rapprochement. Science & Education, 1(1), 11–47. McDermott, L. C. (1984). Research on conceptual understanding in mechanics. Physics Today, 22, 2–10. McMullin, E. (1985). Galilean idealization. Studies in history and philosophy of science, 16, 247–273. Millar, R., & Driver, R. (1987). Beyond processes. Studies in Science Education, 14, 33–62. Mintzes, J. J., Wandersee J. H., & Novak, J. D. (Eds.), (1998). Teaching science for understanding: A human constructivist view. San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Monk, M., & Osborne, J. (1997). Placing the history and philosophy of science on the curriculum: A model for the development of pedagogy. Science Education, 81, 405–427. Mott, W. B., & Lester, J. (2006). Narrative- centered tutorial planning for inquiry-based learning environments. In Proceedings of the 8th international conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS). Jhongli, Taiwan. National Research Council. (1996). National science education standards. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Nerssessian, N. J. (1989). Conceptual change in science and in science education. Synthese, 80, 163–183. Nerssessian, N. J. (1995). Should physicists preach? What they practice? Science of Education, 4, 203–226. Niaz, M. (1993). If Piaget’s epistemic subject is dead, shall we bury the scientific research methodology of idealization? Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 30, 809–812. Niaz, M. (2000). Cases as idealized lattices: A rational reconstruction of students’ understanding of the behavior of cases. Science & Education, 9, 279–287. Nickels, T. (1992). Good science as bad history: From order of knowing to order of being. In E. McMullin (Eds.), The social dimensions of science. Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame Press. Nielsen, H., & Thomson, P. (1990). History and philosophy of science in physics education. International Journal of Science Education, 12(3), 308–316. Noddings, N., & Witherell, C. (1991). Epilogue: Themes remembered and foreseen. In C. Witherell & N. Noddings (Eds.), Stories lives tell: Narrative and Dialogue in Education (pp. 279–280). New York: Teachers College Press.
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CONSTRUCTION OF KNOWLEDGE Novak, J. (1993). Human constructivism: A unification of pcychological and epistemological phenomena in meaning making. International Journal of Personal Construct Psychology, 6, 167–193. Novak, J. D. (1985). Metalearning and metaknowledge strategies to help students to learn how to learn. In L. H. T. West & A. L. Pines (Eds.), Cognitive structures and conceptual change. Orlando, FL: Academic. O’Loughlin, M. (1992). Rethinking science education: Beyond Piagetian constructivism toward a sociocultural model of teaching and learning. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 29, 791–820. Pearson, K. (1900). The grammar of science (2nd ed.). London: Adam and Charles Black. Piaget, J., & Garcia, R. (1987). Psychogenesis and the history of science. New York: Columbia University Press. Piaget, J. (1926). The language and thought of the child. New York: Harcourt Brace. Pozo, J. (1987). Aprendidizaje de la ciencia y pensamiento causal. Madrid: Visor Libros. Riegler, A. (2001). Towards a radical constructivist understanding of science. Foundations of Science, 6, 1–30. Rizaki, A., & Kokkotas, P. (2010). The use of history and philosophy of science as a core for a socioconstructivist teaching approach of the concept of energy in primary education. Science & Education (in press). Rudge, D., & Howe, E. (2009). An explicit and reflective approach to the use of history to promote understanding of the nature of science. Science & Education, 18, 561–580. Rutherford, F., Holton, G., & Watson, F. (1970). The project physics course: Text. New York: Holt, Rienhart and Wintson. Rutherford, J. (2001). Fostering the history of science in American science education. Science & Education, 10, 569–580. Schwab, J. J. (1964). Problems, topics, and issues. In S. Elam (Ed.), Education and the structure of knowledge. Chicago: Rand McNally. Sequera, M., & Leite, L. (1991). Alternative conceptions and history of science in physics teacher education. Science Education, 75(1), 45–56. Smith, E. (1995). Where is the mind? Knowing and knowledge in Cobb’s constructivist and sociocultural perspectives. Educational Researcher, 24, 23–24. Stefanidou, C., & Vlachos, I. (2010). Could scientific controversies be used as a tool for teaching science in the compulsory education? The results of a pilot based on the Galileo-del Monte controversy about the motion of the pendulum. In P. V. Kokkotas, K. S Malamitsa, & A. A. Rizaki (Eds.), Adapting historical science knowledge production to the classroom. The Netherlands: Sense Publishers (in press). Steffe, L., & Gale, J. (1995). Constructivism in education. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Stevenson, L., & Byerly, H. (2000). The many faces of science. An introduction to scientists, values, and society. Boulder, CO: Westview. Stinner, A., & Teichmann, J. (2003). Lord Kelvin and the age-of-the-Earth debate: A dramatization. Science & Education, 12, 213–228. Stinner, A. (1995a). Contextual settings, science stories, and large context problems: Toward a more humanistic science education. Science Education, 79(5), 555–581. Stinner, A. (1995b). The contexts of inquiry in physics education: Supporting a motivational base and providing a theoretical structure. In L. Kovacs (Eds.), History of science in teaching physics. Extended proceedings of history teaching physics conference Szombathely (pp. 160–170). Stinner, A. (1996). Providing a contextual base and a theoretical structure to guide the teaching of science from early years to senior years. Science & Education, 5, 247–266. Strike, K. A., & Posner, G. J. (1992). A revisionist theory of conceptual change. In R. A. Duschl & R. J. Hamilton (Eds.), Philosophy of science, cognitive psychology, and educational theory and practice (pp. 147–176). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Tharp, R. G., & Gallimore, R. (1988). Rousing minds to life: Teaching, learning, and schooling in social context. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
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KOKKOTAS AND RIZAKI Thomson, P. (1998). The Historical-Philosophical dimension in physics teaching: Danish experiences. Science & Education, 7, 493–503. Tobin, K. (1993). The Practice of constructivism in science and mathematics education. Washington, DC: AAAS Press. Toulmin, S. (1972). Human understanding: Vol. 1. The collective use and evolution of concepts. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. UNESCO. (2000). Report of the world conference on science: Framework for action science sector. Paris Unesco. Viennot, L. (1979). Spontaneous learning in elementary dynamics. European Journal of Science Education, I, 205–221. von Clasersfeld, E. (2001). The radical constructivist view of science. Foundations of Science, 6, 31–43. von Glasersfeld, E. (1988). The reluctance to change a way of thinking. Special issue: Radical constructivism, autopoiesis and psychotherapy. Irish Journal of Psychology, 9, 83–90. von Glasersfeld, E. (1995). A constructivist approach to teaching. In L. P. Steffe & J. Gale (Eds.), Constructivism in education (pp. 3–16). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. von Glasersfeld, E. (1999). How do we mean? A constructivist sketch of semantics. Cybernetics & Human Learning, 6(1), 9–16. Vosniadou, S., & Brewer, W. F. (1987). Theories of knowledge restructuring in development. Review of Educational Research, 51, 51–67. Vygotsky, L. (1986). Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Vygotsky, L. S. (1987). The collected works of L.S. Vygotsky (Vol. 1) (R. W. Rieber & J. Wollock, (Eds.). New York: Plenum Press. Vygotsky, L. S. (1998). The collected works of L.S. Vygotsky (Vol. 5) (R. W. Rieber, & J. Wollock, (Eds.). New York: Plenum Press. Vygotsky, L. S. (2003). Imagination and creativity in childhood. Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, 42(1), 7–97. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wandersee, J. H. (1985). Can the history of science help science educators anticipate student’s misconceptions. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 23, 581–597. Wandersee, J. H. (1992). The historicality of cognition: Implications for science education research. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 29, 423–434. Wells, G. (1999). Dialogic inquiry: Towards a sociocultural practice and theory of education. New York: Cambridge University Press. Wiser, M., & Carey, S. (1983). When heat and temperature were one. In D. Gentner & A. Stevens (Eds.), Mental Models (pp. 267–297). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Yamalidou, M. (2001). Molecular representations: Building tentative links between the history of science and the study of cognition. Science & Education, 10, 423–451.
Panagiotis Kokkotas, profesor and Aikaterini Rizaki, PhD Faculty of Primary Education National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece e-mail:
[email protected]
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6. ON THE CONCEPT OF ENERGY History of Science for Teaching
1. WHAT IS ENERGY?
These instructions are intended to provide guidance to authors “It is important to realize that in physics today we have no knowledge of what energy is”, said the Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman in his Lectures. “Nobody knows what energy really is”, one reads in Bergmann and Schaefer’s Experimental Physics (1998). We cannot answer the question of what energy really is, explain Dransfeld et al. (2001). Although everybody has a feeling of what energy is, wrote Çengel and Boles (2002), it is difficult to give a precise definition for it. According to Halliday et al. (2003), it is very difficult to give a simple definition of energy. If we cannot explain in a clear way what energy is, the concept of energy must be a problem in science teaching. Students’ preconceptions or misunderstandings have been subject of much research (Watts, 1983; Duit, 1986; Nicholls & Ogborn, 1993; Trumper, 1990, 1991; Cotignola et al., 2002; Barbosa & Borges, 2006; de Berg, 2008; and many others). Empirical educational research shows alternative ideas, such as ‘Energy is fuel’ or ‘Energy is stored within objects’ (Ogborn, 1993, p. 73; Prideaux, 1995, p. 278). There is so much confusion with energy, according to Beynon “because it is not treated as an abstract physical quantity but something real, just like a piece of cheese” (1990, p. 315). The most common notion of energy in textbooks can, however, lead to the idea of energy as something real. The principle of conservation of energy or the concept of energy is frequently presented as follows: energy can neither be created nor destroyed but only transformed1. If energy cannot be destroyed, it must be a real existing thing. If energy can be transformed, it must be a real thing, which appears in the form A, B, C, and so on. Thus, the concept of energy as a substance is understandable (see Arons 1999, p. 1064). If energy can be transformed and heat is the end product of such a transformation, it is understandable that heat is considered a form of energy (Böge & Eichler, 2002, p. 83; Nolting, 2002, p. 148). However, Cotignola et al. (2002, p. 285), Doménech et al. (2007, p. 54) criticised the definition of heat as a form of energy, presented in some textbooks. In some textbooks, heat is not a form of energy (Hertel 2007, p. 135) and is defined as energy transferred (Keller et al. 1993, p. 423). Different points of view concerning the concepts of heat and energy can become confusing for a student or even for a teacher (see Galili, 2006). P.V. Kokkotas et al., (eds.), Adapting Historical Science Knowledge Production to the Classroom, 85–101. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
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Such difficulties in teaching thermodynamics do not appear in textbooks published towards the end of the nineteenth century or the beginning of the following century. Concerning the heat-motion relationship, Verdet (1868) used the expression “principle of equivalence”. The same holds for Poincaré’s Thermodynamics (1892). The first law of thermodynamics is called principle of equivalence by Preston, 19192. According to Müller and Pouillet, the law is to be formulated in the form: heat and mechanical work are equivalents3. In the same chapter “Principle of Equivalence”, the authors pointed out that with the thesis, energy is indestructible, the principle is not an experimental law anymore but a postulate4. The understanding of the mechanical equivalent of heat as an equivalence factor, which is determined experimentally, and the principle of energy conservation as a principle of equivalence can be justified by the authors who discovered the energy conservation. The history of science teaches us that energy was discovered in the 1840s. Mayer, Joule, Colding and Helmholtz are generally considered the discoverers5. They did not speak of conservation or transformation of energy but rather of force (Mayer, Colding or Helmholtz) or conversion of mechanical power into heat and vice-versa (Joule). The term energy was introduced by William Thomson in 1851. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, energy was understood as a substance by some scientists, such as Lodge, Poynting or Ostwald. This concept was, however, criticised by others, such as Planck, Hertz or William Thomson. The historical development of the concept is reflected in the terminology concerning energy in contemporary textbooks. Hence, some of our terminology becomes more understandable through the past. Historical topics linkable with properties of energy (indestructible and transformable), forms (kinetic and potential) and transference of energy will be presented. Some consequences for teaching are explicitly dealt with in the last section. The present paper is based on Coelho (2007). 2. INDESTRUCTIBILITY AND TRANSFORMABILITY
These instructions are intended to provide guidance to authors Indestructibility and transformability of energy have their roots in Mayer’s theory. According to this theory, “force” is indestructible in quantity and transformable in quality. These properties were justified in the following way. ‘Forces are causes’ states Mayer, without any proof or further explanation, in his 1842 article “Observations on the Forces of Inorganic Nature”. This statement is used to apply to forces the classical saying ‘causa aequat effectum’6. If c causes an effect e, then c=e. If e becomes a cause of an effect f, then e=f, and so on. On account of these equations, Mayer justifies the two properties of force. As c=e=f…=c, the quantity holds constant. Mayer says force is indestructible7. As c=e, Mayer says that c is transformed into e because when there is e, no part of c can exist, and when there is c no part of e exists8. Let us consider what these properties mean concerning phenomena, the first of which is the falling of bodies. According to Mayer, the weight and height of a body form together the cause of falling. At that time, weight was considered the cause of falling. However, 86
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Mayer argues, height is also necessary for falling. In order to determine the cause quantitatively, Mayer proposes the product of the mass and the height of the body9. On account of the relationship between height and velocity of falling from Leibniz’s conservation principle (1686), the height is equal to the square of the velocity10. Mayer takes the product of mass and square of the velocity as the effect of the cause referred to. Admitting that cause equals effect, he writes mh = mv2. Let us move on to phenomena which involve heat and motion. Mayer set up an experiment to prove that motion causes heat: he agitated water in a recipient vehemently and the temperature of the water rose 12 or 13 degrees11. The steam-engine gives an example of the inverse relationship: heat produces motion12. Thus, he continues, he prefers to admit that heat produces motion or motion heat, instead of admitting that there is a cause without effect or an effect without cause13. If there is a causal relationship between heat and motion, an equation of the form “cause=effect” is justified by the theory seen above. To write an equation relating heat to motion, Mayer made recourse to the specific heat of atmospheric air at constant pressure and constant volume. In order to increase the temperature of one cubic centimetre of atmospheric air without changing its volume, a certain quantity of heat, Cv, is necessary. To increase the temperature of the same value but with a variation in volume, a greater quantity of heat, Cp, is necessary14. As Cp is greater than Cv, but in the first case there is some motion and in the second there is none, Mayer considers the difference of these quantities equal to the force performed in the variation of volume against atmospheric pressure. Thus, Cp-Cv corresponds to the mechanical effect produced. This effect is expressed by the weight of the column of air, W, and the change in the height, h. According to the values known at that time, Cp-Cv = Wh leads to the result: one unit of heat is equivalent to one unit of weight raised to 366 metres15. In Mayer’s dealing with the phenomena, two steps are evident: 1. he verifies if a cause-effect relationship can be applied to the phenomena considered; 2. he writes an equation, whose sides are constituted by the quantities which characterise the cause and effect involved. The writing of an equation of the form force (cause) = force (effect) is based on the classical statement “causa aequat effectum”. This statement implies that the quantity taken as cause must be equal to the quantity taken as effect. As the right hand-side and the left hand-side of this equation is called force, it can be said that the quantity of force is constant. Mayer expresses this by saying that force is indestructible. Let us move on to the other property of force. Mayer says, ‘transformation of heat into mechanical effect’ expresses a fact and does not explain the transformation. It is said, for instance, that ice is transformed into water and this is not dependent on how and why the transformation happens. These kinds of questions, he adds, are useless. Mayer states as well that the relationship between heat and motion is quantitative and not qualitative16 and that 87
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‘transformation from falling force into motion’ cannot express anything but a numerical relation between both17. According to these statements, transformation does not explain what is going on in a physical process and the established relationship is only a numerical one. In conclusion, indestructibility and transformability do not mean that any substance with those properties had been found. Using observable or measurable data, Mayer established numerical relationships between certain quantities and determined equivalences between magnitudes, which were until then non-connected. Thus, it can be said, Mayer found a methodology for dealing with phenomena. In so far as the equivalence between mechanical units and units of heat was included in physics, the concept “principle of equivalence” becomes understandable (Verdet, Poincaré, Müller and Pouillet, among others). 3. THE HEAT-MOTION CONVERSION
The conversion of heat into motion and motion into heat, was the thesis defended by Joule in his first article concerning this issue “On the Calorific Effects of MagnetoElectricity, and on the Mechanical Value of Heat” (1843). This thesis is connected with the concept of heat as a kind of motion. This concept of heat represented a conditio sine qua non for the acceptance of the heat-motion conversion by the scientific community. Within the framework of the science of that time, heat could be a substance or a kind of motion. Despite the fact that Rumford (1798, p. 99) and Davy (1799, p. 13–14) have defended that heat was motion, the common thesis concerning the nature of heat during the first part of the nineteenth century was ‘heat is a substance’ (Haldat, 1807; Berthollet, in cooperation with Pictet and Biot, 1809; Carnot, 1824; Colladon & Sturm, 1828, among others). If heat is a substance, it cannot be created by motion, since, if heat is a substance, its quantity must be constant. Joule tried to show experimentally that heat can be generated by motion. The first attempt is presented in the article referred to. ‘Magneto-electricity’ was the name given to the induced electric current, discovered by Faraday in 183118. Joule constructed a magneto-electric machine: an electromagnet rotates in the proximity of a large magnet or an electromagnet. The following picture, drawn from Verdet’s Thermodynamics, where Joule’s experiments and results are dealt with in detail, does not represent the large electromagnet. If the axle on the right side is cranked, it brings the other axle into rotation. Perpendicular to this axle, there is a hollow box, in which an electromagnet was introduced. This element is immersed in a tube of water and thermally isolated. The temperature of the water is measured before the rotation and after it and the heat evolved is determined. From all the experiments set up with this experimental configuration, Joule concluded that motion creates heat. As heat could be increased through the magneto-electric machine and this function by means of motion, Joule tried to determine a proportion between the heat evolved and the mechanical power used. To estimate the mechanical power, he replaced the crank with the system represented in the following image19. 88
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Figure 1. Joule’s machine (Verdet 1870, p. 157, fig. 38).
Figure 2. From Joule’s paper (Joule 1884, p. 150, fig. 51).
The product of the weights and the height make up the value of the mechanical power. To determine the mechanical power which will be equated with the value of the heat evolved, Joule took the difference between the mechanical power necessary to bring the machine into motion as an electromagnetic one, Weightmag.-elec. x Height, and as a mechanical one Weightmec. x Height. The following equation subsumes the set of experiments referred to above (Weight mag.-elec. - Weight mec.) x Height = Heat mag.-elec..
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As the equation states that Į units of mechanical power = ȕ units of heat, Joule calculates how many mechanical units correspond to one unit of heat. The value of mechanical power that corresponds to one unit of heat is termed ‘mechanical equivalent of heat’. Let us move on to the interpretation. If heat can be created by motion, it cannot be a substance. If it is not a substance, it must be a kind of motion. If heat is motion and the calorific effects of the magnetoelectricity are produced through motion, then we have a motion that causes another motion. The quantity of one kind is converted into the other kind of motion. The concept of heat as a state of vibration, a kind of motion, connects from a conceptual point of view, two entities, which were completely different, heat and motion. (This connecting role of motion in Joule’s theory is played by the concept of force in Mayer’s theory.) In 1845, Joule presented for the first time the paddle-wheel experiment. The apparatus used consists of a brass paddle-wheel working horizontally in a can of peculiar construction and filled with water. This paddle-wheel moves by means of weights thrown over two pulleys working in opposite directions. The paddle moved with great resistance in the can of water, says Joule. When the weights had descended through that distance, they had to be wound up again in order to renew the motion of the paddle. After this operation had been repeated sixteen times, the increase of the temperature of the water was ascertained by means of a very sensible and accurate thermometer (p. 203). The schema of the apparatus was presented in the article published in Philosophical Transactions, 1850. The following picture is drawn from Verdet’s reproduction of Joule’s schema.
Figure 3. Joule’s paddle-wheel experiment (Verdet 1868, p. 42, fig. 5). 90
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Figure 4. Joule’s schema: detail of the inside of the can, from Joule’s paper (Joule 1884, Plate II, fig. 70, 69).
Joule’s conclusion states: 1. “the quantity of heat produced by the friction of bodies […] is always proportional to the quantity of force expended ” 2. “the quantity of heat capable of increasing the temperature of a pound of water […] by 1q Fahr. requires for its evolution the expenditure of a mechanical force represented by the fall of 772 lb. through the space of one foot” (p. 328). A third proposition, which was suppressed in accordance with the wish of the Committee who reviewed the paper, stated that friction consisted in the conversion of mechanical power into heat20. Let us consider if there were evidence for this thesis. Joule determined the weights on the scales and the height covered by them. Measuring the temperature of the water at the beginning and at the end, he calculated the heat developed. Thanks to these data, he established the following equivalence weight x height = ȕ units of heat. If Į units of mechanical power correspond to ȕ units of heat, to one unit of heat corresponds x. Thus, Joule determined the mechanical equivalent of heat. To do this, it does not matter, if the phenomenon consists in a conversion from motion into heat. In fact, what happened within the can, where the conversion took place, if it occurred, is not important for the final result. No specific information is drawn from the process of conversion. The ‘conversion’ from the observable motion of the weights into the unobservable motion, of which heat would consist, is an interpretation of the phenomenon, therefore. In sum, Joule did not research the conversion between motion and heat. Instead of this, he found experimental methods for determining the mechanical equivalent of heat. He measured the mechanical power; the heat evolved, established a numerical relation and determined the mechanical equivalent of heat. 4. KINETIC AND POTENTIAL ENERGY
As heat had been understood as motion (Joule, 1884, 1887; Rankine, 1850; and Clausius, 1850) and there was a conversion factor, heat could be translated into mechanical units. Thus, it became meaningful to speak of the mechanical activity 91
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of a body thanks to its heat. In order to express this ‘activity’, Thomson used the term ‘energy’, which etymologically means activity. The mechanical activity of a body, which depends on the total heat in it, is expressed by the “total mechanical energy of a body”. By this, is understood the mechanical value of all effects a body would produce in heat emitted and in resistances overcome, if it were completely cooled21. This is, however, impossible to determine22. Hence, Thomson defines the mechanical energy of a body in a given state23. By this, is understood the mechanical value of the effects the body would produce in passing from that state to a standard one or from this to the given state. In 1852, Thomson divided the stores of mechanical energy available for man into two sets: static and dynamic. A quantity of weights at a height, ready to descend and do work when wanted, an electrified body, a quantity of fuel, contain stores of mechanical energy of the static kind. Masses of matter in motion, a volume of space through which undulations of light or radiant heat are passing are of the dynamic kind (p. 139). Rankine 1853 divided energy into two kinds: “actual or sensible” and “potential or latent”. He writes: Actual energy is a measurable, transferable, and transformable affection of a substance, the presence of which causes the substance to tend to change its state in one or more respects […] by the occurrence of which changes, actual energy disappears, and is replaced by Potential energy (p. 106). Thomson 1854 adopted Rankine’s concepts: actual or dynamic for the energy of motion and potential energy for the other24. In 1862, Thomson and Tait introduced the concept ‘kinetic energy’ instead of ‘actual energy’25. This alteration was only a consequence of a terminological reform of mechanics26. 5. ‘CAPACITY OF DOING WORK’ AND TRANSFERENCE OF ENERGY
In Maxwell’s Theory of Heat, energy of a body is defined as its capacity of doing work27. This concept comes from Thomson. Connected with this, is the distinction between kinetic and potential energy. Maxwell pointed out that we do not know if there are other forms. We cannot, however, conceive of any other form. Maxwell adopted also the other meaning of ‘forms of energy’, which comes originally from Mayer. According to this, heat is a form of energy. However, Maxwell did not categorically assert that heat is a form of energy but rather that it is better to understand it as such because one can obtain heat through work. He writes: The reason for believing heat to be a form of energy is that heat may be generated by the application of work (p. 93). In 1879, Lodge criticised the definition of energy as the power of doing work28. One says that a body has some energy. Nevertheless, he argues, it does not mean necessarily that it can do work29. Hence, Lodge proposed understanding energy as the work already done upon a body30. The conservation of energy is then expressed in the form: energy is neither produced nor destroyed but only transferred31. Lodge will come back to the subject due to Poynting’s article ‘On the Transfer of Energy in the Electromagnetic Field’ (1884). 92
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According to Lodge 1885, energy exists in space, in bodies and in the ether and it can be transferred between them32. With a transference, there is a transformation of energy. Thanks to this new doctrine, it would be possible to give an explanation of potential energy, which had been a problem, according to Lodge33. He writes about the falling of a stone as follows: the common mode of treating a falling weight, saying that its energy gradually transforms itself from potential to kinetic but remains in the stone all the time, is, strictly speaking, nonsense. The fact is the stone never had any potential energy, no rigid body can have any; the gravitation medium had it however, and kept on transferring it to the stone all the time it was descending (p. 486). There was some criticism on this concept of energy. Planck pointed out the following difficulty. The energy of an isolated system remains constant. The same quantity of energy must, therefore, be there. It is, however, not possible, continues Planck, to localise the energy in the system34. Energy, as a substance, is then considered by him as a concept, which one day should be overcome35. Hertz also criticised the concept of energy as a substance36. He pointed out that what we say about potential energy does not comply with our concept of substance. The quantity of a substance, for instance, depends upon the substance itself and not on the existence of other substances. The potential energy of a body is, however, dependent on other bodies37. The quantity of a substance, further argues Hertz, is a positive quantity, whereas the potential energy of a system can be negative38. As energy has properties which contradict the concept of substance itself, such a theory of energy is not logically permissible, according to Hertz. Ostwald, Nobel Laureate for Chemistry, claimed, however, that energy is what is really real39. Energy can subsume matter, the properties of matter, like heat, as well as what had been ascribed to the spirit. Thus, the traditional distinction between matter and spirit could be overcome thanks to the concept of energy, according to Ostwald40. 6. HISTORICAL TOPICS IN THE CLASSROOM
The following picture represents a schema of Joule’s paddle-wheel experiment in a textbook (Tipler, 2000, p. 554; see also Young & Freedman, 2004, p. 653). From a historical point of view, this is not Joule’s schema. From a physical point a view, such a paddle-wheel would not lead to the value of the mechanical equivalent of heat. From a pedagogical point of view, it would be useful to give the idea of friction for different reasons. Joule’s experiment is explained as follows: mechanical work is converted into heat (Arons, 1999, p. 1065) or the potential energy is transformed into heat (Bergmann & Schaefer, 1998, p. 1032; Halliday & Resnick, 1993, p. 614). As the friction, which could increase the temperature of the water in a reasonable way, is not shown, a student will accept that there was a transformation of energy, but will not understand the reason for it. This can lead to the idea of energy as something with somewhat strange properties. Furthermore, if Joule’s experiment is considered as transformation of energy, energy being something real, the end product of the process -the heat- is a form of energy. This conclusion is conceptually required. 93
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Figure 5. Tipler’s schema (Tipler 2000, p. 554).
If something changes its form in a process, what appears as end product must be a form of that entity. If not, we cannot speak of transformation. The concept of heat as a form of energy has, however, been criticised (Cotignola et al., 2002, p. 285; Domémech et al., 2007). Let us consider if the difficulties could be avoided. In 1878, Joule took up the experimental configuration of 1850 again with some improvements.
Figure 6. From Joule’s article (Joule 1884, Plate IV, fig. 113). 94
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The schema of the section of the calorimeter is not very different from the first one.
Figure 7. From Joule’s article (Joule 1884, Plate IV, fig. 114).
In 1879, Rowland carried out an analogous experiment, which can be useful to show in the classroom.
Figure 8. A perspective view of the apparatus, from Rowland’s article (Rowland 1902, p. 425, fig. 6). 95
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The following pictures show the section of the calorimeter (left) and a perspective view of the revolving paddles removed from the apparatus (right):
Figure 9. From Rowland’s article (Rowland 1902, p. 427, fig. 7, 8).
This picture clearly shows the friction necessary to increase the temperature of the water. Let us interpret the paddle-wheel experiment thanks to Mayer’s methodology. Mayer established equivalences between different domains, such as those which concern position, motion and heat. Let us now suppose that we use his methodology for dealing with phenomena. In this case, we are aware that we established an equivalence between certain magnitudes. Thus, we do not need the ‘indestructibility’ of a general or abstract entity to express that its quantity remains constant. As we have established an equivalence between different domains, the mechanical and the thermal one, we do not need the ‘transformability’ of the same entity to justify the connection. We know in advance that we are dealing with measurement processes and units of different domains. Thus, using the concept of equivalence, we can understand the conservation of energy as a consequence of our dealing with the phenomena and dispense with the unknown entity. In doing so, we will not ask the question of what energy is. Some empirical research has been carried out within the framework of the European project History and Philosophy in Science Teaching41. Problem solving strategies based on the concept outlined above are being developed. NOTES 1
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See, for instance, Chalmers, 1963, p. 43; Bueche, 1972, p. 95; Hänsel & Neumann, 1993, p. 222; Cutnell & Johnson, 1998, p. 177; Young & Freedman, 2004, p. 264.
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“The modern science of thermodynamics is based on two fundamental principles […] The first of these is the principle of equivalence established by Joule, and is represented algebraically by the equation W = JH.
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This principle, which is known as the first law of thermodynamics, asserts […]” (p. 667). “Die am engsten an die unmittelbare Erfahrung sich anschließende Formulierung des ersten Hauptsatzes, die von jeder Hypothese, etwa über die Natur der Wärme frei ist, besagt daher einfach: Wärme und mechanische Arbeit sind äquivalent” (p. 109). “Energie wird als unzerstörbar angesehen. Das Energieprinzip ist somit zunächst kein empirisches Gesetz, sondern ein Postulat, das sich allerdings mit den Erfahrungstatsachen (Äquivalenzgesetz) durchaus im Einklang befindet” (p. 126). See, for instance, Breger, 1982; Schirra, 1989; Smith, 1998; Guedj, 2000; or Caneva, 1993; Cardwell, 1989; Dahl, 1963; and Bevilacqua, 1983. “Kräfte sind Ursachen, mithin findet auf dieselbe volle Anwendung der Grundsatz: causa aequat effectum” (p. 233). “In einer Kette von Ursachen und Wirkungen kann, wie aus der Natur einer Gleichung erhellt, nie ein Glied oder ein Theil eines Gliedes zu Null werden. Diese erste Eigenschaft aller Ursachen nennen wir ihre Unzerstörlichkeit” (p. 233). “Hat die gegebene Ursache c eine ihr gleiche Wirkung e hervorgebracht, so hat eben damit c zu seyn aufgehört; c ist zu e geworden” (p. 234). “Die Größe der Fallkraft v steht [...] - mit der Größe der Masse m und mit der ihrer Erhebung d, in geradem Verhältnisse; v=md” (p. 236). “Geht die Erhebung d=1 der Masse m in Bewegung dieser Masse von der Endgeschwindigkeit c=1 über, so wird auch v=mc; aus den bekannten zwischen d und c stattfindenden Relationen ergiebt sich aber für andere Werthe von d oder c, mc² als das Maß der Kraft v” (p. 236). “Wasser erfährt, wie der Verfasser fand, durch starkes Schütteln eine Temperaturerhöhung. Das erwärmte Wasser (von 12q und 13qC.) [..]” (p. 238). “umgekehrt dienen wieder die Dampfmaschinen zur Zerlegung der Wärme in Bewegung oder Lasterhebung” (p. 239). “Ist es nun ausgemacht, daß für die verschwindende Bewegung in vielen Fällen (exceptio confirmat regulam) keine andere Wirkung gefunden werden kann, als die Wärme, für die enstandene Wärme keine andere Ursache als die Bewegung, so ziehen wir die Annahme, Wärme entsteht aus Bewegung, der Annahme einer Ursache ohne Wirkung und einer Wirkung ohne Ursache vor” (p. 238). “Angenommen, ein Kubikzoll Luft von 0q und 27 Zoll Quecksilber Druck, sey durch die Wärmemenge x bei constantem Volumen um 274qC. erwärmt worden [...] Ein andermal aber werde unser Cubikzoll Luft nicht unter constantem Volumen, sondern unter constantem Drucke der 27zölligen Quecksilbersäule von 0 auf 274q erwärmt. Diessmal ist eine grössere Wärmemenge erforderlich als zuvor; es sey dieselbe = x+y” (p. 12). “hiernach gerechnet ist die Wärmemenge, die unseren Kubikcentimeter Luft bei constantem Volumen um 1q erhöht, =0,000347/1,421 = 0,000244 Grad. Es ist folglich die Differenz y=0,000347-0,000244=0,000103 Grad Wärme, durch deren Aufwand das Gewicht P=1033 Gramme auf h=1/274 Centimeter, gehoben wurde. Durch Reduktion dieser Zahlen findet man 1q Wärme=1Grm. auf 367m [...] Höhe” (p. 14–5).
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“Der Zusammenhang, in welchem, wie wir gesehen haben, die Wärme mit der Bewegung steht, bezieht sich auf die Quantität, nicht auf die Qualität, denn es sind - um mit Euklid zu reden - Gegenstände, die einander gleich sind, sich desshalb noch nicht ähnlich” (p. 43). 97
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“Diese, zwischen der Fallkraft und der Bewegung bestehende constante Proportion, welche in der höheren Mechanik unter dem Namen “Princip der Erhaltung lebendiger Kräfte” aufgeführt wird, kann kurz und passend mit dem Ausdrucke “Umwandlung” bezeichnet werden. [...] Etwas anderes, als eine constante numerische Beziehung soll und kann hier das Wort “Umwandeln” nicht ausdrücken” (p. 41–2). “The various experiments of this section prove, I think, most completely the production of electricity from ordinary magnetism” (p. 138). “I propose to call the agency thus exerted by ordinary magnets, magneto-electric or magnelectric induction” (p. 139). “The axle b [...] was wound with a double strand of fine twine, and the strings [...] were carried over very easily-working pulleys, placed on opposite sides of the axle [...] By means of weights placed in the scales attached to the ends of the strings, I could easily ascertain the force necessary to move the apparatus at any given velocity” (p. 150). “A third proposition, suppressed in accordance with the wish of the Committee to whom the paper was referred, stated that friction consisted in the conversion of mechanical power into heat” (p. 328). “The total mechanical energy of a body might be defined as the mechanical value of all the effect it would produce, in heat emitted and in resistances overcome, if it were cooled to the utmost, and allowed to contract indefinitely or to expand indefinitely according as the forces between its particles are attractive or repulsive, when the thermal motions within it are all stopped” (p. 475). “in our present state of ignorance regarding perfect cold, and the nature of molecular forces, we cannot determine this “total mechanical energy” for any portion of matter” (p. 475). “ the “mechanical energy of a body in a given state,” will denote the mechanical value of the effects the body would produce in passing from the state in which it is given, to the standard state, or the mechanical value of the whole agency that would be required to bring the body from the standard state to the state in which it is given” (p. 475). “The energy of motion may be called either “dynamical energy” or “actual energy”. The energy of a material system at rest, in virtue of which it can get into motion, is called “potential energy.” (p. 34). “[...] It had kinetic or (as it has sometimes been called) actual energy. We prefer the first term, which indicates motion as the form in which the energy is displayed” (p. 602). “ A few years later, in advocating a restoration of the original and natural nomenclature, – “mechanics the science of machines,” – “dynamics the science of force,” I suggested (instead of statics and dynamics the two divisions of mechanics according to the then usual nomenclature) that statics and kinetics should be adopted to designate the two divisions of dynamics. At the same time I gave, instead of “dynamical energy,” or “actual energy,” the name “kinetic energy” which is now in general use to designate the energy of motion” (1884, Vol. II, p. 34). “the energy of a body may be defined as the capacity which it has of doing work” (p. 90). “This definition of energy, as the effect produced in a body by an act of work, is not so simple as the usual one – “the power of doing work” but this latter definition seems a little unhappy” (p. 279). “energy is power of doing work in precisely the same sense as capital is the power of buying goods. […] money is a power of buying goods. It does not, however, necessarily confer upon its owner any buying-power, because there may not be any accessible person to buy from; and if there be, he may have nothing to sell. Just so with energy: it usually […] confers upon the body possessing it a certain power of doing work, which power it loses when it has transferred it” (p. 279). “Whenever work is done upon a body, an effect is produced in it which is found to increase the working-power of that body (by an amount not greater than the work done); hence this effect is called energy” (278–9). “But in every action taking place between two bodies the work is equal to the antiwork (§ 3); hence the energy gained by the first body is equal to the energy lost by the second; or, on the whole, energy is neither produced nor destroyed, but is simply transferred from the second body to the first” (p. 279). “The energy may be watched at every instant. Its existence is continuous; it possesses identity” (p. 483). “In the older and more hazy view of conservation of energy the idea of “potential energy” has always been felt to be a difficulty [...] it was not easy or possible always to form a clear and consistent
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mental image of what was physically meant by it [...] The usual ideas and language current about potential energy are proper to notions of action at a distance” (p. 484). “die Unbestimmtheit liegt dann im Begriff der Energie, man kennt den Platz nicht, den man ihr anweisen soll, und hat auch kein Mittel, ihn zu finden” (p. 117). “Gewiß ist zuzugeben, daß diese (sozusagen materielle) Auffassung der Energie als eines Vorrats von Wirkungen, dessen Menge durch den augenblicklichen Zustand des materiellen Systems bestimmt ist, möglicherweise später einmal ihre Dienste getan haben und einer anderen, allgemeineren und höheren, Vorstellung Platz machen wird” (p. 118). “Mehrere ausgezeichnete Physiker versuchen heutzutage, der Energie so sehr die Eigenschaften der Substanz zu leihen, daß sie annehmen, jede kleinste Menge derselben sei zu jeder Zeit an einen bestimmten Ort des Raumes geknüpft und bewahre bei allem Wechsel desselben und bei aller Verwandlung der Energie in neue Formen dennoch ihre Identität” (p. 25–6) . “[...] kann der Inhalt eines physikalischen Systems an einer Substanz nur abhängen von dem Zustande des Systems selbst; der Inhalt gegebener Materie an potentieller Energie aber hängt ab von dem Vorhandensein entfernter Massen, welche vielleicht niemals Einfluß auf das System hatten” (p. 26). “Die Menge einer Substanz ist eine notwendig positive Größe; die in einem System enthaltene potentielle Energie scheuen wir uns nicht, als negativ anzunehmen” (p. 26). “Die Energie ist daher in allen realen oder konkreten Dingen als wesentlicher Bestandteil enthalten, der niemals fehlt, und insofern können wir sagen, daß in der Energie sich das eigentlich Reale verkörpert [...] Sie ist das Wirkliche insofern, als sie das Wirkende ist [...] Und zweitens ist sie das Wirkliche insofern, als sie den Inhalt des Geschehens anzugeben gestattet” (p. 5). “Es besteht [...] gar nicht mehr die Aufgabe, zu ermitteln, wie Geist und Materie in Wechselwirkung treten können, sondern es entsteht die Frage, wie sich der Begriff der Energie, der viel weiter als der der Materie ist, zu dem Begriff des Geistes stellt” (p. 144). The different elements for introducing the concept of energy consist of short texts on Mayer’s and Joule’s biographies and theories; “reconstruction” of Mayer’s experiment – vehement agitation of water – carried out by the pupils in the classroom. The texts on the theories are read and explained in the classroom. For the vehement agitation, glasses with different forms and different liquids have also been used.
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COELHO Caneva, K. L. (1993). Robert Mayer and the conservation of energy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Cardwell, D. S. L. (1989). James Joule. A biography. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Carnot, S. (1824). Réflexions sur la puissance motrice du feu. Paris: Bachelier. (Rep. Éditions J. Gabay, 1990) Çengel, Y., & Boles, M. (2002). Thermodynamics. Boston: McGraw Hill. [etc.] Chalmers, B. (1963). Energy. London: New York. Clausius, R. (1850). Ueber die bewegende kraft der wärme und die gesetze, welche sich daraus für die wärmelehre selbst ableiten lassen. Annalen der Physik, 79, 368–397; 500–524. Coelho, R. L. (2007). On the concept of energy: How understanding its history can improve physics teaching. Science & Education (online). doi: 10.1007/s11191-007-9128-0. Colladon, & Sturm. (1828). Ueber die zusammendrückbarkeit der flüssigkeiten. Annalen der Physik, 88, 161–197. Cotignola, M. I., Bordogna, C., Punte, G., & Cappannini, O. M. (2002). Difficulties in learning thermodynamic concepts: Are they linked to the historical development of this field? Science & Education, 11, 279–291. Cutnell, J., & Johnson, K. (1997). Physics. Canada: J. Wiley. Dahl, P. F. (1963). Colding and the conservation of energy. Centaurus, 8, 174–188. Davy, H. (1799). Collected works (Vol. 2, J. Davy, Ed.). London, 1839. Doménech, J. L., Gil-Pérez, D., Gras-Marti, A., Guisasola, J., Martínez-Torregrosa, J., Salinas, J., et al. (2007). Teaching of energy issues: A debate proposal for a global reorientation. Science & Education, 16, 43–64. Dransfeld, K., Kienle, P., & Kalvius, G. M. (2001). Physik I: Mechanik und Wärme (9th ed.). München: Oldenbourg. Duit, R. (1986). Der Energiebegriff im Physikunterricht. Kiel: IPN, Abt. Didaktik d. Physik. Duit, R. (1987). Should energy be illustrated as something quasi-material? International Journal of Science Education, 9, 139–145. Faraday, M. (1832). Experimental researches in electricity. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 125–162. Feynman, R. (1966). The Feynman lectures on physics (2nd ed.). London. Guedj, M. (2000). L’émergence du principe de conservation de l’énergie et la construction de la thermodynamique. PhD Dissertation, Paris. Haldat. (1807). Recherches sur la chaleur produite par le frottement. Journal de Physique, de Chime et d’Histoire Naturelle, 65, 213–222. Halliday, D, Resnick, R., & Walker, J. (2003). Physik. (German Trans.). Weinheim: Wiley. Hertz, H. (1894). Die Prinzipien der Mechanik. Leipzig: J. A. Barth. Joule, J. P. (1884, 1887). The scientific papers of James Prescott Joule (Vol. 2). London: The Physical Society. (Rep. Dawsons, London, 1963.) Keller, F. J., Gettys, W. E., & Skove, M. J. (1993). Physics: classical and modern (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. Lodge, O. J. (1879). An attempt at a systematic classification of the various forms of energy. Philosophical Magazine, 8, 277–286. Lodge, O. J. (1885). On the identity of energy: in connection with Mr Poynting’s paper on the transfer of energy in an electromagnetic field; and the two fundamental forms of energy. Philosophical Magazine, 19, 482–494. Maxwell, J. (1873). Theory of heat (3rd ed.). Connecticut, CT: Greenwood. Mayer, J. R. (1842). Bemerkungen über die Kräfte der unbelebten Natur. Annalen der Chemie und Pharmacie, 42, 233–240. (In Mayer, 1978) Mayer, J. R. (1978). Die Mechanik der Wärme: Sämtliche Schriften. In H. P. Münzenmayer & S. Heilbronn (Eds.). Heilbronn: Stadtarchiv Heilbronn. Müller, & Pouillet (1926). Lehrbuch der Physik (Vol. 3-I, 11th ed.). Braunschweig.
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ON THE CONCEPT OF ENERGY Nicholls, G., & Ogborn, J., (1993). Dimensions of children’s conceptions of energy. International Journal of Science Education, 15, 73–81. Nolting, W. (2002). Theoretische Physik (Vol. 4, 5th ed.). Wiesbaden: Vieweg. Ostwald, W. (1908). Die Energie (2nd ed.). Leipzig: J. A. Barth. 1912. Planck, M. (1887). Das Prinzip der Erhaltung der Energie (4th ed.). (1921). Leipzig, Berlin: Teubner. Poincaré, H. (1892). Cours de Physique Mathématique, 3. Thermodynamique: Leçons professés pendant le premier semestre 1888-89. Paris: J. Blondin. Poynting, J. H. (1884). On the transfer of energy in the electromagnetic field. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 343–361. Preston, T. (1919). The theory of heat (3rd ed., R. Cotter, Ed.). London: Macmillan. Prideaux, N. (1995). Different approaches to the teaching of the energy concept. School Science Review, 77, 49–57. Rankine, W. (1850). Abstract of a paper on the hypothesis of molecular vortices, and its application to the mechanical theory of heat. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, II, 275–288. Rankine, W. (1853). On the general law of the transformation of energy. Philosophical Magazine, 34, 106–117. Rowland, H. A. (1902). The Physical Papers of Henry Augustus Rowland. Baltimore, John Hopkins Press. Rowland, H. A. Rumford, B. C. (1798). An inquiry concerning the source of the heat which is excited by friction. Philosophical Transactions, 80–102. Schirra, N. (1989). Entwicklung des Energiebegriffs und seines Erhaltungskonzepts. PhD Dissertation, Giessen. Smith, C. (1998). The science of energy: A cultural history of energy physics in Victorian Britain. London: The Athlone Press. Thomson, W. (1851). On the dynamical theory of heat; with numerical results deduced from Mr Joule’s equivalent of a thermal unit, and M. Regnault’s observations on steam. Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1853), 20, 261–298; 475–482. Thomson, W. (1852). On a universal tendency in nature to the dissipation of mechanical energy. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 3, 139–142. Thomson, W. (1854). On the mechanical antecedents of motion, heat, and light. In Thomson (Ed.), 1884, pp. 34–40. Thomson, W., & Tait, P. (1862). Energy. Good Words, 3, 601–607. Thomson, W. (1884). Mathematical and physical papers II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tipler, P. (2000/1994). Physik (German Trans.). Heidelberg: Spektrum Akad. Verl. [etc.] Trumper, R. (1990). Being constructive: An alternative approach to the teaching of the energy concept part one. International Journal of Science Education, 12, 343–354. Trumper, R. (1991). Being constructive. An alternative approach to the teaching of the energy concept part two. International Journal of Science Education, 13, 1–10. Verdet, E. (1868). Oeuvres de E. Verdet. T. 7. Paris: Masson. Watts, D. M. (1983). Some alternative views of energy. Physical Education, 18, 213–217. Young, H., & Freedman, R. (2004). Sears and Zemansky’s University Physics (11th ed.). San Francisco: P. Addison-Wesley [etc.].
Ricardo Lopes Coelho Faculty of Science, University of Lisbon Campo Grande C4, P-1749-016, Lisbon, Portugal e-mail:
[email protected]
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PETER HEERING AND STEPHEN KLASSEN
7. TROUBLESOME DROPLETS Improving Students’ Experiences with the Millikan Oil Drop Experiment
1. INTRODUCTION
Millikan’s oil drop experiment is among the classic experiments from modern physics; moreover, it is considered to be one of the ‘most beautiful’ experiments of all time (Crease, 2002). These classifications, however, contrast with the laboratory experience of students and instructors in performing the experiment, for “… as a teaching-lab experiment it does not enjoy a good reputation for three principal reasons: eyestrain, tedium, and poor, unconvincing results” (Jones, 1995). We, too, have experienced the frustrations of inconsistent and unconvincing results and the inevitable questioning of whether the experiment, indeed, still has justifiable educational value. The existing concerns, led us to start a research project on the Millikan experiment in order to improve its educational potential. The project is a joint venture between the Physics Departments at the Carl-von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg in Germany and the University of Winnipeg in Canada, and portions of this study have been carried out at each institution. In beginning a review of its’ pedagogical merit, we thought it worthwhile to reconsider the words of the Nobel Committee in awarding the Nobel Prize to Millikan1. In the presentation speech, they noted that: Millikan’s aim was to prove that electricity really has the atomic structure, which, on the base of theoretical evidence, it was supposed to have. To prove this it was necessary to ascertain, not only that electricity, from whatever source it may come, always appears as a unit of charge or as an exact multiple of units, but also that the unit is not a statistical mean, as, for instance, has of late been shown to be the case with atomic weights. In other words it was necessary to measure the charge of a single ion with such a degree of accuracy as would enable him to ascertain that this charge is always the same, and it was necessary to furnish the same proofs in the case of free electrons. By a brilliant method of investigation and by extraordinarily exact experimental technique Millikan reached his goal (Gullstrand, 1923). One is struck, especially, by the last sentence- “brilliant method … and … extraordinarily exact experimental technique”. It holds a clue for the reasons behind the difficulty that is currently experienced in the typical student laboratory when doing the experiment. Unless there is ongoing vigilance to make sure that the design and operation of the apparatus is still able to reproduce this extraordinarily complex P.V. Kokkotas et al., (eds.), Adapting Historical Science Knowledge Production to the Classroom, 103–111. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
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experiment, albeit in a simplified manner compared to the original, one can expect that its operation will gradually degrade and lose its value. This is exactly what appears to have happened in the case of the Millikan oil drop student experiment. In this respect, Crease makes an excellent point in discussing the vote of his readers: I was a little disturbed, however, by the ease with which many people seemed to think that the experiments that they were proposing had been conceived, or could be carried out and understood. This seemed a function, in part, of the way that these experiments are often taught. Demonstrations can vastly simplify the experimental process through the use of modern equipment constructed with the “right answer” in view (Crease, 2002). Yet, with respect to the Millikan experiment, even with modern equipment it is not as easy as it appears in educational texts as Crease seems to indicate. 2. DESCRIPTION OF THE EXPERIMENT’S WORKING PRINCIPLE
The oil drop experiment makes use of small oil droplets that have been produced by an ordinary atomizer (see Figure 1). The droplets are introduced into the region between two parallel conducting plates either by spraying directly into the region or by allowing them to fall through a small hole in the top plate. The process of spraying the oil produces charge separation in the droplets so that each droplet contains a few ionized oil molecules that effectively make the droplets electrically charged. The experiment, thus, measures the amount of electrical charge that is transferred to droplets in the charge separation process, which is not necessarily the same as measuring the charge on an electron, per se. Because the droplets are so small, it is possible, using only a few hundreds of Volts applied to the plates, to produce an electric force on the charged drops that is large enough to overcome their weight and cause them to move upward2. By means of relatively simple theory, it is possible to relate the motion of the drop to the electrical force and, thereby, its electrical charge. When a large number of charges have been determined, their values may be categorized and sorted and a common divisor may be determined. It is expected that the values only take on integer (or near-integer) multiples of the elementary electrical charge. In his Nobel acceptance speech, Millikan (1924) explains that the oil drops act somewhat like charged pith balls whose motion can be measured precisely in order to determine the amount of charge. Furthermore, as Millikan points out, the success of the experiment is influenced strongly by the correct choice of the values of the various parameters that allow the effect to be measurable, in the first place. According to Millikan, ... only a narrow range of field strengths [can be used] within which such experiments as these are at all possible. They demand that the droplets be large enough so that the Brownian movements are nearly negligible, that they be round and homogeneous, light and non-evaporable, that the distance be long enough to make the timing accurate, and that the field be strong enough to more than balance gravity by its pull on a drop carrying but one or two electrons. Scarcely any other combinations of dimensions, field strengths and materials, could have yielded the results obtained (Millikan, 1924, pp. 57–58). 104
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Figure 1. A schematic diagram of the oil drop experiment.
Indeed, the experiment is very much more complex that the simple illustration of Figure 1 portrays. Parameters that need to be considered include the calibration of the measuring telescope, the distance between the parallel plates, the value of the Voltage, the barometric pressure, the viscosity of air, the density of oil, and, most importantly, the timing measurement of the drops while in motion. The complexity becomes more understandable when the drawing of Millikan’s publication is examined:
Figure 2. Millikan’ experimental set-up (Millikan, 1913). 105
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M and N are the plates of the condenser, A being the atomizer. The entire chamber is placed in a second one which has been filled with oil to avoid thermal current in the vessel D. The pressure is controlled with a manometer m, the voltage is produced with the batteries B; a is the light source; w is a filter for infrared radiation that has to be absorbed in order to reduce thermal effects in the chamber. One can also see an X-ray tube Ȥ which is used to change the charge on the oil drops. However, the complexity of the experiment can probably be even better comprehended when looking at the image of the real experiment (Figure 3).
Figure 3. Millikan’s setup for the oil drop experiment (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/Millikan%27s_setup_ for_the_oil_drop_experiment.jpg, accessed July 26th, 2009).
2. 1 Its Significance When consulting a number of physics and chemistry textbooks (Niaz, 2000; Niaz & Rodriguez, 2004) it is obvious from its prevalence that the Millikan oil drop experiment is considered to be important. The textbooks, generally, accept Millikan’s own perspective on the significance of his work. In Millikan’s words, [h]ere, then, is direct, unimpeachable proof that the electron is not a ‘statistical mean’, but that rather the electrical charges found on ions all have either exactly the same value or else small exact multiples of that value (Millikan, 1917, p. 70). 106
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The experiment is considered a classic —characterized by simplicity, elegance, and precision and a major, if not definitive, step in the acceptance of the atomic theory (Niaz & Rodriquez, 2005). The educational materials do, however, not take into account the controversial nature of Millikan’s work (Niaz, 2000), in which competing interpretations of the experimental data produced contradictory conclusions in regards to the atomicity of the electronic charge. The educational research literature on the oil drop experiment point out that the experiment is an excellent illustration of the extraordinarily complex nature of scientific experimentation (Kruglak, 1972). 3. PERSPECTIVES OF THE EDUCATIONAL LITERATURE
It appears that the Millikan oil drop apparatus has been commercially available for the student physics laboratory at least since ten years after Millikan received the Nobel Prize (Harnwell & Livingwood, 1993). One would expect that the educational literature would contain a significant number of publications discussing various aspects of the laboratory, but such appears not to be the case. In the entire period up to the present, a literature search has yielded only about a dozen papers discussing educational aspects of the oil drop experiment in the intervening approximately 75 years since it began to be used in student labs. The literature deals primarily with the difficulties in performing the Millikan experiment. The article by Kruglak (1972) is especially critical, reporting findings that students considered the Millikan experiment as the least liked, least instructive, and least understood of their physics laboratory experiments (1972, p. 768). Kruglak recommends abandoning the explicit calculation of the electronic charge in favor of checking only for the aspect of atomicity. The recommendations of Heald (1974) are similar with the additional advice of pooling the data of an entire class in order to obtain sufficient data to demonstrate the atomicity of the electronic charge. In a different approach, Kapusta (1975) demonstrates the negative effect of inappropriate measuring times on the error in the data. Jones (1995) on the other hand attempts a wholesale re-design of the Millikan apparatus based on a study of the apparatus, itself. The re-designed apparatus along with a new calculating procedure produces highly-successful results for the students. Many of the improvements appearing in Jones (1995) are no longer applicable, since manufacturers have produced new apparatus incorporating many of the original suggestions. However, despite the existence of new, re-designed apparatus, the experiences of the authors with physics classes currently performing the Millikan experiment are not far removed from those reported by Kruglak in 1972. One of the authors (Klassen, 2009) has reported on student reactions to the Millikan experiment. According to Klassen (2009), [e]vident in the students’ writing is the same frustration that Kruglak pointed out with obtaining e values in between the expected quantized values (p. 604). It is interesting to note the difference in the notion of the Millikan experiment expressed in the science education literature as compared to the notion held by professional physicists and textbook writers. According to one scientist: the experiment can leave no-one in doubt that modern physics is real, observable, and true (Crease, 2002, p. 19). 107
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Similarly, contemporary textbooks often portray a caricature of the Millikan experiment (Niaz & Rodríguez, 2005; Rodríquez & Niaz, 2004). Moreover, several of the descriptions are erroneous, where it is claimed that the diameter of the drops is determined with a microscope (Parlow & Heering, 2009). Despite the research that has been cited, there has been no significant progress in identifying the underlying nature of the problems inherent in the student Millikan experiment and solving them. For example, only the study of Klassen (2009) has analyzed the nature of student difficulties from the perspective of the students. Kruglak (1972) does poll students’ attitudes towards the experiment, but does not attempt to study the nature of their difficulties. The literature reflects a broad range of experiences with the apparatus, showing that, in some cases, with careful modification and proper use of the apparatus and appropriate assistance given to students, the Millikan lab can be done successfully. On the other hand, there are undetermined factors that make the successful performing of the experiment by students exceedingly difficult in other cases. The preceding review suggests that there is a critical need for a renewed effort at researching various aspects of the student Millikan experiment, including the students’ own analysis of their experiences. 4. HISTORICAL ASPECTS OF MILLIKAN’S EXPERIMENT
When historians’ accounts of Millikan’s work are examined, several aspects are striking. Basically, three lines of discussion can be identified3. The first one was opened by Gerald Holton’s analysis of Millikan’s work (Holton, 1981). He examined Millikan’s lab books and found a contradiction between the entries in the lab books and the publication. Millikan had claimed that he had published all the data from a specific period of his experiments and that none of these measurements resulted in a contradiction to his claim that charge is quantized. Yet, Holton could show that for the period, Millikan had taken more data than he published. This analysis of Millikan’s lab book was also the basis of Allan Franklin’s analysis (Franklin, 1986). Even though he explained the omission of several data, he claimed that Millikan had been “trimming” and “cooking” (Franklin, 1986, p. 232). Subsequently, several authors have claimed that Millikan had been fraudulent (see e.g. Judson, 2004), while others claim that Millikan had acted properly4 (Goodstein, 2001). The second aspect that is discussed in the literature has also been introduced by Holton: Almost simultaneously to Millikan’s work, the Austrian physicists Felix Ehrenhaft worked with a comparable set-up. Actually, Ehrenhaft’s set-up was even more sensitive than the one used by Millikan. However, after initially publishing data that seem to correspond to Millikan’s findings, Ehrenhaft very quickly came to a completely different result: He (as well as several of his collaborators) claimed that he had observed droplets with a charge significantly smaller than the one of an electron. From his data, Ehrenhaft concluded that there are to be ‘subelectrons’, yet, even though it remained unclear how he could come up with such data, his findings were finally rejected. However, it is not just a question of data but also a conceptual problem: It has been clear from experiments in electrolysis that a particular amount of electricity 108
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is able to produce a particular amount of a chemical substance. When at the beginning of the 20th century the atomic concept became more and more accepted5 the question remained whether electricity also had an atomic structure. From electrolysis experiments, a determination of the elementary charge was basically possible, yet, it remained unclear whether this was actually an elementary charge (and electricity had an atomic structure) or whether this value was to be taken as a mean. Also, it remained unclear whether the electron was to be taken as a fundamental particle of electricity or not. Establishing an elementary charge has also to be seen as an attempt to establish the atomic structure of electricity. It is within this context that the Millikan-Ehrenhaft controversy is to be seen, and it is within this controversy that Millikan’s publishing procedures of his data get particularly questionable. The third area of discussion was opened by a posthumously published article of Harvey Fletcher (Fletcher, 1982). In this contribution Fletcher claimed that he had developed central ideas of the experiment. In particular, he had first experimented with oil instead of water, thus increasing the observation time and thus the accuracy of the measurement. However, when Fletcher and Millikan were writing up their results, Millikan visited Fletcher and insisted that the first paper on the determination of the elementary charge should only be published under Millikan’s name, while the paper on Brownian motion only Fletcher’s. Again, it can be discussed (if Fletcher’s story is going to be accepted) whether Millikan’s behavior is ethically acceptable. Moreover, it becomes evident that Millikan is not just working as an isolated researcher but is part of a collective6. 5. DISCUSSION
A central problem appears to be the fact that the students are not satisfied with their data –and this rating is certainly reasonable when the data are to serve as an illustration of the elementary charge concept. It is unclear at the moment why the data are that disappointingly poor, even though some technical aspects may be identified that offer potential improvements. In our project, we have taken a multi-pronged approach. In its initial phase, one of us (Klassen, 2009) has identified four essential aspects to act as the beginning point for work on the laboratory. These are: (1) humanizing the experiment’s originators by focusing on the important and overlooked role of Harvey Fletcher, (2) exposing the difficulty in obtaining results in speculative experiments if the traditional scientific method is followed rather than allowing presuppositions to guide data analysis, (3) dealing with the difficult and frustrating nature of the experiment, apparently somewhat less so in Millikan’s time than with our current students, and (4) bearing in mind that the oil drop experiment establishes various aspects of the fundamental nature of electricity (Klassen, 2009). In the initial phase, an accurate historical background story was written for the laboratory, and students were invited to consider Millikan’s reliance on his preconceptions about the electronic charge and compare his difficulties with their own. 109
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In the current phase of the project, students will be invited to respond, in detail, to questions relating to their experiences with two different versions of the student apparatus, and their understanding of what is meant by “electron” and “negative charge”. The experimental data collected by the students will be analyzed to attempt to identify probable causes for the extraordinarily inconsistent results that they obtain. The questionnaires will be supplemented by structured interviews, carried out several weeks after the lab period, in order to evaluate the students’ understanding of the experiment after they have submitted reports and to provide clarity for the questionnaire results. Although questions provide a great deal of information about students’ attitudes and knowledge, the issue of the inconsistency of the student experimental data can only be confronted by a close study of the apparatus, the data collected by students, and even the apparatus and data of Millikan. To sum up, we are developing ideas where deficits in the set-up might be and how the experiment could be made more satisfactory for the students. However, more research is required. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The researching, writing and presenting of this paper was made possible, in part, through funding provided by the NSERC CRYSTAL at the University of Manitoba, the Maurice Price Foundation, and the University of Winnipeg. NOTES 1
2
3
4 5
6
It has to be remarked that a central reason for the Nobel committee to award Millikan the Nobel Prize was his work on the photoelectric effect, see (Panusch et al., 2009). In the literature, several descriptions can be found according to which the electric field is adjusted in a manner that gravitational force on the observed oil drop is counterbalanced by the electrical force so that the oil drop is motionless. However, this method was only initially used by Millikan who abandoned it as it turned out to be too error-prone due to the Brownian motion (see e.g. http://www. xplora.org/ww/en/pub/xplora/news/latestnews/millikan_experiment.htm, accessed July 26th , 2009). I am not discussing accounts in which Millikan is characterized as a genius who empirically determined the charge of the electron. For a detailed discussion of these aspects see Segerstrale (1995). Chemists had already been working with the concept of atoms for quite some time, yet, they left it open whether atoms actually exist – to them it was more a useful tool for describing chemical interactions (see Görs, 1999). For a criticism of the image of scientific research as being carried out by sole genius’ see Hentschel (2003), for the role of lab assistants, technicians and instrument makers see Hentschel (2008).
REFERENCES Crease, R. M. (2002). Critical point: The most beautiful experiment. Physics World, 15(9), 19–20. Gullstrand, A. (1923). The Nobel prize in physics 1923: Presentation speech on December 10, 1923. Retrieved June 15, 2008, from http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1923/press.html Fletcher, H. (1982). My work with Millikan on the oil-drop experiment. Physics Today, 35, 42–47. Franklin, A. (1986). The neglect of experiment. Cambridge [u.a.]: University Press. Görs, B. (1999). Chemischer atomismus: Anwendung, veränderung, alternativen im deutschsprachigen raum in der zweiten hälfte des 19, jahrhunderts. Berlin: ERS. 110
TROUBLESOME DROPLETS Goodstein, D. (2001). Articles - In defense of Robert Andrews Millikan - Was this Nobel laureate actually guilty of cooking data? American Scientist, 89(1), 54. Harnwell, G. P., & Livingwood, J. J. (1933). Experimental atomic physics. New York: McGraw-Hill. Hentschel, K. (2003). Das Märchen vom Zauberer im weißen Kittel. Physik in unserer Zeit, 34(5), 225–231. Hentschel, K. (Ed.), (2008). Unsichtbare Hände: Zur Rolle von Laborassistenten, Mechanikern, Zeichnern u.a. Amanuenses in der physikalischen Forschungs- und Entwicklungsarbeit. Diepholz u.a.: GNTVerlag. Holton, G. (1981). Thematische Analyse der Wissenschaft: Die Physik Einsteins und seiner Zeit. Frankfurt/ Main: Suhrkamp. Jones, R. C. (1995). The Millikan oil-drop experiment: Making it worthwhile. American Journal of Physics, 63, 970–977. Judson, H. F. (2004). The great betrayal: Fraud in science. Orlando, FL: Harcourt. Kapusta, J. I. (1975). Best measuring time for a Millikan oil drop experiment. American Journal of Physics, 43(9), 799–800. Klassen, S. (2009). Identifying and addressing student difficulties with the Millikan oil drop experiment. Science & Education, 18, 593–607. Kruglak, H. (1972). Another look at the Pasco-Millikan oil-drop apparatus. American Journal of Physics, 40, 768–769. McComas, W., Clough, M., & Almazroa, H. (1998). The role and character of the nature of science in science education. In W. F. McComas (Ed.), The nature of science in science education: Rationales and strategies (pp. 3–39). Dordrecht: Kluwer. Millikan, R. A. (1911). The isolation of an ion, a precision measurement of its charge, and the correction of Stokes’s Law. Physical Review, 32, 349–397. Millikan, R. A. (1913). On the elementary electrical charge and the Avogadro Constant. Physical Review (Series II), 2(2), 109–143. Millikan, R. A. (1917). The electron: Its isolation and measurement and the determination of some of its properties. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Millikan, R. A. (1924). Nobel Lecture. Niaz, M. (2000). The oil drop experiment: A rational reconstruction of the Millikan-Ehrenhaft controversy and its implications for chemistry textbooks. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 37(5), 480–508. Niaz, M., & Rodriguez, M. A. (2005). The oil drop experiment: Do physical chemistry textbooks refer to its controversial nature? Science & Education, 14, 43–57. Panusch, M., Singh, R., & Heering, P. (2009). How Milikan got the Nobel prize. In S. Klassen (Ed.), Proceedings of the second international conference of stories in science teaching. Retrieved July 22, 2009, from http://sci-ed.org/Conference-2008/Panusch-et-al.pdf Parlow, V., & Heering, P. (2009). Das Millikan Experiment und seine Behandlung in der Schule: Notwendige Elementarisierung, Simplifizierung oder Verzerrung? In P. Heering (Ed.), Der Millikansche Öltröpfchenversuch zur Bestimmung der Elementarladung: Historische und didaktische Materialien I. Oldenburg: DIZ (Oldenburger Vordrucke 580). Rodriguez, M. A., & Niaz, M. (2004). The oil drop experiment: An illustration of scientific research methodology and its implications for physics textbooks. Instructional Science, 32, 357–386. Segerstrale, U. (1995). Good to the last drop?: Millikan stories as “Canned” pedagogy. Science and Engineering Ethics, 1(3), 197–214.
P. Heering Carl-von-Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, Oldenburg, Germany e-mail:
[email protected] S. Klassen University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Canada, R3B 2E9 e-mail:
[email protected] 111
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8. THE ANTIKYTHERA MECHANISM A Mechanical Cosmos and an Eternal Prototype for Modelling and Paradigm Study
1. INTRODUCTION
The Mechanism of Antikythera is the oldest, the only and in fact the very best known example of a complex astronomical device, a dedicated analogue astronomical computer, possibly a planetarium, a device made with gears. We know that this type of devices have been used as educational devices in schools. As we read in Cicero and other ancient texts, great scientists and philosophers developed and used such devices either for education, entertainment, or to impress one’s visitors and guests, including state persons during their state visits. Such mechanisms were also offered to them as gifts (as it happened during the Byzantine times, and not only, when visitors entering the palace in Constantinople were passing through a hall with roaring mechanical lions, and other technological executives). st The Antikythera Mechanism was found in a large shipwreck of the 1 century BC off the coast of the small Greek Island of Antikythera. The vessel was huge, probably 9 to 12 m wide and 60 to 70 m long (private communication with admiral J. Theofanidis, 2006, 2009, who was in charge of diving expeditions there several times). We can guess that it was a commercial ship, or a pirate ship, as the small Island of Antikythera served as a base of pirates for very long and a fortification built by the Persians at the time of the Greco-Persian wars was still in use. Finally, Alexander and the Greeks threw away the Persians out of Greece for good. When the states of Alexander’s successors started to decline and to become weak at Roman times, the island becomes a pirate base, mainly of Crete and Cilicia. When there is lack of strong states, or when people are oppressed, piracy becomes the only road for them to stay free, to survive, and it is accepted initially as a necessity and then as a profession. The straits of Kythera (Cythera) and Antikythera are part of the natural route for navigation that links the Eastern to the Western Mediterranean and are thus of great importance in general, and especially for the ships of pirates. Recent finds prove that between the 4th and 1st Century BC Antikythera became an important town, fortified with walls that surround some 300.000 square metres. They were attacked several times by the Rhodians, who were the traditional important fleet in the Mediterranean, possessing excellent port th facilities and navigators. Rhodes, Philip 5 of Macedonia, the Spartans and P.V. Kokkotas et al., (eds.), Adapting Historical Science Knowledge Production to the Classroom, 113–128. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
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other Greeks, attack the pirates in Antikythera in their effort to eliminate piracy, mainly Cretan pirates, and dominate in Crete. Antikythera gets destroyed between 69–67 BC by the Romans during the so-called Cretan revolution (Tsavaropoulos, 2008). The shipwreck sunk in this island at a very turbulent historic period, when the sea battles between the pirates and the other Greeks (Rhodians, Macedonians and Spartans) and the Romans were at their heights. The content of the ship probably shows that it is a pirate ship full of treasures that come from all the Aegean, including statues especially made for the Romans. It is possible that it is merchandise, pirate lute from the islands and the Ionian coast (Asia Minor, Anatolia) and Roman plunder taken by the pirates. The possibility that the mechanism comes from Rhodes increases from the fact that Rhodes participates in the war against the pirates. Hence the Mechanism might be the planetarium of Cicero described as an educational and astronomical device in the school of his friend Posidonius. Naturally, the construction of the mechanism can have roots in the tradition of Hipparchus, the expertise of Rhodes in metallurgy, the long scientific and mechanical tradition of Syracuse (Archimedes and his successors), and the unique Alexandrian experience in automata and astronomy.
Figure 1. The main gear that moves the Sun and part of the Codex Antikytherensis, the manual of the instrument at the background. Image produced by the author using X-tek System CT data and Dr T. Malbender’s PTM method using his software (HP). Copyright University of Athens 2010. 114
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2. THE STORY OF THE DISCOVERY OF THE MECHANISM
The wreck was a ship full of Greek treasures that were travelling from Greece to Rome, to transform it to the Eternal City, to decorate Roman villas, the Forum and Capitolium. We can guess that it was a commercial ship, or perhaps even a pirate ship, as the Island of Antikythera was full of pirates. It has been discovered the 4th April 1900, just before Greek Easter, by Symian sponge divers that stopped there in a small port of Antikythera forced by a storm, on their way to Africa from their island of Syme (Symi, Simi), near Rhodes. The sponge divers initially discovered the hand of a beautiful bronze statue of a handsome, very expressive beard man named the Philosopher of Antikythera (according to some philosopher Borysthenis). They had to continue to Libya and Tunisia to collect sponges, as they had to pay every year an enormous debt, to work very hard for their families, despite that they realised the seabed was full of antiquities. Few months later they return with their sponges back home to the island of Syme that was still under Turkish occupation. They made a meeting with the educated ones and the Greek authorities of the island, to decide what to do with the antiquities. They discuss the matter with others, including their Symian archaeologist professor of the University of Athens A. Economou (Oikonomu) and with the help of the Greek state and the Greek Navy, under the supervision of the Greek archaeological authorities, perform a very lengthy, difficult, even deadly for some (one diver out of the initial six died there and two more were struck by paralysis later) expedition. They had to work in a depth of 40 to 65 m, where they could stay for only three minutes. They had to detach the antiquities, which were in a state of conglomerates with rocks and stones, linked with marine animals, corals and others. In some place they had to break with hammers a conglomerate that formed a 10 cm thick rock. They discovered almost one hundred statues made of marble and a few in bronze. Amongst them is probably the most beautiful bronze statue in any Greek Museum, the Antikythera Youth, possibly Perseus, as it seems that he holds an object hanging from his hand, possibly Medusa’s head. Many small bronze statuettes have also been discovered, one of them that can turn around its base, like the figures we see in old mechanical clocks. Amongst the treasures they discovered a piece of metal covered with sea shells that looked like a stone, as it was calcified, full of small petrified sea animals, corals and other. It is surprising that in the depth and darkness of 50 m a diver working for only three minutes could distinguish that it was a man-made object and not a stone. But no wonder, the experienced diver Elias Lycopantis or Stadiatis managed to recognize that it was certainly such a mechanism. His granddaughter Mrs Lisa Mandaliou told me that her grandmother liked to say for the very capable husband, the best diver, that he always found treasures out of the Sea. The divers did a terrific job indeed. They discovered numerous treasures, the extremely heavy statues that they had to detach from the seabed, as they were in some occasions concealed under the rock formed over the years that, as they reported, was around 10 cm thick. They had to pierce the rock, detach the statue and fasten and knot it with a rope of ten centimetres in diameter. They discovered several ornamental objects, like a nice miniature model of a lyre made of bronze, 115
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a few elaborate sofas, Louis XIV style decorated with lions, head of an Artemis like goddess, a duck etc. It is evident that the huge ship was loaded with a fabulous treasure, like the ones we see today in the Vatican Museum and Roman villas and palaces. As we have the volume of a very large ship, and the treasures recovered and now hosted in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, are not sufficient to fill it up, and as we also know that probably a part of the ship was initially off a cliff at 65 m below sea level and that after this depth there is an abyss of some 125 m, it is certain that there is a plethora of treasures down there, worth having a new archaeological investigation conducted with today’s technological means. We know that at least a huge statue fell off a boat and went down to the abyss, probably a Laocoon complex, as some infer from a description of an eye witness of 1901–2 (priv. Comm Mr Dapontes, ex mayor of Kythera). We also need to find even more gears and plates with inscriptions of the instrument, possibly automata associated with it, like a rotating statuette discovered in the shipwreck, and the mechanism of the planets as their names, and especially their motion, is mentioned many times in the manual of the Mechanism.
Figure 2. The pointer of the Moon. The Moon was a silver sphere inside the hollow hemisphere at the top left. The angular velocity of the Moon follows a good approximation of Kepler’s second law. Image produce by the author using Dr T. Malbender’s PTM method using his software (HP). Copyright University of Athens 2010. 116
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3. THE STUDY OF THE MECHANISM
The Mechanism was taken out of the sea probably in spring of 1902. Archaeologists and three naval officers have initially studied it, quite successfully if we regard the means they had available. Svoronos (1903, 1908), the then director of the National Archaeological Museum did the first very extensive studies of all findings, and the Mechanism has been studied by Rediadis, then a charismatic young officer, that later become minister of finance, who fully apprehended that it was a very complicated astronomical instrument ahead of its time, much more advanced than an astrolabe. Rediadis understood that there is a pin in slot mechanism that drives part of the mechanism and today we know that it gives the Moon a variable velocity during the period of the month, following an approximation of Kepler’s second law. Rados (1905, 1910) and Rehm (1907) studied it too. Admiral J. Theofanidis [grandson of Greece’s liberator Theodoros Kolokotronis] (1934) spends a fortune and creates a clock-like working model of the Mechanism, including some planetary functions. During the Second World War all antiquities of the National Archaeological Museum have been buried in the ground in order to be saved from destruction or lute. After the Second World War and the civil war in Greece, Price (1955, 1956, 1974) examined the mechanism and wrote initially two articles in Scientific American. Twenty years later, and using new techniques, that is radiographs produced by penetrating gamma rays, H. Karakalos studied the mechanism and counted the teeth with the help of his wife Emily. Price consults Theofanidis (priv. Communication. Adm. J. Theofanidis, 2010) and eventually constructs a more realistic working model of the mechanism, as he had the internal structure based on the Karakalos radiographs and having read all the unpublished documents of Theofanidis. The new model took into account the thirty existing gears properly put in order, although he had use his constructive thought to put it in function. The interest of people in Greece, and in the whole world increased dramatically after the publications of Price. G. Veis and others studied the instrument too. Personalities like the renowned physicist and Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman showed great and genuine interest. The fame of the mechanism crosses the borders of Greece. Using tomography Bromley and Write in collaboration with Mangou (Bromley, 1986, 1990; Wright et al., 1995, Wright, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006) and with nonlinear computer tomographies (Freeth et al., 2006, 2008) read several parts of the instrument manual that is written on the device, covering almost every available bronze surface, possibly on two sheets of bronze, seemingly of different chemical composition (Zafeiropoulou and Mitropoulos, 2009). Reading these old texts of the manual is extremely useful but difficult, not because they are written with classical Greek characters, almost the same as the ones we use today in books and newspapers, but because the rust destroyed them for over two millennia and concealed the letters for ever since. John Seabrook (2007), Jo Marchant (2008) and Freeth (2009) give interesting aspects of the story and descriptions of the Mechanism.
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4. MODELLING AND THE FIRST PARADIGM
Humans understand that the world does not behave randomly. Initially they attribute every action to the power and will of the gods. Initially they believe that gods govern their lives and the Cosmos, but gradually they understand that there exists causality. It is very natural that if you live in a climate accompanied with mists for very long periods, not to be in position to see clearly. Nothing is clear. But if you live in Greece, then after sunrise everything becomes crystal clear. This is one of the reasons Greek philosophers tried to explain everything in terms of physics and mathematics, rather than gods. Or as my professor, Michael Anastasiades, said in a lecture forty years ago “No Greek philosopher could have ever conceived the uncertainty principle, but if you live in Göttingen you wake up in the morning and you cannot see the other side of the road ”. But probably the main reason Philosophy and Science started in Greece is because in places with the geography of Greece, with many mountains, small planes and valleys and islands it is inevitable to have small societies, many kingdoms or City States, to which they eventually developed, as the society becomes more and more mercantile and technology dependent, through the revolution of agriculture, and the trading of goods and merchandizing and the opening of the sea roads, the roads the Mediterranean people used at the time linking all important places, from Cyprus and its copper, to Britain with the tin, Iberia, Marseille, Tyros and all other important places. In the Agora (market in Greek) they have to persuade the buyers, many learn the art of talking and exchanging ideas and dialectics, but also rhetoric develops. I believe this is the reason we eventually have the rise of Philosophy and Science in Greece. In the Great Civilizations of Great Nations, that developed in the large planes, and had huge populations, the development of dialectics develops in a different way, as there is no time to let every single person to talk, to express him/herself. In ancient China we have small city-states too. On the contrary, such a possibility becomes even necessity in small societies and probably this helped in the development of philosophy, natural philosophy and science, together with the development of democracy driven by the rise of the class of merchants (olive oil, wine, copper etc) and technologists (metallurgists etc). Two of the most important developments in the history of science are the notion of causality and the existence of laws of nature. Gradually humans understand that laws of nature exist. As they observe the stars night after night, and the Sun day after day, they understand that they move transversing circles every night, according to their regular motions, the Moon and the planets, and the Sun during the day with their seemingly irregular motions, understand that there are normalities, repetitions, schemes, cycles repeating themselves. They start to count and eventually they can predict the phases of the Moon or the seasonal changes. 5. THE MOON STUDY AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF SCIENCE
This is the beginning of modelling nature. The first important attempt to model nature and the development of a paradigm is the one of the Moon and its cycles, starting with the simplest one, the lunar month, from new Moon to new Moon. 118
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In the development of science the study of the Moon and its use in the development of calendars has played a very important role. The year is not an integer multiple of lunar months. The paradigm of the year passes through many stages, that continue even today and I believe this has contributed greatly in the development of mathematics and science. The Moon follows a very complicated motion, as the plane of its journey around the Earth changes periodically, while it wobbles around the Earth. The Moon moves very fast. In one hour the Moon covers an angle in the sky slightly larger that its diameter, or ~13 degrees in 24 hours. The speed varies a lot when it is near the Earth (perigee) or farthest from the Earth (apogee). The intersection of the plane of the orbit of the Moon with Earth’s orbit (ecliptic) precesses with a period of 18.61 years, and the perigee moves 40.7 degrees in one year, returning to the same position with respect to the stars in 8.85 years. The angle between the lunar orbit and the ecliptic is slightly variable, of ~5.15 degrees. Despite all these, ancient astronomers notice the repetitions and managed to describe the motion of the Moon even in prescientific societies, and to predict eclipses. The first paradigm is the lunar month that predicts the phases of the Moon, a necessity for a safer and easier life for hunters and fishers. Another paradigm comes with the introduction of the solar year. A great advancement comes when humans understand the existence of the periodicity of eclipses, the Saros cycle of 18 years, 11 days and 1/3 of a day. This model and paradigm is replaced by the Exeligmos cycle (54 years, one month) that is the triple of the Saros cycle, which is multiple of a day, hence eclipses occur almost at the same longitude on Earth. Great advancement comes with the discovery of Meton’s and Callippus’ cycles, which are the periods the Moon reappears in the sky with the same phase (e.g full Moon) and in the same position according to the stars. The obliquity of the Earth’s orbit, 23.5 degrees, and the inclination of 5.15 degrees of the orbit of the Moon, in combination with the precession of the line of apsides (intersection of the two orbits) give a variable distance of the Moon in the sky from the celestial equator with a period of 18.6 years. Very early in Greek literature we have Homer calling the Muse or the Muses, the goddesses of Science and Philosophy that later become nine, as disciplines develop and humans classify science in many disciplines. 6. HOW THE MECHANISM WORKS
Since the time of Aristotle the Greeks had developed classified knowledge on how to use Gears in machines. The foundations of Engineering changed drastically at the time of Alexander and much more at the time of Archimedes, who continues the works in mechanics taken up by Eudoxus and Archytas. Probably the best technological tradition has been established in Syracuse by the tyrant Dionysius (around 432–367 BC), who understood that knowledge and science is power and established the first research centre recruiting scientists and engineers (Stamatis, 1973) from all the Greek world. They invent or construct catapults and other military machines capable of hitting a target at a large distance of 180 m with a huge sphere. The war machines Archimedes constructed during the siege of Syracuse by the Roman army under Marcellus are monumental, as described by 119
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Polybius, Plutarch and others. Archimedes constructs artillery, catapults throwing at all distances, machines throwing iron arrows, even a canon, probably working with hot steam, as stated by Cicero and others. Consequently, the required technology was available in the Greek world, including engineering and metallurgy. 7. THE GREEKS LIKE CIRCLES AND LINES
The mathematics necessary to design gears to perform given mathematical calculations has been developed for long in the Ancient Greek world. The knowledge of astronomy existed also for centuries. The Greeks developed theories for the motion of the planets since the early days of their civilization. One was based on the use of concentric nested spheres and a newer one was based on eccentric circles and epicycles, i.e. combination of two cycles (or more at later times). The analysis of the motion of a planet with the rotation of several spheres around different axles is a mathematical invention that can be considered similar to the spherical harmonic analysis, used today in modern physics, while the use of epicycles, that is the combination of two, or at later times the combination of a greater number of circles, with one rotating on the perimeter of the other, is the precursor of another very useful mathematical method which we call today Fourier series analysis.
Figure 3. The main gear of the mechanism that drives the Sun and all the trains of gears. The software of Dr Tom Malzbender produces 3D interactive photos and it is ideal for teaching modelling of a surface. Images produced by Dr T. Malzbender’s PTM method using his software (HP). The 3D interactive image is produced using many photographs and appropriate mathematics. The pupil learns that using mathematics and many photographs with the PTM method developed by Dr Malzbender (HP, Palo Alto) “can take off the rust” (left) without touching the old mechanism, by calculating the average smooth surface and rendering method. Additionally one can map the unit vector normal to the surface and see details that are not visible otherwise (right). Image produced by the author using Dr T. Malbender’s PTM method using his software (HP). Copyright University of Athens 2010. 120
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One wonders why the Greek mathematicians and astronomers prefer to use circles to describe the motions of celestial bodies. Of course we have the motion of the stars and the Moon during the night, that move “around the Earth” in circles. The heavens are divine, hence the circle becomes divine. The Greeks prefer to use circles because they are easy to construct using a compass, or even a piece of string. The compass and the circle together with the ruler enable the Greek mathematicians and astronomers to perform geometrical constructions in a simple and unique way, which infact can be reproduced mechanically using appropriate gears following mathematical theorems that they have developed in purpose. The Greeks develop gears that can perform with an ingenious combination (the pin in a slot mechanism that we have rediscovered in the Mechanism of Antikythera, Freeth et al 2006, as the first one to notice it was Rediadis in 1903) the epicyclical motion of a planet, the Moon or the Sun. 8. WHAT IS THE MECHANISM
Based on this and more recent analyses we now know that the Mechanism is: 1. a complex astronomical device and observational instrument, whose complexity surpasses anything else we know and that looks to be ahead of its time a. the user of the instrument can measure the altitude of a celestial body b. he can also determine the angular distance between two astronomical objects 2. a dedicated astronomical computer that uses an approximation of Kepler’s 2nd law, at least for the motion of the Moon. a. it gives the position of the Sun in the zodiac, that is divided in 360 degrees, and b. the Moon, and its phase during the month, c. it predicts eclipses, both solar and lunar, d. the Moon moves, with its trajectory approximating satisfactorily Kepler’s second law, obtaining a variable velocity at perigee and apogee. We know that Hipparchus measured the eccentricity of the Moon’s orbit, possibly in Rhodes, perhaps using the petal shaped end of the stadium as a giant accurate measuring device, e. the variable motion is calculated with epicycles and reproduced with four equal gears, two of which have slightly eccentric axles and are interconnected with a pin through a hole, as Rediadis back in 1903 understood correctly. The accuracy of the method of this eccentric motion is of order of ~1/400 (Gourtsoyannis, 2010). 3. a complex calendar based on three (or five) calendars a. one solar calendar and b. the Saros calendar c. the Exeligmos cycle, equal to three Saros cycles d. the Meton’s calendar e. and Callippus cycle calendar. 121
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Specifically: i. It has a solar calendar using Egyptian months (as today we use Roman months). ii. It has instructions based on the rising or setting of a given star simultaneously with the Sun that enables the user to know the exact time (rising, setting) and specify the day of the month and the position of the Sun in the sky. This star rising or setting calibrates the solar calendar. iii. It predicts the eclipses based on the lunisolar calendar based of the Saros cycle and its triple and more accurate period of eclipses, the Exeligmos cycle, i.e. the periods the eclipses repeat themselves. iv. It has the 19 year cycle of Meton, and 76 years of Callippus which are lunisolar concerning the reappearence of the Moon with a given phase (e.g. full Moon) in the same position in the sky. 4. the oldest known Meteorological and Climatological instrument and 5. used for agricultural activities 6. an educational device. As we know from ancient texts (Cicero) such a device was in use in the School (University) of the giant of knowledge Posidonius in Rhodes, where Cicero studied for a period, and it was a valuable teaching device 7. an impressive and very expensive object that one could use to impress his/her (especially a state person) friends, visitors, for (other) politicians to be afraid of him/her, especially if they come from a prescientific society, as most people and societies were at those times, who considered all science as magic, and were afraid of 8. easily used to measure Geographic Latitude 9. an instrument suitable for cartography, and possibly a navigational instrument. 9. OTHER MECHANISMS
Ancient Greek and Roman literature contains several references to devices similar to the Mechanism. It is certain that there were other similar mechanisms and instruments in antiquity. The fact that the mechanism contains instructions for use implies that it was not the only one made by his constructor, and that it was meant to be used by other users except the constructor. Naturally, as one can imagine and from that we can also infer from the ancient texts, there were simpler and some even more complex mechanisms made of various material. Probably the inexpensive ones were made of wood and the expensive, the “royal ” ones, made even with gold and ivory decorations. The complete works of the great mathematician Archimedes and especially the manuscript on his clock that has been saved only in Arabic (see Stamatis, 1978) are worth reading by all mathematicians, astronomers, physicists, educators and mainly all philosophers, as they contribute greatly to the heritage of humanity, not only to mathematics and mechanics. There we read about his clockwork, complicated and luxurious as it is depicted, simple in concept and in its function, immaculate 122
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and impressive in appearance. It shows the time automatically, working with a combination of gears and pulleys and running with water that moves eventually the hour pointer. 10. AN EDUCATIONAL DEVICE FOR MODELLING
The mechanism, which is the first known mechanical Universe, is based on mathematics, the knowledge of astronomy of that time, the then known “laws of nature” of Saros, Exeligmos, Meton’s and Callippus cycles, that enable the user to possess calendars of great quality and to predict eclipses, and possibly to read the positions of the planets. It is a very good example of modelling. The teacher then and now can use it to teach scientific modelling, the notion of laws of nature, to show how useful mathematics are, the fact that gears can be used to perform calculations, the conception or idea to model the Universe, and then to introduce the concept of a paradigm, using the model of the Cosmos we have in hands. We have been using the Antikythera Mechanism as an educational device, as it is a Great Attractor of Children to Science, Mathematics, Technology and Philosophy (Moussas et al, 2010). We have prepared many exhibitions or contributed to some around the theme Antikythera Mechanism, the first computer. This attracts the general public, and especially children with parents that are always oriented for something of pedagogical value to attract their children’s attention and for their educational benefit. The first and very successful exhibition is the one at Children’s Museum of Manhattan named Gods, Myths and Mortals: Discover Ancient Greece, which has lasted almost three years, is intended to become a national touring exhibition going around all USA. They present the “world’s first computer”, as they call it, to the benefit of the children of USA. At the Children’s Museum of Manhattan the Antikythera Mechanism is a very interesting exhibit (including several panels, a bronze model by D. Kriaris, and several computer interactive 3D photos by Dr Tom Malzbender of HP). I am sure that it is a very successful exhibition, as it lasts three years, and I have been told by visitors of the museum that children, even a few year old toddlers, have been queuing to see the mechanism and play with the interactive images. We also have had many successful exhibitions in various places including the Planetarium Science Center of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Alexandria, Egypt, The Inauguration of the International Year of Astronomy, the IAU Symposium 260 and Art Exhibition at UNESCO, Paris, France, the 7em Salon d’ Astronomie Constantine, Algeria, the Gustavianum Museum Uppsala, Sweden, the Olsztyn Planetarium (Copernicus Observatory) Poland, HELEXPO/DETH International Fair 2007, Thessaloniki, Greece, the Ionic Centre Athens, Greece, Titan Meeting in CosmoCaixa Barcelona, Spain, Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, Slovac Academy of Science Astronomical Institute. The mechanism was also exhibited in schools, the Abetian Greek School in Cairo, Egypt, the Averofian Greek School in Alexandria, Egypt, in the island of Chios (two schools), in the island of Skiathos, Ermioni, Gymnasium of the island of Kasos, the island of Rhodes, Megara, Kallithea (two schools) and other places in Greece, for the benefit of the general public, the children, and the adult learners. 123
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11. EXHIBITIONS OF THE MECHANISM
The Mechanism is an ideal tool for education, as it is a “great attractor” for the children leading them to knowledge, and if you are interested, we can help you in establishing an exhibition in your University, in the Planetarium or Science Educational Center of your city, for the benefit of the children of the entire world.
Figure 4. The head of a philosopher from the Museum of Rhodes, Greece, assumed to be of Posidonius, the great man of Rhodes consider second only to Aristotle by many of his contemporaries. Photo by the author. 12. INTERDISCIPLINARY ASPECTS OF THE MECHANISM
The Mechanism is ideal for investigating interdisciplinarity in the sciences, as it covers many fields of traditional disciplines, without taking into account traditional boundaries between academic subjects, so that it helps a pupil and a student, or an adult learner, to think in a way that crosses the borders of established fields and have a holistic view. The student is automatically redirected to many new disciplines, she/he has never thought off before, that might be related to her/his initial interest on the subject. An astronomy-interested person studying the Mechanism immediately 124
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finds that it has extensions in mathematics and then in physics. Then one understands that astronomy is not just nice images but also mathematics. Then one realises that mechanics and engineering (how to cut the small gears with their tiny teeth) and furthermore technology enter into her/his interests, as the question concerning the construction of the mechanism enters in her/his interests. Then the question of the material the mechanism was made of naturally follows, and then the study of the metal, its chemical composition, why and how the gears have harder teeth than their body, also to ask why the use a bit of lead in the composition of the metal, and then to find out that its use leads to self lubrication. In the study of the Mechanism history of humanity, history of Greece, of Mathematics and Astronomy interplays with philosophy, and even with linguistics and geography and the study of the ancient texts.
Figure 5. The Mechanism (here is part of the manual) is a very interesting 3D puzzle (or even 4D, as the question of time enters in), that can be used to teach modeling, paradigm, history, science, astronomy, physics, mathematics and philosophy. Image produced by the author using Dr T. Malbender’s PTM method using his software (HP) and Photoshop. Copyright University of Athens 2010. 13. THE MECHANISM AS A PARADIGM EXAMPLE
The Mechanism is ideal for the study of the notion of paradigm in the philosophy and history of science. The understanding of the Cosmos with time can be taught with the mechanism put in the centre of the investigation. We start with the gods, and then we improve greatly the model, as we move to a new paradigm introducing 125
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a rotating sphere, we then add the planets, the complicated motion of the Moon, but since the spheres of Eudoxus cannot account for the changing brightness of the planets, and the variable speed of the Moon and the Sun and the planets, eccentric circles are now introduced and then the epicyclical description of the Cosmos appears on the stage. Naturally we then continue to Aristarchus, Copernicus and Kepler that drastically change the paradigm of the Cosmos and we eventually come to the expanding universe and to the big bang theory of the 20th century. Another good example is the evolution of calendars, how to reconcile the months with solar years, and finally the predictions of the eclipses. The perception of this phenomenon evolves, since humans start at their very early stage of civilization to predict “blindly” and as the historical epochs follow and the civilizations alter, accompanied with the introduction and evolution of science, and physics especially, they go on to predict the eclipses following the laws of nature they have at hand. Last, but not least, comes the issue of how to predict them today, with the numerical solutions to the problem of motion of celestial bodies, and by using celestial mechanics and modern computer techniques. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The J.F. Costopoulos Foundation is gratefully acknowledged for generous support. The research that leads to the analysis of computer tomographs was carried out in collaboration with Prof. M.G. Edmunds, Prof. J. Seiradakis, Dr. T. Freeth, Dr. H. Mangou, Ms M. Zafeiropoulou, Mr. Y. Bitsakis, Dr. A. Tselikas and the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, Dr. N. Kaltsas, Ms R. Proskynitopoulou, Mr. M. Makris and all the staff of the Museum, that enable us to obtain the raw data, and for their hospitality during the weeks we have been working continuously in the Museum. The X-ray data were gathered by a team from X-Tek Systems (UK), now Metris (NL), led by Dr. R. Hadland, that designed a new powerful computer tomography machine, the BladeRunner. Special thanks are due to A. Ramsey and A. Ray, D. Gelb, Ambrisco, D. Bate, M. Allen, A. Crawley, P. Hockley. We thank the team from Hewlett-Packard (US), led by Dr. T. Malzbender, who carried out the surface imaging and for using his PTM excellent method for analysing the surfaces of bodies and software. We appreciate the support of C. Reinhart of Volume Graphics. The photos have been produced using Volume Graphics software and our X-Tek data. Thanks are due to Dr Goran Henriksson for discussions on ancient eclipses, Dr. Ch. Kritzas for estimating the age of the instrument based on the shape of the letters of the manual, Prof. Giovanni Pastore for many discussions on the Olbia Archimedes gear, Dr. Arnold Lebeuf for discussions on Meton and Saros cycles and ancient calendars, Mr. Panos Papaspirou for critical reading and many interesting discussions, Mr. D. Kriaris for creating several bronze models, Dr. F. Vafea and Prof. M. Papathanassiou and Dr. Alexandra Coucouzeli for interesting long discussions on the Mechanism structure, astrolabes, and ancient texts. Thanks are due to the University of Athens for support. Special thanks are due to Prof. Panos Kokkotas for organizing the excellent conference at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and editing this book. 126
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REFERENCES Athanassakis, A. (1988). The orphic hymns (Text, Translation and Notes by Athanassakis). http://www. sacred-texts.com/cla/hoo/ http://remacle.org/bloodwolf/poetes/falc/orphee/hymnes.htm. Berthelot, M. (1888). Collection des Anciens Alchimistes Grecs. Paris: Steinheil. http://www.rexresearch. com/alchemy5/berthelo.htm http://remacle.org/bloodwolf/alchimie/table.htm. Betegh, G. (2004). The Derveni Papyrus: Cosmology, theology and interpretation. Cambridge University Press. Bromley, A. G. (1986). Notes on the Antikythera mechanism. Centaurus, 29, 5–27. Bromley, A. G. (1990a). The Antikythera mechanism. Horological Journal, 132, 412–415. Bromley, A. G. (1990b, July). The Antikythera mechanism: A reconstruction. Horological Journal, 28–31. Bromley, A. G. (1990c, Summer). Observations of the antikythera mechanism. Antiquarian Horology, 18(6), 641–652. Chondros, T. G. 2009. The development of machine design as a science from classical times to modern era. In H.-S. Yan & M. Ceccarelli (Eds.), International symposium on history of machines and mechanisms. doi: 10.1007/978-1-4020-9485-9_5. Springer Science+Business Media B.V. Devevey, F., Rousseau, A., Vernou, C., Cauderlier, P., & Magister, C. (2008). The Astral disc of Chevroches. Granada: Cosmology Across Cultures, SEAC. http://www.iac.es/congreso/cac2008/pages/ view_abstract.php?aid=7. Devevey, F. (2009). The zodiacal curved disc of Chevroches. IAU–UNESCO Symposium 260, The Role of Astronomy in Society and Culture, 19–23 January 2009, UNESCO Headquarters, Paris, France. http://iaus260.obspm.fr. Laks, A., & Most, G. W. (Eds.), (1997). Studies on the Derveni Papyrus. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Freeth, T., Bitsakis, Y., Moussas, X., Seiradakis, J. H., Tselikas, A., Mangou, H., et al. (2006). Decoding the ancient Greek astronomical calculator known as the Antikythera mechanism. Nature, 444, 587–591. Freeth, T., Jones, A., Steele, J. M., & Bitsakis, Y. (2008). Calendars with Olympiad display and eclipse prediction on the Antikythera mechanism, Nature, 454, 614–617. Freeth, T. (2009). Decoding an ancient computer. Scientific American, 301(6), 76–83. Gibbon, E. (2009). The decline and fall of the Roman Empire. Cirencester, United Kingdom: CRW Publishing Limited. Henriksson, G. (2009). Ten solar eclipses show that the Antikythera mechanism was constructed for use on Sicily. The European society for astronomy in culture 17th annual meeting, SEAC 2009. Alexandria, Egypt: Alexandria Library. Gourtsoyannis, E. (2010). Hipparchus vs. Ptolemy and the Antikythera mechanism: Pin–Slot device models lunar motions. Advances in Space research. doi:10.1016/j.asr.2009.08.030 (in press). Marchant, J. (2008). Decoding the heavens: Solving the mystery of the World’s first computer. Arrow Books Ltd. Malzbender, T., Gelb, D., & Wolters., H. (2001). Polynomial texture maps. In SIGGRAPH 2001, Computer graphics proceedings, annual conference series (pp. 519–528). ACM Press/ACM SIGGRAPH. Moussas, X., Seiradakis, J., Freeth, T., Edmunds, M., Bitsakis, Y., Babasides, G., et al. (2007). Communicating astronomy to the public. IAU Commission 55 conference, 2007 (Athens). http://www. communicatingastronomy.org/cap2007/abstracts.html. Neugebauer, O. (1975). A history of ancient mathematical astronomy. Berlin: Springer. Papathanasiou, M. K. (1978). Cosmolocical and Cosmogonical notions in Greece during the 2nd millennium BC. PhD Thesis, University of Athens. Papathanassiou, M. K. (2010). Reflections on the antikythera mechanism inscriptions. Advances in Space Research. doi: 10.1016/j.asr.2009.10.021 Price, D., & De Solla, J. (1955). Clockwork before the clock. Horological Journal, pp. 811–813, December 1995, pp. 31–34 and January 1956, pp. 31–34. Price, D., & de Solla, J. (1974). Gears from the Greeks. The Antikythera mechanism – A calendar computer from ca. 80 BC (Vol. 64, Part 7). Philadelphia, NS: Transactions of the American Philosophical Society.
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MOUSSAS Rados, C. (1905). Comptes Rendues. International Archaeological Congress in Athens, pp. 256–258. Rados, C. (1910). On the Antikythera treasure, astrolabe, anaphoric clock, hodometers. Athens (Book). Rediadis, P. (1903). Der Astrolabos von Antikythera. Das Athener Nationalmuseum. Rehm, A. (1907). Philologische Wochenschrijt, cols. 467–470. Svoronos, J. N. (1903). Die Funde, von Antikythera. Das Athener Nationalmuseum. Svoronos, J. N. (1907). Das Athener Nationalmuseum. Stamatis, E. (1974). Archimedes works (in Greek). Athens: TEE publishing house. Theofanidis, J. (1934). Sur l’instrument en cuivre, dont des fragments se trouvent au Musee Archeologique d’Athenes et qui fut retire du fond de la mer d’Anticythere en 1902 (pp. 140–149). Praktika tes Akademias Athenon 9 (Proceedings of Athens’ Akademy). Wright, M. T. (2002). A planetarium display for the antikythera mechanism. Horological Journal, 144 (5 and 6), 169–173, 193. Wright, M. T. (2003). Epicyclic gearing and the antikythera mechanism. Part. I. Antiquarian Horology, 27(3), 270–279. Wright, M. T. (2005a). The Antikythera mechanism: A new gearing scheme. Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society, 85, 2–7. Wright, M. T. (2005b). Epicyclic gearing and the Antikythera mechanism. Part II. Antiquarian Horology, 29(1), 51–63. Wright, M. T. (2005c). Counting months and years: The upper back dial of the Antikythera mechanism. Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society, 87, 8–13. Wright, M. T. (2006a). The Antikythera mechanism and the early history of the moon-phase display. Antiquarian Horology, 29(3), 319–329. Wright, M. T. (2006b). Understanding the Antikythera mechanism. In The proceedings of the second international conference on Ancient Greek technology (pp. 49–60). Athens: Technical Chamber of Greece Wright, M. T., Bromley, A. G., & Magkou, E. (1995). Simple X-Ray tomography and the Antikythera mechanism, PACT 45 (1995). In The proceedings of the conference Archaeometry in South-Eastern Europe (pp. 531–543). April 1991. Zafeiropoulou, M., & Mitropoulos, P. (2009). The Antikythera shipwreck, the treasure and the fragments of the mechanism. XXIII International Congress of History of Science and Technology, Ideas and Instruments in Social Context, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Budapest, Hungary.
Xenophon Moussas Astrophysics Laboratory, Faculty of Physics National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Panepistimiopolis, GR 15783 Zographos, Athens, Greece mobile +30 6978792891 e-mail:
[email protected]
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9. HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND ARGUMENTATION IN SCIENCE EDUCATION Joining Forces?
1. THE ROOM FOR STUDYING ARGUMENTATION IN CURRICULA
These instructions are intended to provide guidance to authors. Although national variations are significant, there appears to be a general trend in most national and international curricula to stress Nature of Science (NOS) elements increasingly in science education as well as to incorporate more and more consciously Critical Thinking (CT) skills, and the understanding of socio-scientific issues (SSI) in the advanced primary and the secondary school education. For all of these aims an adequate image of science and the pivotal role argumentation plays needs to be realised (Driver, Newton et al., 2000). For approaches with deductive orientation, it is crucial that students acquire the ability to: determine which of two or more proposed alternative explanations (claim) for a puzzling observation is correct and which of the alternatives are incorrect (Lawson, 2003, p. 1389). Whatever view one holds about the type of argumentation, it clearly has a role in epistemological questions concerning science education. Theory choice is but one of the important aspects of argumentation in science education, others include the means to generate products or answers, a useful tool to teach students to back their claims or choices with evidence. As Sandoval and Millwood stress: argumentation is a central practice of science and thus should be at the core of science education. ... understanding the norms of scientific argumentation can lead students to understand the epistemological bases of scientific practice (Sandoval & Millwood, 2008, p. 71). Argumentation also has “social functions”. After a successful science education (by the end of high school) students are expected to be able to use criteria to distinguish well from poor arguments. Most national curricula expect students to talk science and write science, and even further to acquire general argumentative skills that can be used outside the science class or even school; the ability to persuade others or to reach an agreement with peers (Jiménez-Aleixandre, 2008, p. 97). 2. THE ROOM HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND ARGUMENTATION HAS IN CURRENT CURRICULA
Argumentation appears to be a crucial aspect of science, and, as such, also for approaches incorporating history of science in curricula. In spite of this, at the P.V. Kokkotas et al., (eds.), Adapting Historical Science Knowledge Production to the Classroom, 129–140. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
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moment mostly desiderata are set in course and curriculum objectives, without providing the necessary time for both history of science and argumentation in science classes. As a recent study concludes: Despite such efforts at the level of international policies about the science curriculum, the systematic uptake of argumentation work in everyday science classrooms remains minimal (Jiménez-Aleixandre & Erduran, 2008, p. 20). This is true even of the courses that aim explicitly to develop critical thinking skills and to teach NOS elements to students. I analysed in detail one such school-system, the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO), and the new compulsory Theory of Knowledge course, launched in 1999 (Zemplén, 2007). Yet the IBO is still way ahead of most national curricula, and most countries lag behind implementing the NOS and SSI elements into school-science. It would be unjust to blame only the slow implementation of the specific goals. There might be other reasons for the generally dismal results of students in comparison to the aims set. These aims might simply be overambitious, as Only a minority of people progress to the final, evaluative epistemology, in which all opinions are not equal and knowing is understood as a process that entails judgment, evaluation and argument (Zohar, 2008, p. 256). A large percentage of students never reach many of the curricular requirements concerning the epistemological understanding of science, even if they received instruction concerning NOS. In my view this problem is still underestimated by curriculum-developers, often only paying lip-service to certain goals, the teachability of which has only been demonstrated to be successful for high-ability students (Zemplén, 2007, p. 170–174). Decades of research on the cognitive development of students suggests that this is not by chance. The desiderata most curricula set are not reachable to the large majority of students in either the later years of primary school or in high schools. In fact, for many, these skills only develop in the undergraduate or even postgraduate years – if at all (King & Kitchener, 1994). Without explicit instruction the success-rate is even smaller. Another factor affecting the success of curricular development is the difficulty of designing learning environments and content. As the causes of unsuccessful teaching interventions are underdetermined, but the successful ones are ascribed to the curricular (often modular) development, a bias is inherently built into any such procedure. As such, cognitive developmental differences are not addressed in most developmental projects. From this follows that partial success – generally meaning success with high ability students – is used as positive feedback in the course-development, thereby masking the results of lowerability students. The result is that most aims are set with high-ability students in focus (Voss, et al., 1991). Apart from the differences in the individual cognitive capabilities of students, a number of limiting factors also influence the efficacy of teaching, so a cursory overview of the most important ones is in order before one can proceed. 130
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3. LIMITING FACTORS
3.1 Individual Cognitive Factors of Students As has been recognized for decades, reasoning skills of students (and teachers) fall short of enlightenment ideas – it is enough to browse through the immense literature on responses to the Wason selection task. As a result, most recent studies move away or even drop logic as a main element of decision making, and instead focus on a number of malleable heuristics and rules of thumb (Kahneman, Slovic et al., 1982; Gigerenzer & Murray, 1987; Gigerenzer & Todd, 1999; Gigerenzer, 2000; Kahneman & Tversky, 2000). Yet, in spite of the significant literature, most curricula still set aims and objectives that are “overoptimistic” about cognitive development of reflective thinking. More specifically for the argumentation-skills of students, it has been found that students have strong confirmation biases in either selecting evidence to conform prior hypotheses or assessing it differently (or even ignoring it), according to whether it confirms or disconfirms prior theories, jumping to conclusions before enough evidence is available, etc. (Garcia-Mila & Anderson, 2008, p. 33). In fact, students generally do not exhibit the patterns of argumentation that is often expected of them: students commonly advance claims without providing explicit justifications (or warrants) ... claims are justified only when they are challenged, and even than not always” (Sandoval & Millwood, 2008, p. 72). This is most probably connected to their naive acceptance of data and of expert opinion. A further factor is the often unrealistically set tasks and objectives by their teachers. While scientists are rightly expected to be both motivated to defend their views and to think and argue critically when challenged, there is no reason to expect the same of students, who have little direct involvement in the theories they meet in science classes. Usually a trade-off can be observed. In case the students are motivated, they are prone to neglect reasoned arguments. On the other hand, in case they are encouraged to think critically, they are more able to do this when they are personally not (or only a little) committed to the position they defend. 3.2 Social Factors in the Classroom This takes us to the next point, the social factors influencing the argumentative performance of learners. As has been observed numerously, students often refrain from expressing or defending clear positions. This is easy to understand when the psychological and sociological factors are taken into account; they usually try to minimize the social costs of taking up well-marked positions (Billig, 1989). Why would we commit ourselves to a high cost position, if not involved (e.g. emotionally)1? 131
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That the social setting in the classroom influences the positions and arguments of students is clear. Examples show that: Arguments by peers may be accepted more easily or defended more robustly according to group dynamics – the impact of social relationships within a group can have a bearing on the course of the argument (Kolsto & Ratcliffe, 2008, p. 123). This poses a major conundrum for designing learning environments where both commitment and good arguments can be facilitated – and is an ideal entry point for history of science and role playing in the classroom (Adúriz-Bravo & Zemplén, 2009). The design of suitable learning environments and the subtle influencing of the social dynamics of the group is the teacher’s task – but teachers’ skills also present themselves as limiting factors. 3.3 Teachers’ Skills and Situation in the Classroom In recent decades the literature on NOS views of teachers became substantial (Bell, Abd-El-Khalick et al., 2001). Much less is known about the argumentation skills and explicit knowledge of argumentation that teachers have. While science teachers teach science, most are not practising scientists, and many have little personal experience with scientific research. As Anat Zohar states: I also found that teachers were not proficient with what is traditionally identified as critical thinking skills such as identifying tautologies and assumptions. Teachers were also often incapable of constructing arguments and counterarguments (Zohar, 2008, p. 248). In her research she came to the conclusion that: teachers ... believed that teaching thinking consists of transmitting rules and algorithms that are required for solving thinking problems. Curriculum and learning materials rather than the student were viewed as being in the center of learning (p. 249). There is little reason to question these pessimistic findings. Most teachers still believe in a “diffusion model” of knowledge, where content is simply to be transmitted from the teacher to the student (Gregory & Miller, 1998). But why would teachers know so much about argumentation, when they rarely receive explicit instruction about it? As recent studies show, teachers’ views about NOS are generally seen as problematic by the research community, even though they generally receive some explicit instruction about NOS. The situation that teachers have in the classroom is further complicated by the conflict of the didactic situation and an argumentative approach. I also discussed this earlier (Zemplén, 2007), but a very pointed way of stating the dilemma is whether the teacher can be considered to take part in a rational debate in case he is not willing to give up his position (Kolsto & Ratcliffe, 2008). As “participation in a critical discussion presupposes a willingness to change view in light of good 132
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arguments” (p. 120), the teacher should in principle be willing to give up his views when challenged by strong arguments from students –or he is in an eristic dialogue that is masked as a rational debate! In a world, where students are able to gather data in the questions they are interested in, this is a more and more pressing dilemma. Not only internet whiz-kids and Wikipedia know-alls can create conflict of interest between educational content goals and critical thinking or NOS goals. Science education and NOS is still dominated by an empiricist-rationalist ideology, where from the four traditional sources of knowledge (memory, testimony, experience, reason) reasoning skills and sensory perception are privileged. This fits well to the naive positivistic conceptions students have of the nature of science (Lederman, 1992), who tend to accept e.g. measurements as undisputable facts about nature. The awkwardness of this situation becomes clear when we see multi-faceted role authority plays in the transmission of knowledge. First, teachers themselves mostly learnt what they know from other teachers and professors, relying on their authority, rather than doing research themselves2. These teachers –trusting their own teachers– teach that science should be based on observation and reasoning –and expect their students to accept this position. Maintaining that facts and not authorities are the basis of science, teachers use their authorities to “overrule” data and measurements– when e.g. in a lab setting a result is obtained that is at odds with the theoretical expectations. This is of course a huge issue, and I am not the first to address it, yet it touches on a number of problems connected to argumentation and critical thinking. First, students are brought up in a rhetoric of “fact-based” science, when in fact for both them and their teachers science is implicitly “authority-based”. They are thus not instructed explicitly to assess authorities, or, in other words to decide on questions of expertise (Collins & Evans, 2007). This skill learnt implicitly, even though the decisions these students will make will more often be a decision to decide which experts to trust in science-related questions, without having the resources to follow and deciding upon the content of scientific debates. For both the teacher and the students defending a position in class cannot be separated from the reputation of the speaker. As most teachers aim to maintain their authority, and most students sense this, it is especially risky to challenge the authority of a teacher – unless students are willing to risk their own reputation, or deliberately aim to challenge that of the teacher. Therefore the choice of the didactic situation can largely determine the extent to which the teacher, in case she is willing to facilitate critical attitude and to develop argumentation skills of the students, can be successful. These issues are especially acute in the case of the now popular “inquiry learning” approach. While in traditional frontal teaching, the teacher is expected to deliver answers and also to explain (at time explain away) possible incongruous experimental findings, in inquiry learning the students are asked to develop their own positions. This means that they are given – at least some – authority to interpret their findings. Thus, when they come up with theories or hypotheses (these concepts are generally not separated for students), the burden of proof shifts to the teacher in case she wants to argue for a different theory. While the teacher is 133
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trivially the authority in a frontal teaching situation, here –at least as the official ideology goes– the “facts” speak for themselves, and in case of bad measurements, etc. the teacher might find it exceedingly difficult to justify his (and the textbook’s) position without reverting back to authoritarian teaching. He faces the dilemma of letting students accept “false” theories, or to break the rules of the game of inquiry learning, and to pronounce judgement on data as an expert, disqualifying one and asserting the truth of another theory3. Debates therefore need to be very carefully prepared and “staged” in a classroom to avoid the pitfalls that can hamper the performance of the students. Designing suitable teaching environments, however, requires a more detailed discussion of the desiderata –what we take arguments to be, and how we specify the relevant skills to be achieved. 3.4 Definitional Matters What are arguments? Arguments are clearly not “natural kinds”, and what we take to be arguments depend, to a large extent, on the choice of analytical framework. Traditionally in science education argumentation has been taken to correspond to “logical thinking”, and logical thinking to following the laws of logic: By this generally zero or first order logic was understood –but rarely explicated. Logic, however, is a tool that determines the truth of conclusions given a certain form of argumentation and true premises. That it is not a suitable tool to decide debated issues has been obvious from ancient times. As in a paradoxical argument the Stoic Zeno formulates the problem: Against the person who said ‘don’t give your verdict until you have heard both sides,’ Zeno argues as follows: the second speaker is not to be heard whether the first speaker proved their case (for then the inquiry is at an end), or they did not prove (for this is tantamount to their not having appeared when summoned, or to their having responded to the summons with mere prattle). But either they proved their case or they did not. Therefore the second speaker is not to be heard. (Plutarch, On Stoic Self-Contradictions, 1034 e, quoted in Bons, 2002, p. 13). Such reliance on logic (determining the outcome if premises and procedures are agreed upon) does not appear just to us in a judiciary setting, and would look equally problematic as a procedure for theory-choice in science. Yet if logic was able to provide the clear-cut answers we want to have about nature, this would be a trivially safe and fast procedure. But logic alone cannot be used to decide on real-life issues, however often we may present this as the solution in a science class. Recognizing this, most recent authors in the field today embrace approaches to argumentation that are contextsensitive, and move away from equating argumentation with logic. In science education –somewhat surprisingly– the most common framework is the Toulminmodel, based on (Toulmin, 1958). This model by the well-known philosopher of science was inspired by legal reasoning and is a conscious move away from logic, relocating argumentation as a “field-dependent”, i.e. not universal enterprise. 134
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Space does not permit me to discuss in detail the shortcomings of these two most common approaches, but both the “logical” and the “Toulmin-model” approach fall short of providing clear and applicable criteria for evaluating arguments in a classroom. Too much focus on logic in science classes creates an illusion of certainty in students that is not realistic in many instances. In a “logic of justification” this can be a useful tool, but in many of the socio-scientific issues (SSI) students encounter, this image of science will not correlate to what students experience when they see experts disagree. This “logical” image of science can therefore create a false impression in students –yielding disappointment in the successes of science, and also giving a weapon in the hands of anti-scientific movements, such as creationism (Taylor, 1996; Zemplén, 2009). As for the Toulmin model, even leading specialists in the field recognize limitations. It uses a typology the use of which is far from trivial; as Erduran states: “the main difficulty has been in the clarification of what counts as claim, data, warrant, and backing” (Erduran, 2008, p. 57). Not only are all major categories of the model problematic, its applicability are even more so: the Toulmin-model did not provide information concerning problem-solving process. One could of course argue that the Toulmin analysis was not designed for this purpose (Erduran, 2008, p. 62). Some experts are blunter when they comment on the model – extensively used, but never developed to either analyse or to evaluate argumentative performances in a classroom. For example Duschl’s own experience on the Toulmin-model is quite devastating: applying Toulmin’s argument pattern to analyze group reasoning in a history context ... the analysis ... did not adequately distinguish signal from noise (Duschl, 2008, p. 168). Looking through the recent academic work in the field –and in this paper I rely extensively on the most recent volume in the area (Erduran & Jiménez-Aleixandre, 2008)– one can see the problems mounting. The two most commonly used frameworks for the study of argumentation in the classroom and in science education, the “logical” and the “Toulmin-type” approach do not live up to the expectations that triggered exploring them in the first place. It appears trivial that in a classroom some dialogical models of argumentation would be more useful, like the pragma-dialectical approach (Eemeren & Grootendorst, 2004), but this paper cannot take up the task of providing a detailed study of this – mostly uncharted– territory. All I can do is listing some of the issues that the choice of framework raises. First, different approaches to argumentation take different arguments to be “good” arguments – at least in the cases where the approach has a normative dimension to it. Choice of framework therefore determines which arguments are to be encouraged and which are not in the classroom. Unfortunately many approaches to argumentation do not have a set of normative expectations –like the Toulmin model– and this is also true of most rhetorical approaches (Bazerman, 1986), describing but not setting norms to scientific argumentation. 135
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Even if the models picked have a normative edge, the differences can be significant. Some approaches are “structural”, and arguments will be considered good or bad depending on their structure. The best known of these are “fallacy-theories”, which are not detailed theories, but rather detailed descriptions and groupings of fallacies. The seminal work in the field was (Hamblin, 1970), but informal logicians, especially Woods and Walton have significantly developed these insights (Walton, 1998; Walton, 1999). Debates in this field are common, and it appears nearly impossible to provide clear-cut answers as to what counts as fallacious argument without recourse to some dialogical model of argumentation –see as a recent example the debate over ad baculum fallacies (Woods, 1998; Kimball, 2006; Walton & Macagno, 2006). Structural models of fallacies have been challenged by functional models, which look at the functions of arguments, and judge their merits based on dialectical norms of reasonableness or critical rationality (Eemeren & Grootendorst, 1987; Eemeren & Grootendorst, 1992). These models start with an ideal procedure for debate-resolution, and investigate to what extent individual arguments (speech-acts in a pragmatic model) contribute to or hinder this resolution. Further, there are approaches that are not structural or functional, but are rather “epistemic”, they attempt to judge the epistemic merit of arguments (Siegel, 1988). It has now been recognised that such epistemic approaches can clash with the earlier described models (Siegel & Biro, 2006), but the epistemic evaluations of arguments is also problematic. To mention just one problem: all above approaches – if normative– start from an individualistic epistemology, and consider a reasonable consensus as an epistemically superior state in a debate. Social epistemologies, however, might even disagree on this fundamental assumption, as is clear from research in the “cognitive division of labour”, where some researchers argue, that – at least in certain cases – disagreement can be an epistemically preferred status in scientific debates (Solomon, 2001; Farrell, 2003; Sunstein, 2003; Solomon, 2006; Solomon, 2007). Another major but connected issue is the evaluation of expert opinion. Generally reliance on the views of experts is often considered to be a fallacy, the so-called ad verecundiam fallacy. This is a major problem, as the still dominant ideology of science in science classes rejects reliance on experts, but the practice does not. Trust in expert opinion is indispensable for science (e.g. to legitimate teachers’ views) and an educational situation clearly presupposes reliance on experts, yet is seen as problematic by many. Apart from this theoretical problem, reliance on expertise poses a direct educational problem to be overcome. In a class-setting, teachers often expect students to offer warrants for the scientific theory/ hypothesis in question. But why should students offer such warrants? As in most argumentative situations, only problematic positions need warrants, so it is pragmatically awkward and artificial to ask students for the support of theories that they consider unproblematic, as e.g. they are endorsed by their teachers, are discussed in the textbooks, etc. The school-science is “true” science for most of the students, and even in cases they reject parts of it (like Intelligent Design supporters), they are not likely to believe that it is worth arguing with teachers. 136
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Not only is there no consensus in the research community on which of the above approaches to argumentation is to be implemented in teaching and in the analysis of the argumentative performances of students, the choreography of ideal didactic interventions is also uncertain: – What teaching style should the teacher adopt? – How should the classroom be prepared and managed? It appears clear that in an argumentative situation “it is illusory for teachers to think they are being neutral” (Simonneux, 2008, p. 194). But whatever stance the teacher is taking (exclusive neutrality, exclusive partiality, neutral impartiality, committed impartiality), she should do it consciously. This, however, requires a new approach to science education. If science teaching is supposed to include NOS, critical thinking, and SSI, the teachers should be prepared for these tasks. At the moment, however, professional coaching and instruction in argumentation is lacking in the curriculum of nearly every teacher-training. 4. FUTURE POSSIBILITIES
The problems above were not discussed to discourage the teaching of argumentation in classrooms. They were listed to highlight limiting factors and to point to challenges that need to be overcome. For one, History of Science, –with its own promises and gradual acceptance in a number of science curricula– can join forces with attempts to teach argumentation. A variety of argumentative situations –including internal monologues in the discovery process, rhetorical techniques in publications, scientific controversies in a core group, and debates on socio-scientific issues in the public sphere– can be utilised when teaching the nature of science through what we call ‘histories of science’. Most of these have not been studied with both aims (i.e. historical and argumentative) in mind, so future cooperation offers a number of promises. But some results are already suggestive and positive, and point towards the possibility of a fruitful integration of the two approaches, when the findings of both research communities involved are consciously taken into account. Historical case studies offer a window of opportunity where many of the problems listed above can be overcome. Case studies and the debates about them offer the students playful possibilities to take up and defend positions which they do not have to maintain after the debate is over, thus minimizing the social risks involved for students4. Also, role-play appears to be one of the best ways to achieve both desiderata discussed in 3.1, and yield both commitments to a position and attention to use good argumentation in a debate. In fact, in one researcher’s experience role-play “was the first [of all the studies] in which changes of opinion were observed” (Simonneux, 2008, p. 185). To undergo conceptual change and discard older views in light of good arguments instead of passively appropriating new knowledge has long been the aim of science education. That this can be brought about employing two recent trends to reform science education, argumentative approaches and approaches to include history of 137
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science in the curriculum is a strong argument in favour of both approaches. Much wished for by experts in education, science, and history of science alike (Goody, Lynch et al., 2008), a collaboration of the two fields can bring about an increased awareness of the problems and an increased efficacy of the implementation, to the benefit of both argumentation-studies and historians of science as well as of the students. Whether these students will become future scientists or members of the general public, their skills in argumentation will be important in their lives –and as historical case studies appear to be ideal to transmit these skills, hopefully both history of science and argumentation will be welcome additional approaches helping the science teacher. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I thank Panos Kokkotas for his continuing support and help, organizing a wonderful conference in Athens in 2008, and fruitfully coordinating an international cooperation of researchers. I am also indebted to the insightful discussions with Agustín Adúriz-Bravo, Dietmar Höttecke, Cibelle Celestino Silva, and Fanny Seroglou. This article was prepared during my János Bolyai postdoctoral scholarship. I received support from the OTKA 72598 and the HIPST EU 7th framework programme project (SiS-2007-2.2.1.2). The project outlined here is similar in many respects to Kokkotas’ more empirical work with primary school students [Malamitsa, A., Kasoutas, M., & Kokkotas, P. (2009). Developing Greek Primary School Students’ Critical Thinking through an Approach of Teaching Science which Incorporates Aspects of History of Science. Science & Education, 18(3–4), 457–468.]. NOTES 1 2
3
4
But if we are emotionally involved, we often engage in an eristic dialogue – and so do the students. Even today’s researchers have to rely much more on authority and are more “epistemically dependant” from others (Hardwig, 1985) than was previously believed. None of these options are ideal – the first followed by some alternative teaching methods, like Waldorf schools, the second more typical of traditional science education. Douglas Allchin has developed exemplary case studies ready for classroom use. One collects materials for the replay of Galileo’s trial (http://www1.umn.edu/ships/galileo/profile.htm), another for Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” (http://www1.umn.edu/ships/pesticides/index.htm) These have been developed for teacher training, but some of the texts also appear in secondary schools: http://www.duval schools.org/rhs/Website%20Documents/2008_2009/Teacher_Syllibi/Kelley_ToK.pdf
REFERENCES Adúriz-Bravo, A., & Zemplén, G. Á. (2009). Historical case studies to teach the argumentative nature of science. International History, Philosophy, and Science Teaching Group Biennial Conference (24-28.06.2009). University of Notre Dame, 2009 Jun. 27. http://www.nd.edu/~ihpst09/program-4.html Bazerman, C. (1986). Shaping written knowledge. The genre and activity of the experimental article in science. The University of Wisconsin Press. Bell, R., Abd-El-Khalick, F., Lederman, N. G., Mccomas, W. F., & Matthews, M. R. (2001). The nature of science and science education: A bibliography. Science & Education, 10(1), 187–204.
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HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND ARGUMENTATION Billig, M. (1989). Arguing and thinking: A rhetorical approach to social psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bons, J. A. E. (2002). Reasonable argument before Aristotle. In F. H. V. Eemeren & P. Houtlosser (Eds.), Dialectic and rhetoric. The warp and woof of argumentation analysis (pp. 13–27). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Collins, H. M., & Evans, R. (2007). Rethinking expertise. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Driver, R., Newton, P., & Osborne, J. (2000). Establishing the norms of scientific argumentation in classrooms. Science Education, 84(3), 287–312. Duschl, R. A. (2008). Quality argumentation and epistemic criteria. In S. Erduran, & M. P. JiménezAleixandre (Eds.), Argumentation in science education (pp. 159–175). Springer. Eemeren, F. H. V., & Grootendorst, R. (1987). Fallacies in pragma-dialectical perspective. Argumentation, 1, 283–301. Eemeren, F. H. V., & Grootendorst, R. (1992). Argumentation, communication, and fallacies: A pragmadialectical perspective. Hillsdale, NJ: L. Erlbaum. Eemeren, F. H. V., & Grootendorst, R. (2004). A systematic theory of argumentation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Erduran, S. (2008). Methodological foundations in the study of argumentation in science classrooms. In S. Erduran & M. P. Jiménez-Aleixandre (Eds.), Argumentation in science education (pp. 47–69). Springer. Erduran, S., & Jiménez-Aleixandre M. P. (Eds.), (2008). Argumentation in science education. Springer. Farrell, R. P. (2003). Feyerabend and scientific values: Tightrope-walking rationality. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Garcia-Mila, M., & Anderson, C. (2008). Cognitive foundations of learning argumentation. In S. Erduran & M. P. Jiménez-Aleixandre (Eds.), Argumentation in science education (pp. 29–45). Springer. Gigerenzer, G. (2000). Adaptive thinking: Rationality in the real world. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gigerenzer, G., & Murray, D. J. (1987). Cognition as intuitive statistics. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Ass. Gigerenzer, G., & Todd, P. M. (1999). Simple heuristics that make us smart. New York: Oxford University Press. Gooday, G., Lynch, J. M., Wilson, K. G., & Barsky, C. K. (2008). Does science education need the history of science? Isis; an international review devoted to the history of science and its cultural influences, 99(2), 322–330. Gregory, J., & Miller, S. (1998). Science in public: communication, culture, and credibility. New York: Plenum. Hamblin, C. L. (1970). Fallacies. London: Methuen. Hardwig, J. (1985). Epistemic dependence. The Journal of Philosophy, 82, 335–349. Jiménez-Aleixandre, M. P. (2008). Designing argumentation learning environments. In S. Erduran & M. P. Jiménez-Aleixandre (Eds.), Argumentation in science education (pp. 91–105). Springer. Jiménez-Aleixandre, M. P., & Erduran, S. (2008). Argumentation in science education: An overview. In S. Erduran & M. P. Jiménez-Aleixandre (Eds.), Argumentation in science education (pp. 3–27). Springer. Kahneman, D., Slovic, P., & Tversky, A. (1982). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. New York: Cambridge University Press. Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (2000). Choices, values, and frames. New York; Cambridge, UK: Russell Sage Foundation; Cambridge University Press. Kimball, R. (2006). What’s wrong with argumentum ad Baculum? Reasons, threats, and logical norms. Argumentation, 20, 89–100. King, P. M., & Kitchener, K. S. (1994). Developing reflective judgment. San Francisco: Jossey Bass. Kolsto, S. D., & Ratcliffe, M. (2008). Social aspects of argumentation. In S. Erduran & M. P. JiménezAleixandre (Eds.), Argumentation in science education (pp. 71–88). Springer. Lawson, A. E. (2003). The nature and development of hypothetico-predictive argumentation with implications for science teaching. International Journal of Science Education, 25(11), 1387–1408.
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ZEMPLÉN Lederman, N. G. (1992). Students’ and teachers’ conceptions of the nature of science: A review of the research. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 29(4), 331–359. Malamitsa, K., Kasoutas, M., & Kokkotas, P. (2009). Developing Greek primary school students’ critical thinking through an approach of teaching science which incorporates aspects of history of science. Science & Education, 18(3–4), 457–468. Sandoval, W. A., & Millwood, K. A. (2008). What can argumentation tell us about epistemology. In S. Erduran & M. P. Jiménez-Aleixandre (Eds.), Argumentation in science education (pp. 71–88). Springer. Siegel, H. (1988). Educating reason: Rationality, critical thinking, and education. New York and London: Routledge. Siegel, H., & Biro, J. (2006). Pragma-Dialectic versus epistemic theories of arguing and arguments: Rivals or Partners? In P. Houtlosser & M. A. Van Rees (Eds.), Considering pragma-dialectics (Festshrift for Frans H. van Eemeren) (pp. 1–10). Mahuah, NJ: Erlbaum. Simonneux, L. (2008). Argumentation in Socio-Scientific contexts. In S. Erduran & M. P. JiménezAleixandre (Eds.), Argumentation in science education (pp. 179–199). Springer. Solomon, M. (2001). Social empiricism. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Solomon, M. (2006). Groupthink versus The wisdom of crowds: The social epistemology of deliberation and dissent. The Southern Journal of Philosophy, XLIV, 28–42. Solomon, M. (2006). Norms of epistemic diversity. Episteme, 3, 23–36. Solomon, M. (2007). The social epistemology of NIH consensus conferences. In H. Kincaid & J. McKitrick (Eds.), Establishing medical reality: Essays in the metaphysics and epistemology of biomedical science (Vol. vii, p. 236). Dordrecht: Springer. Sunstein, C. R. (2003). Why societies need dissent. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Taylor, C. A. (1996). Defining science - a rhetoric of demarcation. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press. Toulmin, S. E. (1958). The uses of argument. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Voss, J. F., Perkins, D. N., & Segal, J. W. (1991). Informal reasoning and education. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Walton, D. (1998). Ad Hominem arguments. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press. Walton, D. (1999). The appeal to ignorance, or Argumentum Ad Ignorantiam. Argumentation, 13, 367–377. Walton, D., & Macagno, F. (2006). The fallaciousness of threats: Character and Ad Baculum. Argumentation, 21, 63–81. Woods, J. (1998). Argumentum ad baculum. Argumentation, 12, 493–504. Zemplén, G. Á. (2007). Conflicting agendas: Critical thinking versus science education in the international Baccalaureate theory of knowledge course. Science and Education, 16(2), 167–196. Zemplén, G. Á. (2009). Putting sociology first - reconsidering the role of the social in ‘Nature of science’ education. Science and Education, 18, 525–559. Zohar, A. (2008). Science teacher education and professional development in argumentation. In S. Erduran & M. P. Jiménez-Aleixandre (Eds.), Argumentation in Science Education (pp. 245–268). Springer.
Gábor Á. Zemplén Department for Philosophy and History of Science, Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME). Budapest, Hungary. e-mail:
[email protected]
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10. INTEGRATION OF SCIENCE EDUCATION AND HISTORY OF SCIENCE The Catalan Experience
1. HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND SCIENCE EDUCATION - GENERAL REMARKS
The complexity of teaching demands the discussion of different resources. As professor John Heilbron said, teaching may be one of the main applications of History of Science1. This subject offers a number of possibilities for science education, as well as a general background in scientific knowledge (Olesko, 2006). First, it offers the opportunity to discuss the process of acquisition of knowledge by avoiding the stereotypes resulting from the vulgarisation of philosophy of science. Some interpretations of the so-called “scientific method” still exert a considerable influence on teachers (and on the public opinion). New insights into the process of discovery, diffusion, and appropriation of science and technology are necessary (McComas, 2008). In this regard, works such as John Pickstone’s Ways of Knowing are welcome (Pickstone, 2000). Second, history of science offers a collective vision of scientific activity, enabling us to give up a heroic vision of history of science, exclusively based on ‘great’ scientists. The history of ‘great’ men has a wide appeal given that personal stories usually arouse more curiosity. It is not necessary for Historiography to renounce the study of great scientists and engineers. Rather individual achievements should be match with collective ones. This will lead to a deeper understanding of scientific activity. Third, case studies open up new guidelines for teaching in many subjects. For example, the study of historical conceptual difficulties, such as the introduction of number zero, could assist in the introduction of this concept in the classroom. Another example would be the use of old demonstrations –particularly in the case of geometry– that could be useful in classes today. Fourth, science and technology have a local context, without which it is not possible to gain a true understanding of these subjects. In the current historiography, there are different perspectives for studying these local contexts. George Basalla proposed a rough model for the spread of ‘western’ science, in which he included imperial and colonial sciences (Basalla, 1967). His proposal generated a number of studies in this field. Social history of science has lent a new value to local achievements in which it is possible to study the social aspects of science and technology. In Spain, the school founded by Professor López Piñero was devoted to studying the Scientific Revolution in Spain. In order to enlarge the social analysis of science P.V. Kokkotas et al., (eds.), Adapting Historical Science Knowledge Production to the Classroom, 141–150. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
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and technology López Piñero and his collaborators (such as Víctor Navarro and Eugenio Portela) proposed the concept of “cultivators” of science, and, continuing with the agricultural metaphor, the idea of “acclimatizing” science and technology, i.e. the process of understanding and use of international science and technology in a particular context. These proposals have been extraordinarily useful in studies on Spanish scientific activity2. Fifth, according to the Bologna declaration on the European Space for Higher Education, the multidisciplinary, transversal objectives of university education would be fully met by history of science. The incorporation of history of science into the new degrees and masters will depend on the recognition of the discipline in the university system. In Spain, we are endeavouring to convince the teachers and university authorities that history of science deserves a central place. It should be noted that not all arguments favour the use of history of science in science education. In this regard, one should not forget what Martin Klein said about the organization of courses of physics strongly structured on a historical basis, such as the course of Holton-Brush3. I think that these arguments have been superseded. We are now adopting a more balanced approach to the use of history of science that should be a complementary tool for an improved science education. At the same time, special courses on history of science continue to play an important role, mainly in higher levels of education. 2. THE QUESTION OF SCIENCE EDUCATION IN EARLY HISTORIOGRAPHY OF SCIENCE IN CATALONIA - THE CONTRIBUTION OF ANTONI QUINTANA-MARÍ
These instructions are intended to provide guidance to authors Spain joined the international movement for history of science in the first decades of the XX century (RocaRosell, 1993). Soon after the creation of the Académie Internationale d’Histoire des Sciences, the Spanish Group was established. At that time, the policy of the Académie was not only to appoint members but also to obtain support from groups that were active in many countries. The Académie was strongly influenced by Aldo Mieli, whose initiative was received with scepticism, but finally accepted by the international community of historians of science, including Hélène Metzger, George Sarton, Charles Singer and others4. The Spanish Group of the Académie was constituted in 1931. Most of its members belonged to the speciality of Arabism, studying the AlAndalus heritage. Mieli had such a passion for Spanish culture that he used to spend his summer holidays in Spain. On these occasions, he was able to meet scholars who had links to history of science. One of these was the young Antoni Quintana-Marí (Tarragona 1907 - Barcelona 1998) (Roca Rosell & Nieto Galan, 2000). QuintanaMarí was engaged in the preservation of heritage of the Antoni Martí-Franquès (1750– 1832), a Catalan chemist of the Enlightenment. In 1932 Quintana-Marí organised an exhibition in Tarragona to commemorate the centenary of the death of Martí, and in 1935 he edited Martí’s main papers, which included a complete biography as an introduction. In 1933 Quintana-Marí joined the Spanish Group of the Académie. After a grave crisis in 1934, the Spanish Group was dissolved by Aldo Mieli, the secretary general of the Académie. Shortly afterwards, the Académie recognised the 142
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Catalan Section, whose secretary was Antoni Quintana-Marí. At that time, QuintanaMarí had obtained his degree to be a primary school teacher while simultaneously studying chemistry. He also joined the Department of Pedagogy at the University of Barcelona, which was supervised by Jaume Serra-Húnter. Quintana-Marí published a paper on the pedagogical values of History of Science in Archeion, the journal of the Académie. He also gave a seminar on this subject, the manuscript of which is preserved in his personal archive. His paper in Archeion (1935) was entitled “Valor de la Historia de la Ciencia como medio de Educación Integral y Específica del Individuo” [Value of History of Science as a means of integral and specific education of the individual] (QuintanaMarí, 1935). Quintana-Marí begins by stating that science constitutes the main value of our culture. He alludes to the notions of George Sarton and Max Scheler and follows the theory of education of the German philosopher Eduard Spranger. For Quintana-Marí, scientific value is the synthesis of social values. He remarks that science and philosophical thinking are closely linked and, in the words of Auguste Comte, history of science is the highest phase of human thought. History of Science is therefore, the true history of culture. According George Sarton, History of Science has three central values: scientific value, psycho-sociological value and pedagogical value. History of Science, after Otswald, provides us with hypothesis, results, and errors committed in history. The knowledge of all these elements is crucial for research today. The psychological and sociological characteristics of individuals also play a major role in the creation of the intellectual ‘aristocracy’ of science. Quintana-Marí devotes the rest of the paper to the pedagogical value of History of Science. He says that “It is impossible to conceive of an integral man if he has renounced history of science in his education.” Despite the fact that there are some difficulties in characterizing the educational uses of history of science, for QuintanaMarí it was opportune and imperative to introduce history of science at “all levels” of education, from primary school to the university degree. First of all, Quintana-Marí asks himself at what age history of science should be introduced. Second, he suggests the syllabus should be extended at each level. Third, he asks himself whether history of science should be considered alone or in the context of Comte’s General History. Fourth, he suggests that history of science should be a separate course in certain cases, but that it should form part of another subject in other cases. Fifth, he asks himself which parts of History of Science would contribute most to an integral education. Quintana-Marí answers these questions as follows. He suggests that history of science could be introduced in the primary school in the form of stories and anecdotes to stimulate the imagination of children. Nevertheless, Quintana-Marí considered that teachers lacked material support at this level. At the secondary school level, although story telling should be continued, History of Science should be introduced as “something that is alive” in all the subjects. In addition, a special course on History of Science should be introduced at this level. According to Quintana-Marí, the study of biographies of scientists and original sources should be encouraged. He also considered the possibility of repeating historical experiments. 143
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As for university degrees, Quintana-Marí considers that each Science Faculty should incorporate the history of its subject into the syllabus. He believed that the university degrees were excessively synthetic and hence unsatisfactory for the students endowed with a research spirit. Quintana-Marí also suggests that the teachers should receive some training in history of science. According to him, there were enough textbooks to support teaching at the secondary and university levels. He only mentions the relative lack of edited versions of original sources. Quintana-Marí ended his paper by reminding us that his proposals were in the same line as those of the foremost historians of science of his time: George Sarton, Aldo Mieli, Gino Loria, Arnold Reymond and Hélène Metzger. In 1933–1935, Quintana-Marí gave a seminar in the Department of Pedagogy of the University of Barcelona. This seminar could be the origin of a long manuscript the title of which “Historia de la ciencia 1932/1935” [History of Science 1932/1935] could be added later5. I met Quintana-Marí in 1985, but unfortunately he had no recollection of this text. Nevertheless, the structure of the text is similar to the paper in Archeion, but more complete (more than 150 pages). Most of the bibliographical references were dated before 1935, but there are some from 1942. It is possible that he continued to work on the manuscript at that time. In March 1934, the Catalan Section of the Académie Internationale d’Histoire des Sciences was set up in Barcelona. There was a public session in which most of the Catalan historians of science, presided over by Josep M. Millàs Vallicrosa, participated6. In a notebook of Quintana-Marí7, who became the secretary of the Section, we can find his proposals for the creation of a chair of History of Science, for the edition of a series of classics of science, etc. All these projects were interrupted by the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), after which Quintana-Marí was unable to continue his work on history of science. He completed his degree in Chemistry and subsequently introduced cerealistic chemistry in Spain. Before obtaining his degree in Chemistry, Quintana-Marí taught physics and chemistry at secondary schools. This gave him the opportunity to apply some of his theoretical proposals on the use of history of science in science education. He prepared a series of problems based on historical references. Despite this long interval, this is still a valuable series that provides evidence of the integration of history of science in science education. We have assembled the pdf of the sheets containing the problems and have distributed them to the participants of the 2007 Catalan workshop on History of Science and Education, during which the centenary of the birth of Quintana-Marí was commemorated. 3. HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND TEACHING IN THE 1980S THE CONGRESS OF VALENCIA
Although the experience of Quintana in the 1930s was remarkable, it was not an exception. The notion that science education could have a historical perspective or be a historical complement was present in the scientific community in Spain. This notion continues to be alive several decades later. 144
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One of the subsequent manifestations of this perception was a meeting organised in 1980 in Valencia, the main subject of which was the study of History of Science and Teaching. The meeting was promoted by the Spanish Society for the History of Science, the Department of History of Science, the Institute for Sciences of Education and the University of Valencia (Navarro-Brotons, 1980). The meeting took place at an interesting time, during the Spanish “Transition” to democracy. The promoters declared history of science should play a more prominent part in the reforms of the university and secondary schools. The proceedings of the meeting feature most of the advocates of the application of History of Science and technology to science education in Spain in the subsequent decades. The meeting was divided in four sections: – First, history of science at the primary and secondary school levels – Second, history of physics, mathematics, and technology and the teaching of these subjects – Third, history of chemistry, biology, medicine, and pharmacy – Fourth, history of philosophy, history, geography and human sciences. Professor Thomas F. Glick delivered a lecture on the history of the environment, then a new discipline. The volume ends with a bibliography on history of science and education. It could be said that the meeting in Valencia in 1980 was the first public manifestation (after the Franco dictatorship) of the belief that history of science should be incorporated into science education. 4. THE CASE OF THE SCHOOL OF INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING OF BARCELONA - THE EXPERIMENTAL PLANNING OF 1987 AND ITS REPERCUSSIONS
These instructions are intended to provide guidance to authors The introduction of History of Science in engineering education in the School of Industrial Engineering of Barcelona resulted from the commemoration in 1976 of the 125th anniversary of the foundation of the School. A congress on History of Science was organized and a conclusion was reached: to introduce a course of History of Science in the new syllabus of the School (Camón et al., 1978). For two years, a group of teachers prepared a general course on History of Science for the new syllabus. However, the plan ran into difficulties and was postponed until 1986. In this year, the initial group underwent a change in composition as well in their orientation. It was decided that students should have to study not only a general course of history of science but also specific topics. For the academic year 1987–1988, a core curriculum plus a number of options was prepared. All the students followed a course on the Scientific Revolution that constituted a foundation course8. This course was complemented by other short courses on more specific matters, such as Greek science, Engineering in Catalonia and Spain, the Industrial Revolution, the Steam Engine or Navigation, subjects on which some of the teachers were working at the time. This structure of course made up of different subjects (with the common theme of the Scientific Revolution) formed part of an experimental syllabus until 1991. 145
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In this year, History of Science changed from being a compulsory subject in the first course (there were more than 600 students) to an optional subject in the second course (less than 100). In the subsequent years, history of science was imparted in separate courses. At the same time, some of these courses were taught in other schools of the University. In the engineering schools of Barcelona –as at many other centres in Spain– there was the feeling that technical education lacked a humanistic and social perspective. Engineers were working in a complex world, where they had to face up to a variety of political, social and environmental challenges. To reinforce this aspect of education, history of science and technology was perceived as a means to delve into the relationships between science, technology and society from a rigorous point of view: the historical analysis. And this experience would be more useful if the analysis included the profession to which the students were seeking entry (Lusa-Monforte, 1995). The Group to which I belong offers a number of courses at five centres of the Polytechnical University of Catalonia. These courses have a different level of specialization. In the School of Industrial Engineering of Barcelona, we teach a course on History of this speciality of engineering in Spain. We also teach courses on History of Mathematics, History of Technology, Technology in Ancient China, Engineering at the Renaissance, the Origins of Modern Science in the Scientific Revolution, History of Aeronautics, and Einstein and his impact on Science in Spain. These courses correspond to a number of research fields of our group9. We are currently preparing a postgraduate course on Scientific, Technical, and Industrial Heritage in Catalonia which has been an industrialized region since early XVIII century. In the last 20 years, most of the industries created in the XIX and early XX centuries have become obsolete. A large proportion of the buildings and machinery, however, are looked after by local museums. Many of these museums have links to the central Museum, in Terrassa, near Barcelona, constituting a network of technical and industrial museums10. This network is regarded as an “ecomuseum”, i.e. it allows us to know the industrial heritage in situ, generating a new source of income from cultural or “industrial” tourism (Roca-Rosell, 2003). Thus, we plan to organize this postgraduate course in 2009, probably in September11. The course will consist of 80 hours over two weeks combining theoretical lessons on history of technology, history of the scientific, technical and industrial heritage in Catalonia with visits to sites in Barcelona and in other parts of Catalonia. The course would be linked to the Erasmus Mundus organized by the University Panthéon-Sorbonne Paris I, and the universities of Évora and Padova12. 5. THE EXPERIENCE OF THE AUTONOMOUS UNIVERSITY OF BARCELONA MASTER STUDIES IN HISTORY OF SCIENCE
Since 2006, the Autonomous University of Barcelona has offered an “official” master in history of science13. It is the continuation of a doctoral programme that has achieved academic recognition in Spain known as “quality doctorate”. The master is organised in accordance with the Bologna programme. The master consists of two parts: first, an introduction to historiography of science and, second, six optional courses: History of Medicine, two courses on History of Medieval Sciences, History 146
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of Psychology, Science and its public, and Contemporary Science and Society. The master would be obtained in two years and is oriented to research. The Autonomous University is the coordinating centre of the master, in which the University of Barcelona and the department of History of Science of the Higher Council for Scientific Research participate. It should be noted that this is the first time that a university degree in history of science has been established in Spain. 6. TEACHING AND HISTORY OF SCIENCE IN THE CATALAN SOCIETY FOR THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
The Catalan Society for the History of Science and Technology was set up in 199114. Since its beginnings, its members (more than half of them) have been teachers from secondary and primary schools. Other members are university teachers, researchers, personnel of science museums and persons engaged in the promotion and public understanding of science. Ten per cent of the 275 members are full time researchers on history of science and technology. The importance of primary and secondary teaching is reflected in the special workshops dedicated to the relationship between history of science and technology and education. Although the first workshop took place in 2003, a number of communications on this subject have been presented at the general meetings of the Society (Trobada) since 199115. The workshops devoted to history of science and science education have been held every year, every two years as a section of the general meeting Trobada. The works presented fall in two categories: 1) studies on the history of science education; 2) application of history of science to science education. In the former case, most of the studies concerned the study of textbooks and scientific instruments. Textbooks bear witness to the daily activity of science education. If it were possible to compare these textbooks with the handwritten notes of students or teachers, the results would be more revealing. As regards scientific instruments, in the last decades there has been a process of recovering this important heritage which used to be underestimated. At present, some collections are kept in the Catalan National Museum of Science and Technology (Museu de la Ciència i de la Tècnica de Catalunya, 2006), but there are a number of other initiatives, for example at the University of Barcelona, which is currently preparing its own museum of instruments, or at the School of Industrial Engineering of Barcelona, which also has a project of Museum of Catalan Engineering16. In addition, three years ago, in another project of recovery of their scientific heritage, an exhibition in Valencia presented the collections of the University and of some secondary schools. For this exhibition, a catalogue featuring the work of researchers in Valencia was issued (Bertomeu Sánchez, & García Belmar, 2002). In the second case, history of science is used to improve science education. The idea continues to be that history is a good reference to stimulate learning. It is possible to use old processes or old mathematical demonstrations as activities in the classroom. There are several active groups investigating in Chemistry and Mathematics (Massa Esteve, 2003). 147
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The autonomous government of Catalonia is currently preparing a reform of primary and secondary education. There is a new subject on Science and Society, but it has also been decided that science education should incorporate history. For the teaching of Mathematics, for example, it is mentioned that historical cases should be used. Members of the Society and of the association of teachers of mathematics are contributing to the preparation of these historical cases. This new situation demands the inclusion of history of science in teacher training courses. In this sense, members of the Society are currently preparing an on-line course for teachers17. 7. CONCLUSION
In the last decades, history of science has played an important role in the reform of science education. Many teachers have contributed their experience and the results of their research to the new syllabus. However, the educational authorities in Spain have been slow to incorporate these contributions. At the university, the situation is similar. Some university teachers devote their free time on history of science. Some courses have been incorporated into the university degrees. Nevertheless, the university system in Spain is currently debating the new European Space of University Education. We have to await the results of this new process. One does not know at this stage if history of science will be recognised and will play an important role in the new organization of university degrees. For the time being, an “official” master in history of science is available in Barcelona. The Catalan Society for the History of Science and Technology promotes the study on the relationship between history of science and science education. In fact, the Society seeks to recover the pioneer sprit of Quintana-Marí, who had already planned to incorporate history of science into science education more than seventy years ago. His plans were interrupted by the Spanish Civil war and the imposition of a military dictatorship. NOTES 1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
14
Heilbron (1987). See also Gooday et al. (2008). López Piñero (1979); López Piñero et al. (1983). Klein (1972); Brush (1974); Holton, (1952 [1973]). On Mieli and the origins of historiography of science, see Fox (2006). The manuscript belongs to the archive of the Quintana-Marí’s family. We would express our gratitude for their generosity given facilities for consulting and copying this material. On Josep M. Millàs Vallicrosa, see Glick (1977) & Roca-Rosell (2003). Archive of Quintana-Marí’s family, Barcelona. See for example: Grup d’Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica (1988). See: “Centre de Recerca per a la Història de la Tècnica”, “Assignatures” in http://www.upc.edu/cutc See: http://www.mnactec.cat/ The information will appear in http://www.upc.edu/cutc For information about this course, see: http://www.tpti.eu See: “Master on History of Science: Science, History and Society” in http://einstein.uab.es/suab237w/ eng/default.htm See: http://schct.iec.cat
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16
17
Two separate volumes have been published: Grapí Vilumara. & Massa-Esteve (coords) (2005); Grapí Vilumara & Massa-Esteve (coords) (2007). For the inventory of the collection of the School of Industrial Engineering of Barcelona, see “Centre de Recerca per a la Història de la Tècnica”, “patrimoni històric” in http://www.upc.edu/cutc The course is prepared by the commission devoted to History of Science and Science Education of the Society.
REFERENCES Basalla, G. (1967). The spread of western science. Science, 156(3775), 611–622. Reprinted in W. K. Storey (Ed.), 1996. Scientific aspects of European expansion. Aldershot, Eng: Variorum. Bertomeu Sánchez, J. R., & García Belmar, A. (Eds.), (2002). Obrint les caixes negres. Col·lecció d’instruments científics de la Universitat de València. València: Universitat de València. Brush, S. G. (1974). Should the History of Science Be Rated X? Science, 183, 1164–1172. Camón, L., et al. (1978). Jornadas de Historia y Filosofía de las ciencias y las técnicas. CXXV aniversario de la Escuela de Ingenieros Industriales de Barcelona (1851–1976). Barcelona: CPDA-ETSEIB. Fox, R. (2006). Fashioning the discipline: History of science in the European intellectual tradition. Minerva, 44, 410–432. Glick, T. F. (1977). José María Millás Vallicrosa (1897–1970) and the founding of the history of science in Spain. Isis, 68, 276–283. Gooday, G., Graeme Gooday, John M. Lynch, Kenneth G. Wilson, and Constance K. Barsky (2008). Does science education need the history of science? Isis, 99(2), 322–330. Grapí Vilumara, P., & Massa Esteve, M. R. (coords.) (2005). Actes de la I Jornada sobre la Història de la Ciència i l’Ensenyament Antoni Quintana Marí. Barcelona: Societat Catalana d’Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica. Grapí Vilumara, P., & Massa Esteve, M. R. (coords.) (2007). Actes de la II Jornada sobre la Història de la Ciència i l’Ensenyament Antoni Quintana Marí. Barcelona: Societat Catalana d’Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica. Grup d’Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica (ETSEIB-UPC). (1988). Programa del curs 1988/1989. Barcelona: CPDA-ETSEIB. Heilbron, J. L. (1987). Applied history of science. Isis, 78, 552–563. Holton, G. (1952 [1973]). Introduction to concepts and theories in physical science. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Second Edition, revised and with new material by Stephen G. Brush. There is an Spanish translation of this Edition. Klein, M. J. (1972). The use and abuse of historical teaching in physics. In S. G. Brush & A. L. King, (Ed.), History in the teaching of physics: Proceedings of the international working seminar on the role of the history of physics in physics education. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England. López Piñero, J. M. (1979). Ciencia y técnica en la sociedad española de los siglos XVI y XVII. Barcelona: Labor. López Piñero, J. M., Glick, T. F., Navarro Brotons, V., & Portela, E. (Ed.), (1983). Diccionario histórico de la ciencia moderna en España (2 Vols.). Península, Barcelona. Lusa Monforte, G. (1995). Mantener vivo el asombro, revivir la admiración, impulsar el progreso. http://www.upc.edu/cutc/docs/Mantener vivo el asombro.pdf. Massa Esteve, M. R. (2003, December). Aportacions de la Història de la Matemàtica a l’ensenyament de la matemàtica. Biaix, 21, 4–9. McComas, W. F. (2008). Seeking historical examples to illustrate key aspects of the nature of science. Science & Education, 17, 249–263. Museu de la Ciència i de la Tècnica de Catalunya. (2006). El Laboratori de Física Experimental Mentora Alsina. Guia de l’exposició. Barcelona: Mnactec. Navarro-Brotons, V. (Ed.), (1980). Actas del Simposio: La Historia de las Ciencias y la Enseñanza. Sociedad Española de Historia de las Ciencias. Valencia: Instituto de Ciencias de la Educación, Universidad Literaria de Valencia. 149
ROCA-ROSELL Olesko, K. M. (2006). Science pedagogy as a category of historical analysis: Past, present, and future. Science & Education, 15, 863–880. Pickstone, J. V. (2000). Ways of knowing: A new history of science, technology and medicine. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Quintana-Marí, A. (1935). Valor de la Historia de la Ciencia como medio de Educación Integral y Específica del Individuo. Archeion, XVII, 218–223. Roca-Rosell, A. (1991). El caso del Congreso Internacional de 1934: ‘Guerra’ entre historiadores de la ciencia. In M. Valera & C. López Fernández (Eds.), Actas del V Congreso de la Sociedad Española de Historia de las Ciencias y de las Técnicas (Vol. II, pp. 1.066–1.084). Múrcia-Barcelona: DM-PPU. Roca-Rosell, A. (1993). Una perspectiva de la historiografia de la ciència i de la tècnica a Catalunya. In V. Navarro, V. L. Salavert, M. Corell, E. Moreno, & V. Rosselló (coords.), II Trobades de la Societat Catalana d’Història de la Ciència i de la Técnica (pp. 13–26). Barcelona: Societat Catalana d’Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica. Roca-Rosell, A. (2003). Millàs i Vallicrosa, Josep Maria. In A. Simon Tarrés (dir.) Diccionari d’Historiografia Catalana (pp. 809–811). Barcelona: Enciclopèdia Catalana. Roca-Rosell, A. (2003). Musées, technique et identité cuturelle. Alliage, 50–51, 151–164. Roca-Rosell, A., & Nieto Galan, A. (2000). Antoni Quintana i Marí (1907–1998) i la fundació d’una escola catalana d’història de la ciència. In J. Batlló Ortiz, P. De La Fuente Collell, & R. Puig Aguilar, (coords.), V Trobades d’Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica (pp. 473–483). Barcelona: Societat Catalana d’Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica.
Antoni Roca-Rosell Polytechnic University of Catalonia Catalan Society for the History of Science and Technology
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SECTION B: PRAXIS
ARTHUR STINNER
11. TEACHING MODERN PHYSICS, USING SELECTED NOBEL LECTURES
1. INTRODUCTION
Some years ago I realized that what I can do as a University educator preparing students who are planning to become physics teachers is to build on their undergraduate knowledge of modern physics using an unconventional approach. I decided to give them some enthusiasm and self confidence for the teaching of the ideas and the concepts of modern physics, using a selected number of appropriate Nobel lectures. Based on my prior experience, I was convinced that the conventional approach revisiting the main ideas of modern physics using a textbook would only lead to boredom. Using seminal papers of the great physicists of the past to teach physics is notoriously difficult. Papers by the Nobel laureates chosen that contributed to the work on which the Nobel Prize was awarded are generally inaccessible to students. However, there are many Nobel lectures that are accessible and can be fruitfully studied by students. What follow is a brief description and a rationale of the course I present to “physics teacher candidates” at the University of Manitoba. The paper also containes a shortened version of a handout produced by one of my students (in consultation with the instructor) based on the work of J. J. Thomson, as reported in his Nobel lecture. 2. DESCRIPTION OF THE PRESENTATION
I always begin my classes with a quotation by G. P. Thomson, the son of J. J. Thomson, taken from his Nobel lecture: The goddess of learning is fabled to have sprung full-grown from the brain of Zeus, but it is seldom that a scientific conception is born in its final form, or owns a single parent. More often it is a product of a series of minds, each in turn modifying the ideas of those that came before, and providing material for those that came after. The electron is no exception. I then emphasize that the Nobel lectures chosen must illustrate the interconnectidness of ideas and the dependence of new work on earlier achievements, as described in the statement (Nobel lectures chosen, with a shortened version of the citation given, are shown in the Block). P.V. Kokkotas et al., (eds.), Adapting Historical Science Knowledge Production to the Classroom, 153–157. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
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A note of explanation must be added here. Roentgen did not give an acceptance speech and Einstein’s Nobel lecture (given a year later) was not based on the work for which he was awarded the prize (photoelectric effect). For Roentgen, my students read relevant articles taken from the special edition of “History of Physics”, an AAPT publication. The Einstein acceptance speech is based on his two theories of relativity, and is generally inaccessible to students. Here I made an exception, and I ask my students to read the first part of his ultimately revolutionary 1905 paper on relativity. Finally, Rutherford received his Nobel Prize in chemistry, much to his annoyance, and the second Nobel Prize of Madame Curie was also in chemistry. The following is a shortened version of a student’s summary of the work of J. J. Thomson. This report is handed out after the PP (Power Point) presentation by the student-presenter, to be discussed in detail in the following session. Of course, appropriate diagrams and pictures are contained in the PP presentation, which are also handed out to the students. 3. CARRIERS OF NEGATIVE ELECTRICITY
Thomson begins his lecture by reviewing the experiments by Crookes to show that cathode rays travel in straight lines. These “rays” were found to be absorbed by a thin plate of mica. Two views were prevalent in 1897: one, held by English physicists, that the rays are negatively electrified bodies, shot off the cathode with great velocity, and the other, supported by German physicists, that these rays are vibrations in the ether. The arguments in favour of the rays being negatively charged particles were: they are deflected by electric and magnetic fields, as we expect moving charges to behave, and they can be confined in a vessel to give up their negative charges. If the electric field E and the magnetic field B are so arranged that the forces cancel we have: Bev = Ee Therefore: v = E/B where B is the magnetic field, e the charge on the negative particle, v is the velocity of the particle (in the horizontal direction) and e the electric charge of the particle. We can now determine the velocity of the particles. It turns out that the velocity can be as high as 1/3 the velocity of light, or about 60,000 miles per second. Having found the velocity of the rays, we can determine the e/m ratio of the particle. When the particles find themselves in a constant electric field they experience a constant force. The physics here is like that of a bullet projected 154
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horizontally with a velocity v and being acted upon by a gravitational force. It is easy to show that the displacement of the particle will be given by: d = ½ Ee l2/mv2 where l is the horizontal length, m the mass of the particle. We can now find the displacement d and then calculate the e/m ratio of the particle: e/m = V/B2l2 Thomson expressed this as: e/m = Vș/B2ld where ș = d/l This ratio seems to be independent of the velocity as well as the kind of electrodes we use! The value for e/m found was about 1.7x107 as measured in the cgs system of units. The value of this ratio found for atoms of hydrogen was only about 104. Therefore, this ratio for the corpuscle associated with cathode rays is about 1700 times larger. The conclusion Thomson reached was that the mass of the corpuscle was about 1/1700 that of the hydrogen atom. There are many sources of cathode rays: metals heated to a high temperature, and any substance when heated gives out corpuscles to some degree; sodium and potassium give off negative corpuscles even when cold and exposed to light. Radioactive materials (uranium and radium) emit them continuously and at very high velocities. Thomson goes on to describe how the newly discovered Wilson cloud chamber has assisted physicists to show those properties described above. He also discusses a first attempt to find the charge on these particles using Stokes’ law. He then estimates the charge on a particle to be about 3.0x10-10 electrostatic units, or about 10-20 electromagnetic units. Since we know the charge to mass ratio, we can now estimate the mass of the negatively charged particle. This mass turns out to be about 6x10-28 g. The conclusion then is that in all known cases in which negative electricity occurs in gases at very low pressures, it occurs in the form of corpuscles, small bodies with an invariable charge and mass. 4. QUESTIONS BASED ON THE NOBEL LECTURE BY J.J. THOMSON
1. In what year did J.J. Thomson discover his “negatively charged corpuscle”, we now call electron? 2. What were the two hypotheses about what cathode rays are initially? 155
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3. What were the main arguments in favour of the particle theory of cathode rays? 4. What were the two main conclusions about the “particle” that was discovered? 5. What physical arrangement allowed the calculation of the velocity of the particle? 6. About how fast did these particles move? 7. What are some of the sources of these particles? 8. How was the Wilson cloud chamber used to find the charge of the particles? 9. How did Thomson estimate the mass of the particle? 10. Thomson concludes his lecture by stating that: In all known cases in which electricity occurs in gases at very low pressures, it occurs in the form of corpuscles, small bodies with an invariable charge and mass. The case is entirely different with positive electricity. What did he mean? Main concepts: Electric field, magnetic field, electric charge, force, potential difference, kinetic energy. Relevant Articles: “The discovery of the electron: a centenary”, by Leif Gerward, Physics Education, and “J. J. Thomson, The Electron, and Atomic Structure”, by Helge Kragh, The Physics Teacher, Sept. 1997. 5. QUESTIONS AND PROBLEMS
1. How do physicists produce a constant electric field? A constant magnetic field? Explain. 2. Who first suggested the name of electron for Thomson’s electric corpuscle? When was this suggested? 3. What were the arguments and evidence for believing that cathode rays are negatively charged particles? 4. Describe how Thomson set up his apparatus and explain how he found the e/m ratio of the electron? 5. How did Thomson estimate the charge on the electron? 6. In our experiment, we used a 2000 V potential difference for both the plate voltage and the anode voltage. The coil had 320 turns, and its diameter was 15 cm. The plate separation was 5.0 cm, and the length of the plate 7.0 cm. The ammeter reading of the current was 1.0 Amps. Using the method of Thomson, calculate the e/m ratio, based on these figures. 6. COMPARISON WITH A “TYPICAL” CONTEMPORARY TEXTBOOK PRESENTATION
1. Read the textbook presentation of J.J. Thomson experiment and compare the content with the historical description, taken directly from the Nobel lecture. Comment. 2. Here is one of the questions in the text: “Electrons move with through a 6.0x10-2T magnetic field balanced by a 3.0x103N/C electric field”. What is the speed of 156
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the electrons? What assumptions does the author make about students conceptual understanding? How would you change, or extend the problem in order to go beyond just testing the students’ ability to “plug in values” and find an answer? 7. CONCLUSIONS
My students have generally found the reading, the studying, and the discussions of the selected Nobel lectures refreshingly different from the lecture-based and textbook-centered presentations in their undergraduate years. Revisiting the basic ideas, concepts and empirical evidence presented in textbooks using this historical approach allows students to read the summary of the work of a Nobel laureate from an accessible primary source. It is hoped that having had this background study they not only understand the basic ideas of modern physics better but also have developed confidence and enthusiasm to present them on a level accessible to their physics students in high school. 8. BLOCK
– Wilhelm Roentgen (1901) “The discovery of the remarkable rays named after him”. – J.J. Thomson (1906) “The experimental investigations on the conduction of electricity by gases”. - Our emphasis is the discovery of the electron. – Ernest Rutherford (1908) “The chemistry of radioactive substances”. – William Henry Bragg and William Lawrence Bragg (1915/22) “The analysis of crystal structure by means of x-rays”. – Madame Curie (1903, 1911) “The discovery of the elements radium and polonium”. – Niels Bohr (1922) “The structure of atoms and of the radiation emanating from them”. – Albert Einstein (1921) “The discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect”. – Robert Millikan (1923) “The elementary charge of electricity and on the photoelectric effect”. – Arthur Compton (1927) “For his discovery of the effect named after him”. – Lois de Broglie (1929) “The discovery of the wave nature of electrons”. – James Chadwick (1935) “The discovery of the neutron”. – G.P. Thomson (1937) “The experimental discovery of the diffraction of electrons”. Dr. Arthur Stinner, Professor of Science Education Faculty of Education, University of Manitoba
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ELIZABETH CAVICCHI
12. CLASSROOM EXPLORATIONS WITH PENDULUMS, MIRRORS, AND GALILEO’S DRAMA
1. INTRODUCTION
Ordinary things pass under our notice. We may assume we know what to expect from them, without ever having set aside the space to scratch beneath those unexamined assumptions, contemplate the behavior and wonder what is going on. Through carving out space for observing and rethinking everyday things, scientists in history generated questions and understandings that unsettled views prevailing at their time. In the swinging of a pendulum, Galileo gained evidence that contributed to new means of investigating and comprehending motions and relationships in the world. Galileo’s trial thrust into prominence the inextricability of that scientific undertaking from a wider matrix of beliefs, pressures and experiences; its reverberations extend across subsequent science. This paper follows students in my science class as they came to their own curiosities about ordinary things and experienced these curiosities in relation to Galileo’s researches and his trial. Science education often undermines the inextricability among ordinary things, human investigation, and the surrounding worlds of culture and nature. Instruction treating science in isolation from student experiences leaves students feeling that their minds and actions do not matter in science. Objecting to this practice in her high school physics course, one student told an interviewer, “Don’t just teach me the facts… Let me see and think for myself!” (Hughes-McDonnell, 2000, p. 1). Surveys of science students report that classroom experiments may be fun but do not engender the observation-based critical thinking that this student advocated (Angell, 2004; Coleman et al., 1998). As an effort to build such an environment in the science classroom and analyze it so as to support students’ thoughtful participation, researchers collaborated with five middle school teachers in conducting a three week curriculum, beginning with a competition to design, make and test model boats and expanding along paths of children’s questions about their boats (Schauble et al., 1995). By the end, most children could articulate what they had done and propose a revision to their experiments. Like the physics student quoted above, these researchers decried science presented in isolation from student involvement, and instead argued for “sustained periods of real experimentation” by students (p. 158). In making my classroom a space where students investigate ordinary things, I seek to bring about personal experiences relating students to the natural world, each other, and historical efforts (Cavicchi, 2008a, 2008b, 2007, 2005, 1999). While this integration among classroom activities and experiences might seem to be a condition P.V. Kokkotas et al., (eds.), Adapting Historical Science Knowledge Production to the Classroom, 159–179. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
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that comes about on its own, in fact it depends on a teacher’s observant participation. Teachers in the study of Schauble et al. found they had to adopt such new classroom practices as becoming aware of opportunities for reasoning as these arose in students’ activities and responding with challenges and encouragement. Similarly for me, I find that by interacting with students as their investigation emerges, opportunities arise for extending what they do, develop, and learn. My classroom observing and interactions are a research into the process of learning, just as my students are doing their own researches with pendulums, mirrors and history. Whereas in Schauble’s study, classroom researchers collaborated with teachers, in mine, my teaching is at the same time research. In teaching, I am seeking to observe, understand and extend what goes on in: the classroom, students’ work, my teaching, and materials of science and history. This research pedagogy, called critical exploration, was developed by Eleanor Duckworth (Duckworth, 1973/2006, 1986/2006, 1991/2006, 2005/2006) from the clinical interviewing of Jean Piaget (1926) and Bärbel Inhelder (1974) and the experimental teaching of the 1960s Elementary Science Study (1970). Critical exploration uses Piaget and Inhelder’s findings that children’s actions on things, and their thinking, are the means by which they construct knowledge and develop new capacities. A teacher sets up a classroom critical exploration to allow curriculum to evolve as students engage with it. By doing research, the teacher looks for developments in understandings that students express in relation to the curriculum –and of developments in the teacher, in relation to provocatively bringing students together with curriculum. Since these developments happen in the midst of activities, research reports on critical explorations preserve narrative context. Students document what they do; this helps them notice how their understandings develop. The teacher also documents class activities; this assists her in making teaching decisions and reporting to other teachers. Participants in critical explorations discern properties in everyday phenomena that they had not suspected were there, and realize ways that their study links to wider surroundings. For example, a group of Genevan teachers who explored floating and sinking with Eleanor Duckworth as their teaching/learning researcher, dealt thoughtfully with such ambiguities as that, when they poured more water into a pail containing a sealed plastic bag containing air and small objects, the bag did not lift off the pail’s bottom and float (Duckworth, 1986/2001). At the end of this eight week exploration, one participating teacher reflected that through working out understandings of floating and sinking, her core perception of the world and its behaviors evolved. She was now a questioner: I have the impression of having understood… why one object sinks and another floats… I have opened my eyes to a lot of notions that hadn’t interested me before. For example: why in a mountain chalet does the condensation form on the outside window, while in my Geneva apartment it forms on the inside window? One question leads to another and another. You start asking about everything (Duckworth, 1986/2001, p. 37). Students in my class also perceived a personal deepening in awareness. One student, Noam, described how rereading what he did and wrote during the course, 160
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enabled him “to see the progression and curiosity in my work” (Shabani, 2007) Noam’s sense of being in process supported him in making the insight that Galileo too developed in the course of, and by means of, experimenting and living. Rather than being static, fixed, and over, both science and history became dynamic in myriad ways having dramatic resonances for Noam and his classmates. Looking closely into some of their explorations with pendulums, mirrors, and Galileo, this paper documents education where curiosity grew while continuing to expand relations among what goes on in the classroom, everyday life, and history. 2. COURSE OVERVIEW
My class, in which Noam and his classmates participated, is a science course in the Honors Program at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Students are admitted to this program on the basis of grades and exam scores. During their sophomore, junior and senior years, these students are required to take several enriching courses which are only offered through the nondepartmental Honors Program. Honors courses engage students in intellectually challenging work in interdisciplinary areas with in-depth study and resources beyond the classroom such as field trips. Titled “Science Experimenting: Learning from Nature, History and Ourselves”, my course fulfilled a lab science requirement as well as meeting Honors Program expectations. Most sessions met in a lab where students experimented with a wide range of materials such as: string, weights, mirrors, water, glass vessels, baby powder, light sources, laser pointers, magnets, batteries, wires. I developed and taught this course first in 2005 with nine students (Cavicchi, 2007, 2009); when next teaching it in the 2007 semester discussed here, the class size doubled. Like the school’s population at large, students in this class came with diverse backgrounds and academic aims. Many had grown up in part outside the US; having done some of their schooling on another continent including Europe, Africa, Asia and South America, English was not their first, or only, language. Others were longtime residents of Boston. Most had already declared a major; these included: Psychology, Mathematics, Nursing, Management, Classical Languages, Biology, Computer Science and Sociology. None had taken a college-level physics course; a few were also attending a chemistry or biology course. While in college, some students worked long hours at jobs or internships in: a hospital, nursing, hairdressing, showroom sales in kitchen décor or computers, military training. In response to a reflective writing assignment early in the course, students recalled having a childhood curiosity sparked by: stars, death, snow, softened candle wax, rocks and trees. At the beginning of the course, some students knew no one else while others were friends or previous classmates. I hoped to develop a science classroom where students could act from the fullness of their personal experience and learn from the particular and differing outlooks of others. Thus I structured assignments, activities and resources to engage students with the openness of exploration, where “one question leads to another and another” as observed by the teacher quoted above (Duckworth, 1986/2001, p. 37). Class sessions included time for students to explore science materials in small groups, and time to discuss, as a class, what they found in those explorations, and 161
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our readings from historical science. Between classes, they did activities at home and wrote about this work and our readings. Readings, assignments and other resources were available on a class website which I expanded continually. Everyone kept a notebook on their explorations in the class lab and at home. During the last half of the term, I asked each student to select a science phenomenon that interested them and investigate it outside of class. They shared these project activities with others during class and in writing. Topics varied from mirror reflection to bass vibrations from a speaker to the processes underlying granite countertop surfaces. From week to week, I developed class activities and assignments that related to what students were doing, and at the same time challenged them to take it further or observe by a new perspective. I wrote individual responses to each homework by which I raised questions that might provoke thinking and extend the interests that I saw emerging in that student’s work. Through this responsive method of designing assignments and reacting to individual’s work, I seek to support each student in becoming aware that their own observations and thoughts are fertile grounds for science experiments and understandings. At the same time that I encouraged individual students to experience themselves as explorers, I also planned activities that brought students to listen to each other and learn as a community. An assignment titled “shared class notes” illustrates this practice. Each week, the students and I documented what unfolded in experiments and discussion. During the first month of meetings, I used these records to compile a summary of what happened in class, which I distributed at the next meeting. These summaries include quotes from discussion, descriptions of experiments, questions, photos, and references. During the remainder of the term, I assigned three students each week to compose a summary of what they observed in class, and circulate it next time with the others. To prepare a summary meant students had to listen closely to each other and express in their own words the work of others. Then, when the rest of the class read those three summaries, they noticed differing and connecting perspectives on the same shared experience. I integrated historical materials of science into the class experience in many ways: readings and activities based on historical experiments; a visit to the MIT Museum and its exhibit of historical simple microscopes (Giodano, 2006); a visit to a special collections library; guest Elaheh Kheirandish who spoke on optics in the medieval Islamic world and guest Zuraya Monroy-Nasr who discussed history and philosophy of science. In addition to these historical resources, I developed a major assignment on Galileo and his trial. The students presented on Galileo during two class sessions using a variety of formats, including PowerPoint presentations, posters, recreations of Galilean experiments, blackboard arguments, conducting a provocative class discussion, and a short original drama. Everyone wrote a short reflective paper based on these Galileo presentations. The research that I was doing, as a teacher, to attend to each student’s interest, confusions and potential, also records developments in teaching and learning during the course. The discussions below excerpt from those records, kept by the students and myself, in explorations and experiments done in and out of class, in my own teaching responses, and in work that emerged through the Galileo presentation 162
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assignment. Since teaching is a process reflective on itself, more can be learned by reviewing, narrating, reentering. In the possibilities that came to be, we see the resilience of the subject together with students’ curiosities. Historical knowledge production in the classroom carried over into each facet of the course. In experimenting with mirrors and pendulums, and watching the night sky, students became aware of much going on in the physical world that they had overlooked before. By encountering readings and artifacts from historical science at the same time, they realized that others in the past witnessed and wondered about these things. While the students were used to academic settings that privilege answers, under this course’s requirement that they look closely, interact with materials and interpret what happens, relying on answers began to seem inadequate and limiting. Through my teaching efforts to continually open up domains for further activity even in what students assumed they had already covered, I tried to unsettle their inclination to accept premature conclusions. In addition, the historical examples from Galileo and others connected with students’ own experiences and supported them in developing as explorers that seek questions and are critical of authoritative answers. 3. PENDULUMS
I started off our first class activity saying: “suspend a weight on a string. Pull the weight back, let it go, watch. What do you notice? What can you vary?”1 From structures around the room, the students improvised supports: hands; ring stands; handles on the lab shower; the electric plugs over each lab bench! Hanging on long electric cords, these plugs looked so much like pendulums that someone set them swinging. Then, strings bearing weights were tied to the hooks ending these plugs. Releasing the weight put both plug line and string into motion. The plug line went like a pendulum and the weighted string acted as a second pendulum on its end! (Figure 1).
Figure 1. The hanging power cord with a weight on a string hung from it, while at rest (left) and swinging (next). Drawings by C. Gomez (2007). Photo of power cord and pendulum assembly. Right: Bar of lab shower support a string pendulum and its hanging handle; both swing. 163
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Two students tied a weight on a string to the plumbing of the lab shower (Figure 1, Right). They pulled back and released that weight together with the shower’s handle, which hung from the same support. The weight and the handle made up two pendulums. Was one going faster? How were the two motions relating to each other? At first both went back and forth, then the paths became circular. The handle kept swinging longer than the weight. The following week, I handed out a summary based on what I observed during the activity: Try ‘same weight, shorter string’. Hang two pendulum strings from the same point or hand, or beside each other. Two types of string: try with one string, and then ‘change the type of string’. Compare the two strings: Does one have less tension, go for longer or further? Compare two pendulums of same length string, where the weights are different. Is it proportional to weight? ‘I wonder what happens if I do this?’ Do two pendulums sway together? Is one driving the other? Is one going faster? What makes it swing longer? There are a ‘ton of things to write down’… ‘a lot of factors’. Questions, trial runs, ideas for experiments, inferences about what affects the motion, emerged from what the students did. I see this as an emergent curriculum. Amid the playfulness of pitting one pendulum against another and the seemingly odd assemblies like the swinging shower handle, the students were identifying core features of the phenomena and proposing experimental tests in the interest of working out how these matter. Already, in taking what they noticed seriously enough to recognize that there are “a lot of factors”, the students engaged with swinging motions through a complex context of associations. Through their further explorations, the students’ contact with that complexity would branch out and interconnect yet more in physical ‘factors’ and human experiences, including historical ones. Other critical exploration studies (Duckworth, 1986/2001; McKinney, 2004; Schneier, 2001) show that when a subject matter is provided in its full complexity, students find their own entries into it. The personal curiosity excited in this process moves them to continue looking closer, exploring, and reflecting on what they observe. At the same time, the subject matter itself, by being complex, sustains the multitude of students’ investigations while invariantly confronting them with its distinctive properties and relationships. For example, the next week, I asked the class to talk about their pendulums along with a paragraph they’d read by Galileo (1638/1914, sec.140–1, p. 97). I wrote what they said on the board. Questions like: –Does weight matter? Will it stop?– coalesced with techniques like –Start two same weights on different length strings; and use the ceiling pipes to hang a long pendulum. The class broke into groups. The long line group set up a single pendulum and successively refined its mounting. John climbed on a table, tossed a washer tied to a fishing line over the ceiling pipe, and looped it into a knot (Figure 2, Left). Our largest weight, 20 oz, 164
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Figure 2. Left: The long string hangs from a ceiling pipe down to the paper where Yelana’s hand is about to pull the bob back. Middle Top: Diagram of pendulum on ceiling pipe. Middle Bottom: Interpretive sketch of the bob’s successive oval path. Drawings by Y. Zhadanovsky (2007). Right: Two pendulums hang from a single support.
was tied at the line’s bottom end. Immediately after it got started swinging, someone bumped it; they had to start over. Now Noam, a biology major, noticed that the washer at the top interfered with the motion. On redoing the attachment without a washer, the line slipped. An attempt to reduce friction and anchor it better with tighter knot, gave rise to Noam’s idea to drill a vertical hole in the ceiling pipe and thread the string through it. He explained what drove this persistence to ever-improve the apparatus: “We are trying to get it perfect. Because maybe in a non perfect situation, it would stop and in a perfect situation, it wouldn’t.” (Shabani, 2007). “Will it stop?” Surprising to me, this question of the students reveals the different grounding of their view, from conventional instruction. Their concerns to reduce friction, their patience to count all the swings, respond to the role of energy. This relates to the Pendulum Project’s identification of the study of energy conservation as a counterpart to that of time, in history (Stinner, 2007; Bevilacqua et al., 2005). Having that outlook, my students observed effects that are not typically acknowledged. Noam wrote: “The one thing that puzzles me is why the swing stops moving back and forth, and eventually takes the shape of an oval.” (Shabani, 2007). Nothing he did eliminated it –he even looked up the oval online and found nothing! The oval path was a genuine finding. Yelena sketched it (Figure 2, Middle). Participants in the groups doing string length comparisons corroborated it too (Figure 2, Right). And when they spoke of the longer string lasting longer, they meant – longer until it stops. The short string had stopped sooner by hitting its ring stand support. By contrast, the Galileo quote took a time perspective, in reporting that whether a pendulum goes through a large or a small arc, its swing time is the same. It intrigued and puzzled me when students did not pick up on this analysis in writing reflectively about it. Yet they found other entries into this rich quote which connected to the 165
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experimenting they were doing and its surprises. Resonating with Sagredo’s comment that: from such common and trivial phenomena, you (Salviati/Galileo) derive facts which are not only striking and new, but which are often far removed from what we would have imagined (Galileo, 1638/1914, sec.140–1, p. 97), Christina wrote: “people are able to accomplish amazing things if they pay attention to every detail” (Buonomo, 2007). The students were recognizing some of these details in the attachments and motions of their pendulums. The Galileo quote provoked Carolina to ponder: “What were Galileo’s experimental capacities? How can I relate them to my own?” (Gomez, 2007).
Figure 3. Left: The bob swings on a string that passes through a hole in a wood board which is mounted between the backs of two chairs. Pulling on the string from above the board shortens the pendulum length. Right: Drawing by N. Shabani (2007).
Next week, I assigned Galileo’s experiment where a pendulum string passes through a hook so it can be shortened while swinging (Galilei, 1632/2001, p. 522). Redoing this, they passed the string through a hole I’d drilled in a board, in response to Noam’s idea that a drill hole would make a more ideal string support (Figure 3). On pulling the string from above the hole, while swinging the weight below, the swing rate quickened with its shortening string. Veronica expressed wonder: “It was EXTREMELY cool how the speed of the pendulum was affected by the length of the string.” (Lantigua, 2007). Noam, focused on extending the swinging time, found that with the drill hole support, a constant-length pendulum swung for the entire class! (Shabani, 2007). While our classtime activities went on to other things from there, several students pursued their own questions about the pendulum in investigations done at home, parts of which were shared with the class. By timing a single pendulum swing at different lengths and weights, Koffi, a math major, concluded that only the first of these variables mattered –and wondered what else might affect it. Interestingly, John, a classic major who in our first class swung a pendulum from his hands, researched a pendulum’s magical associations with truth-telling. He asked class 166
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members to hand-held a pendulum while saying something false or true. According to the tradition, the pendulum’s swing direction exposes either veracity or deceit. Curiosity about the pendulum clock’s origins in history infused Murielle’s extensive research of the pendulum. Like Noam, she was looking for the conditions that made for a “better pendulum”. She was not looking to establish a particular time interval. Calling her project “The Weight of Time”, Murielle, a nursing student, wanted to know whether different masses of a pendulum effect the time of a pendulum swing. If so how did early scientists decide the appropriate weight of the pendulum to be used in clocks in order to keep exact time? (Casseus, 2007). Borrowing my drill hole boards, she rested them between clothes hampers at home, so as to have side-by-side pendulums (Figure 4). She tracked down discrepancies between the two boards and their mounting. With this setup, she tested many factors alone and in multiple combinations including: string length, string thickness, string texture, wire strings, weight, string thickness combined with weight, string length. By generating experimental possibilities that she projected in advance and tested directly, Murielle worked out an understanding of multiple dimensions going on in the phenomena. For example, she found that a heavier weight on a lighter string persisted in swinging for longer than if either factor was altered.
Figure 4. The board supports for two pendulums rest on clothing hampers (left and middle) and a dresser (right). By watching the two different length pendulums swing side-by-side, Murielle observed the shorter one swings faster. Drawing by M. Casseus (2007).
Coming to this inference took critical work on Murielle’s part. She had to trust, and recheck, her experimental work, even as it “disproved” both her own initial hypothesis and one class member’s authoritatively delivered statement that physics says “weight doesn’t matter”. This took courage –courage which Murielle expressed in other ways within the class community, and on her own. In Galileo, and the 167
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history, she found nourishment for having fortitude in making sense of science for herself. She wrote: “Galileo’s persistence towards finding and executing his theories motivated me in my own experimentation… I did encounter some opposition to my project… [I was condemned for] making too much noise… while this is no comparison to the opposition Galileo faced… it is still an opposition to discovery.” (Casseus, 2007). 4. MIRRORS
Mirrors and light were another area of class activities and a theme in our historical readings and museum visits. Since we use mirrors everyday, students assumed that there was nothing to find out about mirrors. When I first introduced mirrors in class, what the students did bore out their limited experience –and yet already there were curiosities to notice. For example, two students, Gabriela and Koffi, stood on either side of a refrigerator and didn’t see each other directly, but when John put a mirror before them, one saw the other (Figure 5, Left). Similarly, a mirror held over the heads of two people let them see each other. But, quickly becoming facile at placing a mirror so something else could be seen with it, some students called this activity “very easy”, and one wondered what she was “missing”. Seeking to bring about more provocative involvement with mirrors, I looked for passages in their work that might open to future exploration. I did this as a piece of research: I studied my notes, photos and other records of the class activities, and I examined everyone’s homework assignments. From this data, I compiled a list of questions and activities that originated directly or indirectly in what the students were puzzling about: Size of mirror: What is it like when a mirror is very big or very small? What can a mirror show, based on its size? Can any size mirror show any thing? What size of mirror is large enough for a person to see all of their own face? Does it matter how far they are? What is going on with the size of an image seen in a mirror? What is going on with letters and things seen backwards in mirrors? Looking in multiple mirrors, seeing behind you Seeing behind an object, at different distances Where does light reflected back from a mirror go? Changing positions and distances of viewer and object from mirror Read, try to understand and try out, Euclid’s passage on the mirror. Crediting those students whose work engendered these questions, I asked the class to select something from the list as the starting place for their next exploration, whether it was theirs, or not. I also expanded the array of lab materials that were available to use, including curved mirrors, mylar, and small lamps. This time, activities conducted with intent, playful, and sustained participation broke out in our lab rooms, exhibiting light’s behaviors in diverse ways. Whereas so far, students had only used the mirrors to view reflected images, this time one group shone a lamp’s light at a mirror and tried to follow what happened to the light. Frustrations over working with the lamp in a lit room gave rise to the 168
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Figure 5. Left: Gabriela and Koffi stand on either side of a refrigerator, seeing each other only in the mirror held by John. Right: Top-view diagram using a line to show light from a laser, at the right of the table, passing to one mirror on the table, then another, then a third mirror at the top of the diagram, and a fourth mirror (bottom) that is outside the classroom door. Drawing by N. Shabani (2007).
idea to use a laser pointer. One student had brought a laser pointer, but its batteries died. An attempt to run it off AA batteries failed. Disappearing for awhile, Koffi returned with a much stronger, borrowed laser pointer. When shone at a mirror, the laser’s light went elsewhere in the room. Placing another mirror to intercept that reflected beam, someone sent it off in another direction. Challenging themselves to get the laser’s light into the next room, the group set up a sequence of mirrors with tape and stands (Figure 5, Right). Finding where to put the next mirror was an exploratory process. Through trying to locate the laser’s light with a hand or a shirt, Noam and Carolina conceived the idea to expose the beam’s path. With the room lights off, they sprinkled sand into the beam. Its light briefly sparkled in the sand. Wondering about how a cosmetic mirror magnifies and a convex mirror shrinks, Shannon tried to analyze that with diagrams (Figure 6, Left). In a prior study exquisite in its emergence of inference through observation, she had already established for herself its equal-angle path at a flat mirror. Trying to apply it to the curve, she became confused. She doubted her diagram. Doubt deepened; she was unsure about the rule for reflection. This struggle was productive; it brought her to see how dependent she’d been on teachers telling her what was wrong. Here, she had to work that out for herself. The reality of her doubt became a resource in realizing that learning encompasses failures. A similar self-realization arose for Cintia, who stated off that day by writing across her notebook the claim: “today we are going to finish up on mirrors”. Selecting from my list John’s question about backwards letters, she lettered the word “MIRROR” and traced its surprising reversals through multiple reflections (Figure 6, Middle, Right). How did it work? Cintia was unsettled. Later she reflected I wanted answers… I was missing the point at first. But eventually I caught on. The history of mirrors and how they were built before were all fascinating stories. I finally stopped and realized that mirrors are very cool and if we pay attention to the details of the shapes and materials, we would appreciate them more. Now when I look at mirrors 169
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anywhere, I’m more aware of them and I stop to observe them. Something I never did before (Crespo, 2007). For Cintia, reading about ancient mirrors of the Olmec civilization in Central America (Carlson, 1981) assisted her in working through the unsettledness of not having definitive answers, to really look and wonder at the world.
Figure 6. Left: Diagram using arrows to represent light’s reflections at a flat and concave mirror. Drawing by S. Kiley (2007). Middle: Lettering of the word MIRROR. Right: Viewing MIRROR through multiple mirrors.
As for Cintia, class explorations were disequilibrating for Gabriela. Wanting to do things right, Gabriela’s outlook in approaching these activities was “Ok, what am I suppose to do?” (Antunes, 2007). She came to a new place in relation to exploration through many many interactions across the term, including her in-depth study of Cardinal Bellarmine for the Galileo presentation; watching classmate Carolina’s spontaneous curiosity; the complexity and interest of the historical stories our guest speakers shared; class assignments. Experiencing what it was like to “crack open my wonder”, Gabriela aspired to facilitate this for others with her project sharing (Antunes, 2007). Gabriela laid out flat, concave and convex mirrors on the table. Being with two or three classmates at a time, she asked: “How does reflections/mirror allow you to see more? … What intrigues you about what you see in the reflection or using a mirror?” (Antunes, 2007). Gabriela’s effort resonated with Cintia, who collaborated with Noam in her activity. Gabriela recorded in detail what they did with the mirrors. Confusion and delight spurred Cintia and Noam to put convex with concave mirrors in sequence in search of a “normal” sized image, or in opposition to produce an “infinity” of imaged “mes” (Figure 7; Antunes, 2007). Afterwards, Cintia wrote: “[with Gabriela] I got another chance with the mirrors. This time around, I was much more into really focusing my observations and saying what I was thinking out loud. I will always remember the different shapes and their purposes. If they are convex or concave they reflect differently. It was wonderful to understand the purpose of thinking science. I gave the mirrors a chance and I explored them, and I discovered many things I didn’t know, or never stopped to think about that were right in front of me. I finally saw how interesting it is to think about things in a scientific way.” (Crespo, 2007). 170
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Figure 7. Left: Noam and Cintia use concave and convex mirrors in sequence to try to produce a “normal” sized image. Right: Noam looks between two opposing mirrors at “an infinity of mes” (Antunes, 2007).
For these students, what mirrors do was no longer obvious, no longer in any danger of being “finished off ”. Through mirror views, they gained access to seeing in a more probing way –to actually notice that the reflective surface’s shape makes a difference, and that maybe, as Shannon considered, there are rules or patterns at work in what light does. By bringing themselves into relation to phenomena of the world, these observations provided key grounds for beginning explorations. Yet the students’ development in exploring took place by a bigger context than just mirror reflections. In connecting students such as Cintia and Gabriela with mirrors as part of a process and culture of making and use, our historical readings opened space for them to see and value their own interactions with mirrors. They had to claim that space from intrusions by a practice of making and using answers that they had accepted without realizing that as acceptance, or that there were alternatives. Galileo’s story brought this issue into relief in the tension between authority and inquiry. 5. DRAMAS EVOKED THROUGH GALILEO PRESENTATIONS
Into the course, I interwove activities relating to Galileo through topics of pendulums, astronomy, history, and Galileo’s works. These included: reading short quotes from Galileo’s pendulum work, relating those to our pendulum experiments, discussing in class; observing the night sky, reading Galileo’s Sidereus Nuncius (Galileo, 1610/1989), writing Galileo a letter, discussing in class; reading introductions to Galileo by Heilbron (2001) and Einstein (1953/2001), writing a reflection and list of questions, discussing in class; looking through many volumes of Galileo’s Opere (1968/1929–1939) in Italian in the library study room, writing a reflection. 171
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These activities formed a context relating to Galileo that the class shared in common, as a backdrop for the diverse themes of their Galileo Presentations. In addition to informing their work on Galileo, the students drew on these readings, activities and discussions as a core from which their investigative work developed. For example, many students continued watching the night sky, documenting it in drawings, photos, and writing. Taking time to look at pendulums or the sky opened their awareness of things they had seen, but not truly noticed before. In the wonder that students experienced, they identified a personal connection with Galileo. Linda wrote: “I could feel what he felt. The surprise of such profound thinking and striking findings derived from such trivial things such as an object dangling from a string…” (Chu, 2007). Jeiying wrote: “I can see a little dark spot on the moon…that Galileo mentioned…” (Lin, 2007). Noam realized: “The moon that he drew is almost exactly the same as our moon today. Obviously this isn’t anything new, but to me it really brings me close to Galileo. We both see the same things; in a way…2 it makes him more real to me.” (Shabani, 2007). Renata asked Galileo: “How did you get into all of this? What sparked your interest?” (Decarvalho, 2007). I adapted my Galileo assignment from the historical simulation titled “Debating Galileo’s Trial” that Douglas Allchin developed and demonstrated at meetings of the International History, Philosophy, and Science Teaching group and the History of Science Society3. Allchin’s students recreate Galileo’s 1633 trial by opposing a “Church Team” against a “Galileo Team”. He acts as the Grand Inquisitor. The class votes on the outcome. I broadened the story to include history prior to the trial, and its aftermath into our future. The students’ individual or group presentations on Galileo took up part of two classes. The presentations spanned many perspectives and delivery formats, from a short blackboard lecture on logic, to a thorough study of Galileo’s thinking on Scripture, to quotes excerpted from students’ writing about Galileo, to a participatory class discussion, to an original monologue involving Galileo’s trial set in the future. While there were various mishaps in setting up PowerPoints on the projector and keeping the presentations in time, the talks held everyone’s interest. The anxiety some felt about speaking traded with fascination in hearing everyone else’s efforts. Renata wrote: “Presenting my project was exciting because I got to share all I learned; hearing others present was interesting because it was things I never knew about.” (Decarvalho, 2007). One student who had to leave early said she felt bad to miss any of it. The multiplicity of responses to one historical story both amazed my students and brought about personal curiosity and connection to Galileo. Murielle wrote: “I felt like everyone adapted their own way of presenting Galileo’s story.” (Casseus, 2007). Yelena observed: “I loved how even in the story of one man, everyone found something that they were interested in and could present on.” (Zhadanovsky, 2007). Shannon perceived a relationship between the Galileo presentations which came together as a class activity and the investigating she was about to commence on her own: “when we had concluded our historical exploration with the Galileo presentations, I was amazed at how much information we had all collected about 172
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different aspects in his life. From his daughter, who was a nun, to the church trials. I was also very intrigued by the introduction of other scientists through history who were both inspirational to him and inspired by him. It really helps to exemplify how interconnected the learning experience is, or should be. It was therefore quite daunting to venture off on a project I would be doing myself since most of the course we’ve relied on one another for ideas and support” (Kiley, 2007). The intensity of Galileo’s story gave rise to dramatic reverberations in the class and for students personally. Drama is explicit in Brecht’s play (1937/1994) that a group reported on, and one student’s evocative enactment of her own futuristic vision of struggles between exploring and authority. Yet qualities of drama – development, reflection and realization– arose through other students’ presentations as well. As Ødegaard (2003) observed in reviewing uses of drama in the science classroom, students are reconstructing and reworking their understandings in blending personal experience with elements of drama. Four examples from my class illustrate the ways drama enriched students’ personal experiences with historical insights: Noam and Linda’s sharing on the tides; Murielle’s question for discussion; Veronica’s insight from politics; Henry’s experimental project. I assigned Noam and Linda to read Day 4 of Galileo’s Dialogue (1632/2001), redo some pendulum experiments, and show how Galileo argued about the tides in support of Copernican views. A scuba diver, Noam knew the lunar explanation of tides. When he started this project, it appalled him that Galileo got the tides so wrong. Wanting his classmates to hear from him how tides work, Noam was uneasy about just reporting on Galileo without adding an update. Noam and Linda took their partnership seriously. The understanding they worked out showed beautifully in their presentation as they switched off antiphonally from each other, sometimes completing each other’s thoughts (Figure 8, Left). They projected Galileo’s diagram on the whiteboard. To illustrate earth’s motions around the sun and its axis, they moved their hands along the paths and drew directly on the board in superimposition with the historical drawing. Linda and Noam demonstrated the back and forth motion of a pendulum, then of water in an aquarium and a test tube, while describing how Galileo interpreted tidal motions as evidence of the vessel earth’s motions (Figure 8, Right). Noam ended their tightly interwoven presentation with scholar Stillman Drake’s appreciation of Galileo’s efforts to observe nature, not accept what others said. Then Noam concluded with a passionate statement: “to say Galileo was wrong” about the tides, is to miss what he did. “Galileo’s exploring, even though incorrect, is a step forward” (Shabani, 2007). While Noam’s spontaneity imparted dramatic closure, it did more. With it, Noam expressed his personal transition from preoccupation with Galileo’s failure to get the ‘answer’, to awareness of how curiosity opens up the world and leaves ‘answers’ behind. In his final paper Noam reflected on how studying Galileo’s story became a process for himself: “[Galileo] paved the way for so many explorers! …Linda and I instantly recognized this. It was incredibly humbling to see what Galileo went through, and as a result we tried to put ourselves in his shoes. Amongst many things, this required us to be curious and imaginative. Looking at his theory on the tides, it became very apparent to me how 173
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Figure 8. Left: Galileo’s diagram is projected onto the classroom whiteboard; Linda (left) and Noam (right) gesture over it to show the earth’s motions. Right: Noam uses water sloshing in an aquarium to demonstrate Galileo’s argument about tides on vessel Earth.
much thought must have gone into all of it. In many ways Galileo’s theory was so beautiful, so elegant. …It has never been more clear to me that sometimes it’s not about the answer, but about the journey. This semester has been a journey; in more ways than one. I have learned a lot about myself and my ability to be able to think and explore. Creativity has been my pen, and curiosity my paper, and together they have created my scientific doctrine.” (Shabani, 2007). Drama is diverse and we experienced drama in a form differing from Noam’s reliving of Galileo’s process, through a question that Murielle initiated. Presenting with the group on Brecht’s play and modern science, Murielle identified opposition to stem cell research with opposition to Copernican ideas in Galileo’s time (Figure 9, Left). She ended this report by asking the class “what do you think? Do you think the advancement of science will always be impeded by morality?” The class immediately took up Murielle’s question. These quotes, each voiced by a different student, suggest their responsiveness to the issues and each other’s outlooks. There is always going to be someone saying no. Morality is an uncertain thing. Whose morality? Who are the people making science? Galileo believed in the church …Some people doing science might say I want to make sure it doesn’t contradict my ethics. Those scientists would say we can’t do that, we can’t destroy something. Who is going to fund your experiment if no one cares about it? 174
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War has a tremendous impact on science. War is not moral. Morality nowadays does not play a role in science. The places where science is happening now (Northeast and West coast US) are places where scientists don’t have that much religion influence. Things have changed since Galileo. Now you don’t have to take the Bible word by word. It may not have to do with religion or morality. Maybe it is about control. I think progress is always going to have problems. People will oppose ideas. Give credit to Murielle for asking the question. Yelena, a member of Murielle’s group, wrote later: “I was really excited about the discussion … I was very happy that our presentation set in motion what I really liked about the class, people from different backgrounds, ethnically, academically and whatnot, all bringing to the table what they had to say.” (Zhadanovsky, 2007). The power of the discussion figures in Christina’s pondering: “after our discussion, I am not even sure what my exact opinion is. I do think that we should be open minded, but to what extent I am not sure… I am looking forward to personally reflecting on this more in the future and throughout my life.” (Buonomo, 2007). Veronica and Henry came to personal realizations that something in their lives echoed Galileo’s. Veronica presented on Biagioli’s analysis (1993) that those who, like Galileo, were most successful in gaining a court’s patronage, were also most at risk for becoming its target when times changed (Figure 9, Middle). After working through this argument based on the historical case, Veronica recognized that it paralleled the dynamics that led to her removal from a job controlled by a political boss. She wrote: “in Galileo’s situation many things contributed to the issues he was facing: changing allegiances, bad timing, misplaced trust. The same issues I faced when my political umbrella of protection was taken from me.” (Lantigua, 2007). Henry came to a different self-realization while investigating the magnetism of coils. A seemingly knowledgeable friend told Henry that magnetism only comes from alternating currents. Henry’s experiments showed otherwise. Doubting his results, he redid the experiments to focus on testing the wire’s magnetism under
Figure 9. Left: Murielle presenting her analogy between stem cell research and Galileo. Middle: Veronica presenting on the politics that led to Galileo’s fall from papal favor. Right: Diagram of Henry’s experiment to see if direct current affects a magnetic compass. Drawing by H. Lo (2007). 175
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constant current (Figure 9, Right). Again, magnetism appeared where his friend said it would not be. This discrepancy facilitated a critical development for Henry: “I realized I hadn’t tested his idea thoroughly before accepting it. I trusted that he knew what he was talking about since he has experimented with similar things a lot more than I have, yet his idea was either flawed or wrong. This reminded me of Galileo. In his time, many people simply believed without testing the truth of the information they were given, and because of that were sometimes led to wrong conclusions. Though Galileo opened a new way of thinking, there are many people today that believe whatever is told to them.” (Lo, 2007). With each example, from Noam and Linda, Murielle, Veronica, and Henry, a lesson passed from an academic assignment into the student’s everyday life, adding critical and reflective perspective to personal and collective experience. Putting themselves in “the shoes of Galileo” at the same time brought into new balance a query and struggle that was somehow at the core of where each was in their development. For Noam, walking with Galileo gave impetus to his own tentative steps of exploring in a terrain without ready-made answers, a maturation of relevance to his aspirations for pediatric practice. For Murielle, the torment of Galileo’s trial gave voice to her own struggles just to do her self-chosen pendulum project in an inhospitable environment, and to her concerns, as a future nurse, that society – including her classmates– seriously debate and weigh its moral objections to the pursuit of science that may have possible or unknown human benefits. For Veronica, a scholar’s exposure of the ins and outs of political intrigue by which the papal court orchestrated Galileo’s fall from favor thrust into stark relief the backstage machinations that had closed down her early career. From this analysis, she gained cautionary wisdom toward her future in business. Unaware that in planning his project, he had accepted ungrounded claims about its outcome just on the basis of the claimant’s authority, Henry came into perplexity when the experimental materials behaved opposite to that guidance. Henry redid his experimental work with sufficient care to convince himself that what he had been told did not hold. Further, by reflecting on Galileo, Henry gained awareness of his own complicity in accepting an authoritative word without questioning it. From the diverse, complex story of Galileo, each student reached depth with facets that were most needed to illumine and sustain their own development. Galileo became more than a long-ago story for my students. Rather than being put off by his astounding accomplishments and viewing his political battles as antiquated, they saw what he saw, followed his thinking, and experienced surprise, wonder, betrayal and opposition with an intensity that met up with Galileo’s. The dramas of Galileo’s history accommodated student participation wherever they were in their developing as questioners of nature, and in their engagement with the human dilemmas of research, authority and power. 6. HAVING AND MAKING SPACE FOR EXPLORING
As explorers themselves, my students were doing science and history and that action deepened their relation with the phenomena, their predecessors, and their learning. 176
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Everyday things, such as pendulums and mirrors became in their hands links to a world of curiosity, patterns and unexpected behaviors. Finding their own struggles, questions and confusions there and –crucially– having space to reflect on these individually and collectively, my students came into respectful dialogue with each other and explorers of the past. Teaching in this classroom encompasses creating spaces where everyone can explore and reflect while having the safety to attempt something as tentative as holding a mirror so it sends light out a doorway or as risky as broaching a discussion regarding morality among participants who act from differing grounds. In doing this work, I found myself becoming curious about each student’s explorations, imagining possibilities, and noticing what they overlooked. I used this observational and reflective research in responding, whether by planning the next activity, selecting readings and materials, or addressing a question or email. My seeking to support and provoke fuller explorations on the part of my students had a part in enriching their exposure to materials and experiences that became integral to developments in understanding science, history and themselves. While my students, individually and as a class, were the ones who applied themselves by all the means that produced these developments, I as their teacher had a role, one that worked more through the medium of interaction than by directing others. Such interrelated investigation by students and teacher depends on tolerating, and working within, confusion, doubt, and unsettled openendedness –an unwelcome condition where education hinges on answers. Noam found Galileo’s contribution could not be reduced to right or wrong answers on the tides. Similarly, where science, history, teaching, and learning are evolving, the students and I found there is always more to wonder about. Not mirrors, not the story of Galileo, not our own story, are ever “finished”. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am happy to thank the Class: Christina Buonomo, Murielle Casseus, Linda Chu, Gabriela Cordeiro Antunes, Cintia Crespo, Renata De Carvalho, John Kerpan, Shannon Kiley, Gerard Koffi, Veronica Lantinua, Jennifer Light, Jieying Lin, Henry Lo, Lillian Rodriguez, Noam Shabani, Yelena Zhadanovsky. I am grateful to the support of this class at University of Massachusetts Boston from Joyce Morrissey, Rajini Srikanth, Dick Cluster,Yvonne Vaillencourt and Paul Foster. Debbie Douglas, Elaheh Kheirandish, Elizabeth Mock, Zuraya Monroy-Nasr, and Qian Yu participated in class sessions with their own stories and expertise. Jim Bales, Peter Houk, Ed Moriarty and Wolfgang Rueckner expanded the experimental offerings of the course; Douglas Allchin, Peter Heering, Elaheh Kheirandish, Ben Marsden and Sam Schweber contributed to its historical context. Eleanor Duckworth, Fiona McDonnell, Lisa Schneier and Bonnie Tai inspired its pedagogy. Contributers to this paper through reading and discussion include: Eleanor Duckworth, Peter Heering, Carl Angell, Ellen Hendriksen, Dietmar Höttecke, Sungmi Kim, Edvin Østergaard and Andreas Quale. I thank Panos Kokkotas and the 7th International Conference for the History of Science in Science Education (Workshop of Experts) for the 177
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opportunity to present this work in Athens, Greece, and Ellen Hendriksen and the science education seminar for their invitation to share part of it at the University of Oslo. Alva Couch, Alanna Connors, Phil and Roy Veatch animated my imagination. This work honors the memory of Philip Morrison. NOTES 1
2 3
Unless otherwise identified, quotes and excerpts are from my notes, assignments and records of the 2007 class. Ellipsis in Shabani’s original manuscript (2007). Douglas Allchin of the University of Minnesota developed a historical simulation assignment titled Debating Galileo’s Trial. http://my.pclink.com/~allchin/1814/retrial/profile.htm I provided my students with the readings referenced on Allchin’s website, and supplemented these with many additional readings.
REFERENCES Angell, C., Guttersrud, Ø., & Hendriksen, E. K. (2004). Physics: Frightful, but fun; Pupils’ and teachers’ views of physics and physics teaching. Science & Education, 88, 683–706. Antunes, G. (2007). Assignments and final paper for honors 290F. Boston: University of Massachusetts. Bevilacqua, F., Falomo, L., Fregonese, L., Fiannetto, E., Fiudice, F., Mascheretti, P., et al. (2005). The pendululm: From constrained fall to the concept of potential energy. In M. Matthews, C. F. Gauld, & A. Stinner (Eds.), The pendulum: Scientific, historical, philosophical and educational perspectives. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Biagioli, M. (1993). Galileo: Courtier: The practice of science in the culture of absolutism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Brecht, B. (1937/1994). Life of Galileo (J. Willett, Trans.). New York: Arcade Pub. Buonomo, C. (2007). Assignments and final paper for honors 290F. Boston: University of Massachusetts. Carlson, J. (1981). Olmec concave iron-ore mirrors. In E. Benson (Ed.), The Olmec & their neighbors (pp. 117–147). Washington, DC. Casseus, M. (2007). Assignments and final paper for honors 290F. Boston: University of Massachusetts. Cavicchi, E. (2009). Exploring mirrors, recreating science and history, becoming a class community. New Educator, in preparation. Cavicchi, E. (2008b). Opening possibilities in experimental science and its history: Critical explorations with pendulums and singing tubes. Interchange, 39, 415–442. Cavicchi, E. (2008a). Historical experiments in students’ hands: Unfragmenting science through action and history. Science & Education, 17(7), 717–749. Cavicchi, E. (2007). Mirrors, swinging weights, lightbulbs…: Simple experiments and history help a class become a community. In P. Heering & D. Osewold (Eds.), Constructing scientific understanding through contextual teaching (pp. 47–63). Berlin: Frank & Timme. Cavicchi, E. (2005). Exploring water: Art and physics in teaching and learning with water. In R. France (Ed.), Facilitating watershed management: Fostering awareness and stewardship (pp. 173–194). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Pub. Cavicchi, E. (1999). Experimenting with wires, batteries, bulbs and the induction coil: Narratives of teaching and learning physics in the electrical investigations of Laura, David, Jamie, myself and the nineteenth century experimenters - our developments and instruments. Dissertation, Harvard University. Coleman, L., Holcomb, D., & Rigden, J., (1998). The introductory university physics project 1987–1995: What has it accomplished? American Journal of Physics, 66, 125–137. Chu, L. (2007). Assignments and final paper for honors 290F. Boston: University of Massachusetts. Crespo, C. (2007). Assignments and final paper for honors 290F. Boston: University of Massachusetts. 178
CLASSROOM EXPLORATIONS WITH PENDULUMS De Carvalho, R. (2007). Assignments and final paper for honors 290F. Boston: University of Massachusetts. Duckworth, E. (1973/2006). The having of wonderful ideas. In E. Duckworth (Ed.), “The having of wonderful ideas” and other essays on teaching and learning (pp. 1–14). New York: Teacher’s College Press, 1986/2006. Duckworth, E. (1979/2006). Learning with breadth and depth. In E. Duckworth (Ed.), “The having of wonderful ideas” and other essays on teaching and learning (pp. 69–81). New York: Teacher’s College Press, 1986/2006. Duckworth, E. (1986/2001). Inventing density. In E. Duckworth (Ed.), “Tell me more”: Listening to learners explain (pp. 1–41). New York: Teacher’s College Press, 2001. Duckworth, E. (1986/2006). Teaching as research. In E. Duckworth (Ed.), “The having of wonderful ideas” and other essays on teaching and learning (pp. 173–192). New York: Teacher’s College Press, 1986/2006. Duckworth, E. (1991/2006). Twenty-Four, forty-two and I love you: Keeping it complex. In E. Duckworth (Ed.), “The having of wonderful ideas” and other essays on teaching and learning (pp. 125–155). New York: Teacher’s College Press, 1986/2006. Duckworth, E. (2001). Teaching/Learning research. In E. Duckworth (Ed.), “Tell me more”: Listening to learners explain (pp. 181–187). New York: Teacher’s College Press. Duckworth, E. (2005/2006). Critical exploration in the classroom. In E. Duckworth (Ed.), “The having of wonderful ideas” and other essays on teaching and learning (pp. 157–172). New York: Teacher’s College Press, 1986/2006.
Elizabeth Cavicchi Edgerton Center, MIT, Cambridge MA 0213 e-mail:
[email protected]
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KATERINA MALAMITSA, MICHAEL KASOUTAS AND PANAGIOTIS KOKKOTAS
13. DEVELOPING GREEK PRIMARY SCHOOL STUDENTS’ GRAPH/CHART INTERPRETATION AND READING COMPREHENSION AS CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS Assessing a Science Teaching Approach which Integrates Elements of History of Science
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 Theoretical Assumptions Concerning the Definition and Assessment of Critical Thinking Historically, the most prominent and influential concepts regarding Critical Thinking were advanced by Ennis (1987), Paul, Binker and Weil (1995), Lippman (1991), Siegel (1988) and Sternberg (1985a, b; 1987) among others. However, due to the great difficulty in defining and therefore in assessing Critical Thinking, these conceptualizations only revealed different and often contradictory aspects of Critical Thinking instead of leading to a coherent theory. These multiple conceptualizations reflected where emphasis was given each time and consequently led to different approaches for assessment – i.e. as logical fallacies (Dreyfus, & Jungwirth, 1980; Jungwirth, 1987; Jungwirth, & Dreyfus, 1990), as formal reasoning processes or skills (Blair, & Johnson, 1980; Lawson, 1982, 1985; Obed, 1997), as scientific reasoning in general (Friedler, Nachmias, & Linn, 1990) etc. Many scholars agree that Critical Thinking is more than skills including also attitudes and dispositions that reflect the decision to use the ability to think critically (Facione, 1990a, 1990b, 1990c; Paul, 1990, 1992; Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo, 1996; Facione, Facione, Blohm, & Giancarlo, 2002; Halpern, 1996; Giancarlo, & Facione, 2001; Norris, 2003) and raise concerns about (a) Critical Thinking being subject specific or not; (b) the extent to which novices can learn to think like experts; (c) the distinguishing between higher order and lower order thinking skills for instructional purposes; and (d) Critical Thinking being considered a process or a set of skills (Facione, 1984; Beyer, 1985; Resnick, 1987; Perkins, Farady, & Bushey, 1991; Johnson, 1996). However, in this research the conceptualization of Critical Thinking described in the conference proceedings of the American Philosophical Association (APA) widely known as ‘‘The Delphi Report’’ (Facione, 1990a, P.V. Kokkotas et al., (eds.), Adapting Historical Science Knowledge Production to the Classroom, 181–194. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
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p. 12) is adopted, a broadly inclusive definition of Critical Thinking that integrates both cognitive skills and affective dispositions and focuses primarily on Critical Thinking skills. This conceptualization resulted as the consensus of a panel of 46 leading theoreticians, teachers and Critical Thinking assessment specialists from several disciplines and is considered to be a historical benchmark. Based on the Delphi conceptualization of Critical Thinking, a series of psychometrical instruments have been developed, including the “Test of Everyday Reasoning” (TER). The construct validity of the TER is grounded on its correspondence to the Delphi conceptualization of Critical Thinking and on the results of related research indicating that TER and the “California Critical Thinking Skills Test” (CCTST) are strongly correlated (0,766) (Facione, 1990b, 1990c, 2001; Facione et al., 2002). “The TER was developed out of the CCTST” (Facione, 2001, p. 14) a tool which has been used in scientific studies involving over 7900 students from 50 colleges and universities (Facione et al., 2002, p. 5). Furthermore it is a product of longitudinal research and constant development from 1992 until lately (Form A, Form B, Form 2000). In the present research, TER was translated into Greek and standardized. The sample of the standardization research consisted of 350 persons, including primary school students, secondary education students and undergraduate students (Malamitsa, Kasoutas, & Kokkotas, 2008, 2009a). 1.2 History of Science History of Science could provide content material which can be used in science teaching (Matthews, 1994, 1998; Stinner, MacMillan, Metz, Jilek, & Klassen, 2003; Stinner & Williams, 1998). In this way students could understand how science works, they could develop the Critical Thinking skills needed to critically analyze texts and interpret graphs and charts (vignettes, short historical extracts of scientists’ biographies, historical experiments, historical photos, pictures, drawings, graphs/ charts etc.). Moreover, students could critically analyze ideas and compare them with observations of how nature functions. Thus, students are facilitated to distinguish between concepts, hypotheses and observations of nature. The generous incorporation of aspects of History of Science into instruction is not necessarily on the expense of the disciplinary knowledge of the subject as the studies by Galili and Hazan (2000, 2001) have demonstrated. The incorporation of History of Science could also motivate students by creating a meaningful learning environment and promote a richer understanding of socioscientific issues through different representations of ideas or data (Kokkotas, 2003; Malamitsa et al., 2009a). A common problem with many of the contemporary science teaching projects is that they focus on the content of science rather than on the links between the pedagogy and the academic content and they often neglect science’s methodology, development, history and effect on our society (Malamitsa et al., 2009a). The incorporation of aspects of History of Science in science teaching could promote Critical Thinking skills if it is mediated in a pedagogical way that treats its neglected facets. Such an approach would challenge students to develop their ability of evidence analysis (e.g. texts and graphs/charts) in rational argumentation. 182
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1.3 Graph/Chart Interpretation and Reading Comprehension in the Context of Science Education and Critical Thinking Literacy in the twenty-first century means educating for the skills necessary to effectively construct and comfortably navigate multiplicity, to manipulate and critique information, representations, knowledge, and arguments in multiple media from a wide range of sources, and to use multiple expressive technologies including those offered by print, visual, and digital tools (Williams, 2001, p. 22). Students are exposed to a broad range of information daily but the Greek educational system seems to have failed to take seriously and adequately respond at the vast information in visual form. The traditional core of educational aims focusing on reading, writing and arithmetic is considered incomplete without visual literacy that involves the interpretation of pictures. All students, and not only during “composition, speech or language” classes, should be educated in visual rhetoric and it is emphasized that a new paradigm is required, one that takes rhetorical education seriously and that recognizes it for the multidisciplinary endeavor that it is (Hill, 2004, p. 128). Science courses are not an exception as being saturated with visual images. Specifically the visualized data that a student faces in a science course is very diverse, ranging from realistic drawings and photographs (e.g., a photo of a pot with boiling water) to highly abstract representations (e.g., the structure of matter or a model of an atom). Furthermore, the visual representations carry critical information about the state of our world that may have significant social and economic implications (e.g., meteorology, weather map diagrams) (Lowe, 2000, 1996; Stokes, 2002; Gordin, & Pea, 1995; Glasgow, Narayanan, & Chandrasekaran, 1995; Iding, Klemm, Crosby, & Speitel, 2002; Iding, 2000). Baca (1990) created a program in order to facilitate the development of critical viewing and thinking skills in children.” (p. 30) and identified among other paramaters of visual literacy “the use of visuals for the purposes of: communication; thinking; learning; constructing meaning; creative expression; aesthetic enjoyment” (p. 65). In this paper visual literacy is conceptualized as an ability to understand (read) and use (write) images and to think and learn visually, that means in terms of images (Hortin, 1983). Of course the results of this research concern only the visual literacy skills that are connected with Critical Thinking skills (Analysis, Evaluation, Inference, Deductive and Inductive Reasoning) as implemented in the TER. On the other hand, a large portion of the educational research concerning Science Education is devoted to the quality of the texts provided to the students within courses’ context (Bakken, Mastropieri, & Scruggs, 1997; Breger, 1995; Casteel, & Isom, 1994; Charron, & De Onis, 1993; Craig, & Yore, 1996; Drake, Hemphill, & Chappel, 1996; Graesser, Olde, Whitten, Lu, & Craig, 2002a; Graesser, Leon, & Otero, 2002b; Mayer, 1995; Nelson, Smith, & Dodd, 1992; Neubert, & Binko, 1992; Otero, 2002; Sutton, 2000). In contemporary approaches to Science Education, an important aim of the educational process is considered the student capacity “to distinguish theories from observations and to assess the level of certainty described to the claims advanced” (Millar, & Osborne, 1998). This skill seems to be also crucial to the comprehension 183
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of a text in depth. A clue that a scientific text is being understood is when the reader is able to generate inferences at a deeper level of representation revealing causal relations between events, processes and consequences. However, it is often a challenge, not only for students, but also for adult readers to generate inferences, to ask and to answer questions concerning the causal mechanisms. There are reasons why that happens e.g. lack of knowledge, insufficient training or understanding of the causal mechanisms in scientific texts (Graesser et al., 2002a). The lack of understanding may be among the reasons why students are so often negatively predisposed towards science courses and Science Education (Dunbar, 1995). Furthermore, this lack of understanding often leads students and teachers to overemphasize in the memorization of terminology which, in best terms, can have results only in the factual and conceptual knowledge of students (Anderson et al., 2001) but has little or no effect in what it is called “Deep Learning” and “Critical Thinking” (Graesser et al., 2002a). Since, “Interpretation” is a basic skill for Critical Thinking according to the Delphi Report where is defined as “to comprehend and express the meaning or significance of a wide variety of experiences, situations, data, events, judgments, conventions, beliefs, rules, procedures or criteria” (Facione, 1990a, p. 13), there is an evident interconnection among visual literacy, reading comprehension and Critical Thinking skills. In response to this interconnection, in the basic description of TER it is clearly stated that “an item may require the proper analysis or interpretation or the meaning of a sentence” as well as “interpreting and reasoning with the information provided in charts and graphs, a vital part of living and working in the world today” (Facione, 2001, p. 3). Thus, TER has a series of questions engaging the participant on the interpretation and reasoning based upon the information provided in charts and graphs as well as the information provided in text. These skills are considered essential for Critical Thinking and problem solving in everyday situations and should be fostered in Science Education classes. 2. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY
2.1 Purpose of the Research The purpose of this research is to examine the development of sixth grade students’ Critical Thinking skills regarding graph/chart interpretation and reading comprehension in science teaching relatively to the contribution of the integration of issues of History of Science into instruction (Binnie, 2001; Seroglou, & Koumaras 2001). TER was used to measure research results. 2.2 Scales and Measure TER is a 35-item multiple choice test, designed for use with the general population, adolescents and adults of all ages. Testing purposes supported by TER include: to assess an individual’s or group’s reasoning and Critical Thinking skills, to gather program evaluation on reasoning and Critical Thinking skills research data, to assess educational learning outcomes. TER provides six scores from an individual’s 184
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completed test: (a) an Overall Score which ranges from 0 to 35 and represents the number of the items answered correctly, indicating the overall ability of Critical Thinking, (b) three Sub-scales corresponding to the following skills: (i) “Analysis”, ranging from 0 to 9, (ii) “Evaluation”, ranging from 0 to 11, (iii) “Inference”, ranging from 0 to 15 and (c) two more Sub-scales which follow a rather traditional conceptualization for Critical Thinking: (i) “Deductive Reasoning”, ranging from 0 to 19 and (ii) “Inductive Reasoning”, ranging from 0 to 16 (Facione, 2001, p. 11–12, 25). Each of the items of TER is assigned to only one of the three Sub-scales: “Analysis”, “Evaluation” or “Inference”. The same items are reclassified to only one of the two other Sub-scales: “Deductive Reasoning” or “Inductive Reasoning”. The items of TER are multiple choice questions designed to be scored dichotomously1 with one correct answer and three or four distractors which represent frequently made errors or are designed to attract the attention of those who exhibit what are known as dispositional failures in reasoning (Engel, 1999). They range from simple to the more complex, they involve analysis, interpretation and reasoning upon the information provided in charts and graphs as well as in texts and they aim to be familiar to the general population. TER is suitable for persons in late childhood, adolescent and adult populations; no other background knowledge is required than that which is readily achievable through normal maturation and elementary schooling. A selection of 20 questions from a total of 35 questions of TER (Facione, 2000, in Greek) was included in the analysis. The questions were grouped accordingly for the needs of the research. The first group of questions (questions #5, #11, #12, #13, #15, #16, #22, #23 and #24) involves graph/chart interpretation skills. They were chosen because answering them correctly involved the interpretation of a graph/ chart. The second group of questions (#25, #26, #27, #28, #29, #30, #31, #32, #33, #34 and #35) involves reading comprehension skills and requires interpreting text. Two composite variables were created, one for “Graph/Chart Interpretation Score” ranging from 0–9 as the sum of the first group of questions scores and one for “Reading Comprehension Score” ranging from 0–11 as the sum of the second group of questions scores. It should be remarked that answering correctly to those questions involved also the use of other Critical Thinking skills (Analysis, Evaluation, Inference etc.). Although these questions are part of a questionnaire designed to assess Critical Thinking skills, it was assumed that they could sufficiently treat the above mentioned research questions in order to draw some conclusions which could have an impact on the Greek Science Education Curriculum design and implementation. It should be noticed that TER is not designed for giving results concerning graph/chart interpretation skills and reading comprehension skills, although they are mentioned as key skills for completing it successfully (Facione, 2001). 2.3 Experimental Design In order to develop students’ Critical Thinking skills a project was developed on electromagnetism concepts which incorporated historical aspects. A class of 22 sixth grade primary school students serves as the experimental group at which the project was implemented and another class of 22 sixth grade students (with 185
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similar characteristics) was the control group that followed the conventional way of teaching the same concepts, using the instructional books, which are provided by the State according to the Greek National Curriculum. Both student classes were from the same school unit of Athens for the minimization of confounding variables interference, since both groups approximately originated from the same sociocultural environment. The experimental group and the control group presented the same initial level of Critical Thinking skills since they had almost the same mean in pre-test TER scores (see also Malamitsa et al., 2009a). Experimental and control groups were taught the same concepts, the same hours, by the same teacher in their science courses. However, the designed project was implemented only to the experimental group, while the control group followed the conventional way of teaching. The design of the project combined: (i) the incorporation of selected material (i.e. Volta’s electrical pile, Oersted experiments) from the History of Science in science instruction, (ii) an attempt to address the historical and sociocultural context of the scientist to whom the discovery is attributed, (iii) the engagement of students in the reflective examination and comparison between texts, graphs and charts and (iv) 12 worksheets with “hands on and minds on activities” (vignettes, short historical extracts of scientists biographies, historical experiments, historical photos, pictures, drawings, graphs/charts etc.). During the implementation of the project the students interpreted and completed graphs/charts and they analyzed ideas/ concepts while reading and discussing texts in the class. The innovative teaching approach seemed to help students improve their visual literacy skills by collecting data from multiple visual representations. The assessment of the graph/chart interpretation and reading comprehension skills development was conducted with TER which was administered to the students before and after the teaching of the electromagnetism concepts to both the experimental group and the control group. The experimental hypothesis was that students after the project would have significantly better results in those TER questions that targeted the specific skills signifying the improvement in their Critical Thinking skills. The hypothesis was tested with a series of paired samples t-tests. 3. RESEARCH RESULTS
Summary statistics (Descriptives) of the TER results before and after the implementation of the project are presented at Table (1) and on Figure (1). Table 1. Descriptives of graph/chart interpretation and reading comprehension scores before and after the project for the experimental group
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Variables
N
Min
Max
Mean
Std. Dev.
Graph/Chart Interpretation (Pre) Graph/Chart Interpretation (Post) Reading Comprehension (Pre) Reading Comprehension (Post)
22 22 22 22
0 3 2 2
8 9 7 11
4,23 7,36 4,14 8,45
2,137 1,761 1,670 2,464
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Figure 1. Box plot of graph/chart interpretation scores and reading comprehension scores before and after the project for the experimental group.
The statistical difference for the pre-post test of the experimental group was determined using paired samples t-tests. Significant differences were found for both the Graph/Chart Interpretation Score [t(21) = 6,353; p = 0,000 (< 0,05); d = 1,605], and the Reading Comprehension Score [t(21) = 7,320; p = 0,000 (< 0,05); d = 2,085]. The effect size values of the t-test results were considered, according to Cohen’s instructions (1988), much larger than typical (d >1) (see also: Leech, Barrett, & Morgan, 2005; Morgan, Leech, & Barrett, 2004; Murphy, & Myors 2004; Page, Braver, & MacKinnon, 2003). Table 2. Descriptives of graph/chart interpretation and reading comprehension scores before and after the project for the control group Variables
N
Min
Max
Graph/Chart Interpretation (Pre) Graph/Chart Interpretation (Post) Reading Comprehension (Pre) Reading Comprehension (Post)
22 22 22 22
1 2 1 1
8 8 8 9
Mean 4,09 4,36 4,18 4,23
Std. Dev. 1,770 1,649 1,816 1,798
The statistical difference for the pre-post test of the control group was determined correspondingly with paired samples t-tests. No significant difference was found for the Graph/Chart Interpretation Score [t(21) = 2,027; p = 0,056 (> 0,05); d = 0,160]. 187
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Furthermore, no significant difference was found for Reading Comprehension Score [t(21) = 0,370; p = 0,715 (> 0,05); d = 0,025]. Evidently, the results of the control group showed no significant improvement. The effect size values of both paired t-tests were considered, according to Cohen’s instructions (1988), much smaller than typical (d < 0,20) and the results were evidently less improved than those of the experimental group (the differences of means between pre and post scores were less than 0,5) (see also: Leech et al., 2005; Morgan et al., 2004; Murphy, & Myors, 2004; Page et al., 2003). 4. DISCUSSION
In our study we researched the contribution of integrating aspects of History of Science –along with a reflective examination and comparison of texts, graphs and charts– in a science teaching project to the development of students’ graph/ chart interpretation and reading comprehension skills. The data analysis indicates a significant improvement of those skills for the experimental group, whereas there was no significant improvement for the control group. History of Science was implemented as a teaching strategy and as a rich source of appropriate content material for the development of skills that were the focus of this research and which are directly related to Critical Thinking skills (Malamitsa et al., 2009a; Malamitsa, Kokkotas, & Kasoutas, 2009b). Furthermore, the need to create opportunities for student engagement with History of Science, in order to develop an understanding of how scientific ideas are accepted and/or rejected on the basis of empirical evidence, became apparent. The teaching project intended to interpret science learning as a process of active individual construction (of knowledge), as a social process which involves others in this construction (students, teacher, parents, experts etc.) and as a process of enculturation into the scientific practices of the wider society (Cobb, & Yacker, 1996). The use of a small nonrandom sample imposes a locality as a limitation to this study and, consequently, the findings cannot be generalized since there is difficulty in knowing whether the same innovative teaching approach would have the same impact on students within a different context. However, curricular decisions can be informed from this research in relation to the incorporation of History of Science in science teaching in order to develop, among others, students’ graph/chart interpretation and reading comprehension skills. Known limitations of this study also include the use of TER (that targets specific Critical Thinking and reasoning skills) in order to measure graph/chart interpretation and reading comprehension skills, although, they are both key skills for completing it successfully. It was assumed that TER could sufficiently be used so as to draw some conclusions with an impact on curricular decisions for Greek Science Education. Moreover, it should be remarked that the texts included in TER in relation to reading comprehension skills were not written in Greek; rather they were translated from the English version of TER, but there has been significant effort to keep the translated text as fluent in Greek as possible. Additionally, the interference of the development of reading comprehension skills and graph/chart interpretation skills due to other reasons is not measured, 188
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although the control group could be used for an estimate. Test-retest effects have not been measured for the Greek TER, but they could be approximated from control group results (as well as students’ natural maturation) and, most likely, they didn’t have a significant effect. An independent tutor, who was instructed to differentiate the courses between the control and the experimental group, was the science teacher for both groups in an effort to reduce the risk of experimenter bias which would be greater if one of the researchers was also the tutor. This study doesn’t measure effects of gender and age. The limitation of using intact classes (frequently a necessity in educational research) was addressed through a pre-post test research design. The students generally responded positively to the learning environment that was created within the teaching project that integrated aspects of History of Science (vignettes, short historical extracts of scientists’ biographies, historical experiments, historical photos/pictures/drawings etc.) and a socio-constructivist approach that prioritized meaningful learning and students’ motivation. Within the context of this study the role of History of Science proved valuable since (a) it supported the development of instructional tools which improved science teaching by adopting a pluralistic methodology; (b) it supported students’ learning by engaging them to discussion, argumentation and consensus as members of a community; and (c) it contributed towards graph/chart interpretation and reading comprehension skills development. On the basis of the paired samples t-tests results and the size effect values of the control and experimental groups, the null hypothesis that the teaching project would not have a significant effect on students’ graph/chart interpretation and reading comprehension skills, was rejected. Thus, the experimental hypothesis that the project contributed significantly to students’ skills development as appraised by TER, could be accepted. Mean differences reflected on effect size values indicate that the improvement of the experimental group was relatively bigger comparing to that of the control group. Moreover, the differences in the control group could be assigned to possible test–retest effects and/or the natural maturation of the students during the lifespan of the project. It is also suggested that the creation of opportunities which engage students with aspects of History of Science and their interwoven values in science courses contributes to their visual literacy and scientific literacy. Although not investigated in this study, the students’ excitement and motivation was evident at the experimental group. Further research on the emotional and motivational aspects of integrating History of Science in Science Education within a skills development context is needed. Since, the Greek educational system is text-centered (Kokkotas, 2003) there was an expectation that this would probably be reflected at improved scores for reading comprehension skills of the control group. Nevertheless, the data analysis revealed similar scores for graph/chart interpretation and reading comprehension skills. This is an indication that an instruction based only on texts is inadequate for the development of reading comprehension skills. Towards this direction also point the results of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2003 which showed 189
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that Greece is low beyond average concerning reading comprehension skills (OECD, 2004, 2005). Moreover, Greece was placed as 31st between 40 participating countries in mathematics scale (OECD, 2004, p. 91), revealing that more than 1/3 of Greek student population responds only to questions regarding the simplest mathematical skills (Level 1) while they lack the ability to cope with more demanding questions (Level 2) (OECD, 2004, p. 90). It seems that the development of literacy skills such as graph/chart interpretation and reading comprehension should be encouraged simultaneously and within a Critical Thinking skills development context. The findings of this study may be only indicative, bringing to the foreground the lack of sufficient relative research in Greece; thus, further research is required. In retrospection, a differentiated science teaching in Greek classrooms seems to be required. By focusing on the above mentioned skills this research brings about the necessity of an improved language use in science courses, in a way that should emphasize on its role as a semiotic and culturally defined tool (Vygotsky, 1978; Wertsch, 1991). The incorporation of graphs and charts during the courses should focus on understanding and interpretation, as essential components of Science Education. However, this aspect of learning is very often neglected by teachers because it is generally assumed that pictures are self-explanatory. Teachers may lack of a better appreciation for the demands that are posed by graphs/charts in science courses. Additionally, many of them may not have a repertoire of teaching strategies that will facilitate the development of students’ visual literacy. Thus, science teacher education should cover this topic and offer the required support, even if the resources necessary to help teachers develop visual literacy are limited (Lowe, 2000). Teaching approaches founded on social constructivism hypotheses, such as the one adopted at the teaching project of this study, enhance understanding, contribute to knowledge expansion and facilitate deep comprehension (Black, & Lucas, 1993; Salomon, & Perkins, 1998). Moreover, they create a framework which can support the development of graph/chart interpretation and reading comprehension skills by amplifying and reorganizing the way learners think, facilitating the composition of new knowledge, adding, modifying and comparing representations. NOTES 1
Missing items are considered as wrong answers.
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DEVELOPING GREEK PRIMARY SCHOOL STUDENTS Morgan, G. A., Leech, N. L., Gloeckner, G. W., & Barrett, K. C. (2004). SPSS for introductory statistics: Use and interpretation. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Murphy, K. R., & Myors, B. (2004). Statistical power analysis: A simple and general model for traditional and modern hypothesis tests. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Nelson, J., Smith, D., & Dodd, J. (1992). The effects of teaching a summary skills strategy to students identified as learning disabled on their comprehension of science text. Education and Treatment of Children, 15, 228–243. Neubert, G., & Binko, J. (1992). Inductive reasoning in the secondary school. Washington, DC: National Education Association. Norris, S. P. (2003). The meaning of critical thinking test performance: The effects of abilities and dispositions on scores. In D. Fasko (Ed.), Critical thinking and reasoning: current research, theory, and practice (pp. 315–329). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, Inc. Obed, N. (1997). Investigating the nature of formal reasoning in chemistry: Testing Lawson’s multiple hypothesis theory. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 34(10), 1067–1081. OECD (2004). Learning for tomorrow’s World: First results from PISA 2003. Paris: OECD Publishing. OECD (2005). PISA 2003 technical report. Paris: OECD Publishing. Otero, J. (2002). Noticing and fixing difficulties while understanding science texts. In A. C. Graesser, J. A. Leon, & J. Otero (Eds.), The psychology of science text comprehension (pp. 281–308). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers. Page, M. C., Braver, S. L., & MacKinnon, D. P. (2003). Levine’s guide to SPSS for analysis of variance. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Paul, R. (1990). Critical thinking: What every person needs to survive in a rapidly changing world. Rohnert Park, CA: Sonoma State University. Paul, R. (1992). Critical thinking: What, why, and how. In C. A. Barnes (Ed.), Critical thinking: educational imperative (Vol. 77, pp. 3–24). San Fransisco: Jossey-Bass, Inc. Paul, R. W., Binker, A., & Weil, D. (1995). Critical thinking handbook: K-3rd grades. Santa Rosa, CA: Foundation for Critical Thinking. Perkins, D. N., Farady, M., & Bushey, B. (1991). Everyday reasoning and the roots of intelligence. In J. F. Voss, D. N. Perkins, & J. W. Segal (Eds.), Informal reasoning and education (pp. 83–105). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Resnick, L. B. (1987). Education and learning to think. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Salomon, G., & Perkins, D. (1998). Individual and social aspects of learning. Review of Research in Education, 23, 1–24. Seroglou, F., & Koumaras, P. (2001). The contribution of the history of physics in physics education: A review. Science & Education, 10, 153–172. Siegel, H. (1988). Educating reason: Rationality, critical thinking, and education. New York: Routledge. Sternberg, R. (1985a). Teaching critical thinking, Part 1: Are we making critical mistakes? Phi Delta Kappan, 67(3), 194–198. Sternberg, R. (1985b). Teaching critical thinking, Part 2: Possible solutions. Phi Delta Kappan, 67(4), 277–280. Sternberg, R. (1987). Teaching critical thinking: Eight easy ways to fail before you begin. Phi Delta Kappan, 68(6), 456–459. Stinner, A., & Williams, H. (1998). History and philosophy of science in the science curriculum. In B. J. Fraser & K. G. Tobin (Eds.), International handbook of science education (Part two, pp. 1027–1045). Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Stinner, A., MacMillan, B., Metz, D., Jilek, J., & Klassen, S. (2003). The renewal of case studies in science education. Science & Education, 12, 617–643. Stokes, S. (2002). Visual literacy in teaching and learning: A literature perspective. Electronic Journal for the Integration of Technology in Education, 1(1), 11–19. Sutton, C. (2000). Words, science and learning (P. Kokkotas, M. Kasoutas, & D. Lathouris, Trans., 1st ed.). Athens: Tipothito (in Greek). Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 193
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Katerina Malamitsa, PhD, Michael Kasoutas, PhD candidate and Panagiotis Kokkotas, proffessor Faculty of Primary Education National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece e-mail:
[email protected] e-mail:
[email protected] e-mail:
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14. USE OF THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE IN THE DESIGN OF RESEARCH-INFORMED NOS MATERIALS FOR TEACHER EDUCATION
1. INTRODUCTION
The so-called nature of science (widely known as NOS) has been repeatedly recognised –under different denominations– as a major, structuring, component of science teachers’ professional knowledge (cf., Shulman, 1986, 1987; Bromme, 1988; Matthews, 1994; McComas, 1998; Adúriz-Bravo, 2005b; Flick & Lederman, 2005). Consequently, several guidelines, frameworks, programmes, and materials have been devised for science teacher training in NOS. In this context, one of the many debates that have pervaded NOS education of science teachers is that around the specific role that the history of science can play in science education (cf., Matthews, 1994, 2000; Stinner, 1995; McComas, 1998; Quintanilla, 2007). The aim of this paper is to report some reflections and some actions concerning the integration of the history of science in the nature-of-science education of prospective and in-service science teachers for all educational levels, from kindergarten to university. I focus on a particular kind of relationship between the history of science and the other meta-sciences within NOS instruction, which I call ‘setting’ (AdúrizBravo, 2001, 2004a; Adúriz-Bravo & Izquierdo-Aymerich, 2004). According to the rationale that I present here, the history of science can provide valuable ‘sceneries’ within which 20th-century philosophical ideas are used to foster teachers’ understanding of the deep nature of scientific processes and products. The reflections that I share here go along the path of considering NOS as a philosophical discourse on science that, in order not be ‘blind’ or ‘void’, needs to be produced in the context of concrete scientific episodes of discovery or invention; I contend that such episodes can be constructed on the basis of ‘raw material’ furnished by the history of science. On the other hand, the actions that I report here are related to the design of instructional materials, mainly teaching-learning sequences (Méheut & Psillos, 2004), that use the history of science performing the aforementioned function. In these sequences (‘didactical units’) a historical case study presented via a narrative (what I call a ‘science story’) works as a set for the discussion of NOS ideas. My focus when using the history of science in science teacher education is acquainting teachers with some key ideas on NOS (sometimes called ‘tenets’ in the literature), and not with the history of science as an academic discipline per se. Consequently, my work is done from the field of didactics of science (i.e., science P.V. Kokkotas et al., (eds.), Adapting Historical Science Knowledge Production to the Classroom, 195–204. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
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education as a discipline [Adúriz-Bravo & Izquierdo-Aymerich, 2005]), and not from the history of science, with the necessary limitations and recognitions derived thereof (cf., Brush, 1974, 1989; Lombardi, 1997; Fried, 2001; Quintanilla, 2007). 2. REFLECTIONS ON THE THEORETICAL KNOWLEDGE AVAILABLE
2.1 Some Precisions around the History of Science for Science Education For the purpose of my activity in science teacher education, I consider NOS as a research line within didactics of science. This research line belongs to the very large and active research area around the contributions of the meta-sciences – mainly the philosophy, history, and sociology of science– to science education (such area is usually known by its English acronym HPS) (cf., Matthews, 1994; McComas, 1998; Adúriz-Bravo, 2005b). Consequently, the ‘academic knowledge and practices of reference’ –savoir and pratiques de reference, using Jean-Louis Martinand’s (1983, 1989) terminology– for NOS are a broad and varied corpus of disciplinary knowledge on what science is, coming from the meta-sciences, mainly –but not only– from the philosophy of science. I thus adhere to Bill McComas’s (1998) characterisation of NOS as a ‘fertile hybrid arena’ encompassing different kinds of meta-scientific, secondorder, knowledge that is educationally valuable. This NOS is prescribed as content to be taught in current curricula and is seen as an unavoidable objective in prospective and in-service science teacher education. More concretely, I here define NOS as some content from 20th-century philosophy of science, heavily ‘transposed’ (i.e., transformed into something that can be taught and learnt [Chevallard, 1991]), and carefully selected by its educational value, that is, by the fact that it serves the goals proclaimed for current science education. Such content is set against the background provided by the history of science, and warned against scientism by the sociology of science and the so-called science studies (Adúriz-Bravo, 2004b, 2005b, 2007; Adúriz-Bravo & Izquierdo-Aymerich, in press). I think that it is within this framework of ideas –NOS as hybrid content, mainly philosophical ideas, but located into historical case studies– that the contribution of the history of science can and should be discussed (cf., Arons, 1989; Stinner, 1995; Irwin, 2000; Seroglou & Koumaras, 2001; Stinner et al., 2003; Klassen, 2006). This also calls for some clarification around the extent to which the expression ‘history of science’ is used in this paper. Let us consider here four different meanings of ‘history of science’ (cf., Kragh, 1987, for other distinctions): 1. The set of ‘facts’ that happened in other times (and are happening today?) within science as an enterprise. Acknowledging, of course, that such ‘facts’ cannot be but constructions seen through a particular ‘filter’ provided by aims, expectations, culture, background, language, age, gender, ideology, etc. 2. Any explicit, intentional, theory-laden, ‘reading’ of such facts performed from a distinctive theoretical positioning. 196
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3. An academic discipline systematically investigating such facts and producing such readings (sometimes called ‘capitalised History of Science’, or alternatively ‘historiography of science’, to distinguish it from meanings 1 and 2). 4. Any different way of telling the historical production derived from that discipline, in various vehicles and formats, and subject to heavy pragmatic and rhetorical constraints. The theoretical framework that I present in this paper is mainly concerned with meaning 4, since I am interested in the use of the so-called historical case studies – in narrative format (Tignanelli et al., 2009)– serving as setting for philosophical discussion in NOS instruction. This implies, of course, the need to discuss the use of models, ideas, results, terminology, and materials from the history of science sensu stricto, i.e., in meaning 3. The history of science has a long and prestigious tradition both within didactics of science as a scholarly endeavour, and within science education as a reflective practice (cf., for a rapid revision, Matthews, 1992; Fernández González, 2000). In the last four decades, historical content has been used in science education in at least three main ‘formats’ (Adúriz-Bravo, 2008b): 1. ‘Pure’ history of science interspersed with, infused in, or appearing alongside, the scientific content. 2. The history of science seen through the lens of the philosophy of science (which we might call, following Imre Lakatos [1978], ‘rational reconstructions’). 3. The history of science as a context, setting or anchoring for the philosophy of science (cf., Stinner, 1995, 2006; Klassen, 2006). As to the goals at which the history of science in science education could aim, I consider the following (Adúriz-Bravo, 2001): 1. Intrinsic goal. The history of science is taken at its face value, i.e., it is used due to the fact that it constitutes a specific and distinct meta-scientific perspective on science that is supposed to have educational interest. 2. Cultural goal. The history of science provides a richer, more complex, picture of science as a human endeavour, bridging the mythical gap between the ‘two cultures’, and humanising science. 3. Instrumental goal. The history of science contributes to the teaching and learning of content from other disciplines (science, or philosophy of science). When using the history of science instrumentally, historical content scaffolds or fosters understandings but is somehow ‘hidden’, not constituting a substantial part of the instructional aims, but rather serving as an excuse or a vehicle. It is perhaps possible to also identify a fourth, ‘affective’, goal, meaning that the history of science is a strong motivational tool and can bring science ‘closer’ to the audiences. I also talk about different ‘histories of science’ (Adúriz-Bravo, 2008b), which could then be transformed into ‘stories of science’ (i.e., narratives with some educational intention [Tiganelli et al., 2009]): 1. Descriptions. What ‘in fact’ happened (acknowledging however that this is ultimately inaccessible and always ‘told’ with a strong theory-ladenness). The usual 197
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‘biographies’ of scientists, stating dates and events extracted from ‘official’ documents would fit into this first category. 2. Interpretations. What we think happened: any interpretation of ‘plain’ facts done from a specific standpoint and with specific aims. The roles attributed to Galileo’s (real and thought) experiments in bringing forth his contributions to physics are an often cited instance of divergent historical interpretations of the ‘same’ facts. 3. Reconstructions. What could have happened: historians’ hypothetical and inferential reconstructions of the gaps in the documental corpus of data. The life and achievements of science women from Antiquity, such as Miriam the Jewess or Hypatia of Alexandria, heavily draws on what I here call reconstructions. 4. Legends. What some people think happened: well-known mythical episodes that have been constructed over ages with ‘moral’, hagiographic, chauvinistic, pedagogical, etc., aims. Archimedes’ bath or Newton’s apple are among the most (in)famous. 5. Fictions. What did not happen. Counterfactual narratives or speculations, which might be overtly aiming at argumentative purposes, or reduce themselves to downright falsifications of history with spurious intentions. 6. Reports. What is now happening. In many cases, historians confront the use of the term ‘history’ applied to facts that have too short a temporal distance to admit reconstruction. In those cases, we could talk about ‘reports’, as more or less careful descriptions of recent and current events in science. 7. Anticipations. What has not yet happened. Science fiction would be a good example of this category. All the previous categorisations permit me to define science stories as oral or written narratives (in any of the seven styles above) with clearly defined educational goals. Such stories: 1. are constructed resorting to raw material coming from the history of science; 2. are told with instrumental, cultural, and affective objectives; and 3. function as contexts for NOS reflection after the didactical operation of setting, which I define below. 2.2 Adapting Historical Knowledge Production to the Classroom We as didacticians of science (i.e., science education researchers) and as science teachers are not professional historians of science; therefore, we need to resort to work done by historians, especially those who have an interest in science education. On such work, we need to perform a careful transposition which gives priority to educational aims, even if this might mean that a certain amount of ‘noise’ is introduced in the process. When adapting the history of science for its use in science classes, we need to develop criteria for quality assessment, but I think didactical –and not strictly historical– criteria should have priority. Among such criteria, I would include: formative value; communicativeness; relation to an agreed-on rationale or ‘morale’; 198
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connection to other curriculum content; socio-cultural relevance; frontal questioning of hagiography, gender bias, or other biases or forms of discrimination. As an example of these guidelines, I can mention my previous work on the figure of Madame Curie (Adúriz-Bravo, 2005a, 2005b; Seroglou & Adúriz-Bravo, 2007; Adúriz-Bravo & Izquierdo-Aymerich, in press), in which a commercial French film, ‘Les palmes de Monsieur Schutz’, is used in order to learn different NOS tenets related to creativity, models, and scientific ‘heroes’. The film freely recreates the ‘sanctioned’ history of Maria Skáodowska-Curie, drifting away from it when dramatic needs require it. When using the history of science for science education purposes, several different textual vehicles can be used to convey the historical content into the classroom. Stinner et al. (2003) talk about ‘units of historical presentation’: vignettes, case studies, confrontations, thematic narratives, dialogues, and dramatisation. McComas (1998) proposes a list of ‘resource types and instructional approaches’: original works, case studies and illustrations, biographies, presentations, and re-enactments. My proposed science stories more or less correspond to narratives and case studies: they consist of plain, non-technical, prose; they avoid as much as possible the use of quotations from scientists’ original works; and they are generally longer than the usual vignettes (e.g., 2–10 pages of written text or 5–20 minutes of oral text). I have been suggesting that the history of science, when introduced through science stories or any other vehicle, can serve as a ‘set’ or ‘scenery’ –in the theatrical sense– for philosophy-based NOS content in NOS instruction (Adúriz-Bravo, 2001, 2004a; Adúriz-Bravo & Izquierdo-Aymerich, 2004). In my opinion, key NOS ideas can be presented against the backdrop of carefully selected and adapted historical scenes. As I mentioned before, for this instrumental, NOS-driven, use of the history of science, science teachers and teacher educators should perform a didactical transposition of the historical content, in which eclecticism, pragmatism, and a certain amount of ‘functional distortion’ could be allowed. In my science stories, the history of science is not actual content in the traditional sense, but a powerful context for explicit NOS reflection. 2.3 Actions to Expand the Available Corpus of Materials Here I report only on the design (i.e., first cycle of the elaboration phase) of instructional materials for teachers. Such ‘materials’ can range from just a caption to an entire book. I want to focus especially on didactical units (i.e., teaching-learning sequences) in which history-based ‘artefacts’ are used for the NOS education of prospective and in-service science teachers. Following recent suggestions from the literature (cf., Millar, 2002; Méheut & Psillos, 2004), I talk about ‘researchinformed’ and ‘research-based’ didactical units. Research-informed NOS units are designed, applied, evaluated, validated, adapted, etc., using insights (guidelines) from established didactical research. Research-based NOS units are designed, etc., as an integral part of a particular piece of research, in which they are generally assessed in more or less formal ways. 199
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The next subsection is devoted to present the theoretical apparatus of derivation (Figure 1) of didactical units in which NOS tenets are set in selected historical episodes (cf., Adúriz-Bravo, 2001, 2002, 2007; Adúriz-Bravo & Izquierdo-Aymerich, 2002).
The ‘apparatus’ what is science?
how does it change in time? how does it relate to society?
correspondence & rationality representation & languages intervention & methodologies ...
setting in the history of science
what is the relationship between a scientific model and the reality for which it is a surrogate? Ron Giere’s theoretical models & similarity
NoS key idea Models and systems share a family resemblance
Figure 1. The process of ‘derivation’. Theoretical apparatus for research-informed construction of NOS didactical units that feature science stories. Each unit teaches one or more key NOS ideas set in an episode from the history of science.
2.4 The Theoretical ‘Apparatus’ to Derive History-based Didactical Units I start with three main questions on the nature of science that constitute three possible theoretical perspectives when working with teachers: what is science? (philosophical perspective); how does it change in time? (historical perspective); how does it relate to society and culture? (sociological perspective). In the example provided in Figure 1, the first question is highlighted: the unit aims at inspecting how science works and how it is constructed. Each of the three main questions has within it a series of thematic ‘strands’ (Adúriz-Bravo, 2001, 2004b, 2008a), i.e., clusters of ‘big’ issues or problems that have been essential and characteristic in the philosophy of science throughout its history. So far, I have devised a system of seven strands; in the example discussed here, the first strand –dubbed ‘correspondence and rationality’, and dealing with the nature, reach, and validity of scientific representations– is selected to be dealt with in teacher education. Once a strand is picked out for NOS instruction, one or a few well-delineated philosophical questions within it are formulated. In the example under consideration, the question –on the substantive relationship between model and its ‘surrogated’ 200
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system– has been posed rather formally, though this can be re-phrased into less technical formulations when working with science teachers. The strands by themselves, due to their characteristic of being theoretical fields constituting the foundations of the philosophy of science as a discipline (cf. Adúriz-Bravo, 2008a), do not imply a particular answer to the NOS questions; such answer needs to be selected from the available philosophical knowledge from nowadays or from the history of the philosophy of science. In the illustration, the definite answer that I want my teacher audience to become acquainted with comes from the semantic view of theories. In particular, I focus on Ron Giere’s (1988) relationship of ‘family resemblance’ between theoretical models and real systems.
Figure 2. Facsimile of a science story (in Spanish). The story is meant to be used as a written text, and is accompanied by an illustration (by Leonardo González Galli). 201
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The particular philosophical proposition that constitutes the content to be taught and learnt is then transformed into what I call a key NOS idea: a non-complex, straightforward formulation of some aspect of the nature of science that, in spite of its compactness and simplicity, keeps the trace of its model-based derivation. So far, the ‘pure’ philosophical part of the NOS didactical unit has been derived. The last step of the process is the setting itself: the key idea is now located against the backdrop of an historical episode that ‘tunes’ with it. In the case of the example provided, I have used several sceneries, which work as ‘epitomes’ (i.e., paradigmatic examples [Adúriz-Bravo, 2005b]) of scientific modelling: Madame Curie’s ‘discovery’ of radium; the early 17th century dispute between botanical pharmacists and iatrochemists (cf., Izquierdo-Aymerich, 2000); Jean Richer’s scientific voyage to South America (cf., Matthews, 2000); the different atomic models, especially focussing on the transition between the plum pudding and the planetary atom; etc. For the readers’ benefit, Figure 2 shows a facsimile of one of the science stories that I am using with science teachers in my interventions. The story, entitled The Hero’s crown affaire, is a one-page vignette-style text on Archimedes’ mythical ‘Eureka bath’. 3. AS A CONCLUSION
In this paper, I have put forward and illustrated a particular use of the history of science in science education: the history of science as a discipline provides an irreplaceable input for the design of powerful settings for NOS reflection with science teachers. In the use I have discussed here, historical ideas are presented through narratives, a practice that is gaining adepts in current didactics of science (cf., Abd-el-Khalick & Lederman, 2000; Kokkotas & Piliouras, 2005; Rudge, 2006; Stinner, 2006; Clough, 2009). REFERENCES Abd-el-Khalick, F., & Lederman, N. G. (2000). The influence of history of science courses on students’ views of nature of science. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 37(10), 1057–1095. Adúriz-Bravo, A. (2001). Integración de la epistemología en la formación del profesorado de ciencias. Ph.D. Dissertation, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Bellaterra. On line: http://www.tdx.cesca. es/TDCat-1209102-142933. Adúriz-Bravo, A. (2002). Un modelo para introducir la naturaleza de la ciencia en la formación de los profesores de ciencias. Pensamiento Educativo, 30, 315–330. Adúriz-Bravo, A. (2004a). La historia de la ciencia como ‘ambientación’ para enseñar sobre la naturaleza de la ciencia. In Resúmenes del VI Congreso Latinoamericano de Historia de las Ciencias y la Tecnología, CD-ROM, 3. Buenos Aires: Sociedad Latinoamericana de Historia de la Ciencia y de la Técnica. Adúriz-Bravo, A. (2004b). Methodology and politics: A proposal to teach the structuring ideas of the philosophy of science through the pendulum. Science & Education, 13(7–8), 717–731. Adúriz-Bravo, A. (2005a). ‘Los descubrimientos del radio’: Una unidad didáctica para enseñar sobre la naturaleza de la ciencia a futuros profesores de ciencias naturales. In D. Couso, E. Badillo, G. A. Perafán, & A. Adúriz-Bravo (Eds.), Unidades didácticas en ciencias y matemáticas (pp. 317–336). Bogotá: Editorial Magisterio. Adúriz-Bravo, A. (2005b). Una introducción a la naturaleza de la ciencia: La epistemología en la enseñanza de las ciencias naturales. Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica. 202
USE OF THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE IN THE DESIGN Adúriz-Bravo, A. (2007). La naturaleza de la ciencia en la educación científica para todos y todas. Educación en Ciencias e Ingeniería, 5(1), 28–36. Adúriz-Bravo, A. (2008a). A proposal to teach the nature of science (NOS) to science teachers: The ‘structuring theoretical fields’ of NOS. Review of Science, Mathematics and ICT Education, 1(2), 41–56. Adúriz-Bravo, A. (2008b). The use of short stories in research-informed design, implementation and evaluation of science narratives. Paper presented at the second international conference on Stories in Science Teaching, Munich, Germany. Adúriz-Bravo, A., & Izquierdo-Aymerich, M. (2002). Directrices para la formación epistemológica del futuro profesorado de ciencias naturals. In G. A. Perafán & A. Adúriz-Bravo (Eds.), Pensamiento y conocimiento de los profesores: Debate y perspectivas internacionales (pp. 127–139). Bogotá: Universidad Pedagógica Nacional/Colciencias. Adúriz-Bravo, A., & Izquierdo-Aymerich, M. (2004). The discovery of radium as a ‘historical setting’ to teach some ideas on the nature of science. In D. Metz (Ed.), 7th international history, philosophy, and science teaching conference proceedings, CD-ROM (pp. 12–19). Winnipeg: University of Winnipeg. Adúriz-Bravo, A., & Izquierdo-Aymerich, M. (2005). Utilising the ‘3P-model’ to characterise the discipline of didactics of science. Science & Education, 14(1), 29–41. Adúriz-Bravo, A., & Izquierdo-Aymerich, M. (in press). A research-informed instructional unit to teach the nature of science to pre-service science teachers. Science & Education. Arons, A. (1989). Historical and philosophical perspectives attainable in introductory physics courses. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 20(2), 13–23. Bromme, R. (1988). Conocimientos profesionales de los profesores. Enseñanza de las Ciencias, 6(1), 19–29. Brush, S. (1974). Should the history of science be rated X? Science, 183, 1164–1172. Brush, S. (1989). History of science and science education. Interchange, 20(2), 60–70. Chevallard, Y. (1991). La transposition didactique: Du savoir savant au savoir enseigné (2nd ed.). Grenoble: La Pensée Sauvage. Clough, M. (2009). Humanizing science to improve post-secondary science education. Paper presented at IHPST 2009, South Bend, United States. Fernández González, M. (2000). Fundamentos históricos. In F. J. Perales, & P. Cañal (Eds.), Didáctica de las ciencias experimentales: Teoría y práctica de la enseñanza de las ciencias (pp. 65–83). Alcoy: Marfil. Flick, L., & Lederman, N. (2005). Scientific inquiry and nature of science: Implications for teaching, learning, and teacher education. Dordrecht: Springer. Fried, M. (2001). Can mathematics education and history of mathematics coexist? Science & Education, 10(4), 391–408. Giere, R. (1988). Explaining science: A cognitive approach. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Irwin, A. (2000). Historical case studies: Teaching the nature of science in context. Science Education, 84(1), 5–26. Izquierdo-Aymerich, M. (2000). Fundamentos epistemológicos. In F. J. Perales & P. Cañal (Eds.), Didáctica de las ciencias experimentales: Teoría y práctica de la enseñanza de las ciencias (pp. 35–64). Alcoy: Marfil. Klassen, S. (2006). A theoretical framework for contextual science teaching. Interchange, 37(1&2), 31–62. Kokkotas, P., & Piliouras, P. (2005). Bridging history of science and science education: “The MAP project”, in IHPST 2005: The papers. On-line: http://www.ihpst2005.leeds.ac.uk/papers/Kokkotas_ Piliouras.pdf. Kragh, H. (1987). An introduction to the historiography of science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lakatos, I. (1978). The methodology of scientific research programmes: Volume 1: Philosophical Papers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lombardi, O. (1997). La pertinencia de la historia en la enseñanza de ciencias: Argumentos y contraargumentos. Enseñanza de las Ciencias, 15(3), 343–349.
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ADÚRIZ-BRAVO Martinand, J.-L. (1983). Questions pour la recherche: La référence et le possible dans les activités scientifiques scolaires. In G. Delacôte & A. Tiberghien (Eds.), Recherche en didactique de la physique: Les actes du premier atelier international (pp. 227–249). Paris: Éditions du CNRS. Martinand, J.-L. (1989). Pratiques de référence, transposition didactique et savoirs professionnels en sciences techniques. Les Sciences de l’Éducation, pour l’Ère Nouvelle, 2, 23–29. Matthews, M. (1992). History, philosophy, and science teaching: The present rapprochement. Science & Education, 1(1), 11–47. Matthews, M. (1994). Science teaching: The role of history and philosophy of science. New York: Routledge. Matthews, M. (2000). Time for science education: How teaching the history and philosophy of pendulum motion can contribute to science literacy. New York: Kluwer/Plenum Publishers. McComas, W. (Ed.), (1998). The nature of science in science education: Rationales and strategies. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Méheut, M., & Psillos, D. (2004). Teaching-learning sequences: Aims and tools for science education research. International Journal of Science Education, 26(5), 515–652. Millar, R. (2002). Towards evidence-based practice in science education. School Science Review, 84(307), 19–20. Quintanilla, M. (Ed.), (2007). Historia de la ciencia: Volumen I: Aportes para la formación del profesorado. Santiago de Chile: Arrayán Editores. Rudge, D. (2006). History of science in the service of middle school science teacher preparation. Paper presented at the 6th international conference for the History of Science in Science Education, Oldenburg, Germany. Seroglou, F., & Adúriz-Bravo, A. (2007). ǹʌȩ IJȘȞ İȚțȩȞĮ IJȠȣ İʌȚıIJȒȝȠȞĮ ıIJȘȞ İȚțȩȞĮ IJȘȢ İʌȚıIJȒȝȘȢ: ȆİȢ ȝȠȣ IJȘȞ ȚıIJȠȡȓĮ IJȘȢ ȂĮȞIJȐȝ ȀȚȠȣȡȓ. In D. Koliopoulos (Ed.), ǿıIJȠȡȓĮ, ĭȚȜȠıȠijȓĮ țĮȚ ǻȚįĮıțĮȜȓĮ IJȦȞ ĭȣıȚțȫȞ ǼʌȚıIJȘȝȫȞ (pp. 463–473). Marousi: Othisi. Seroglou, F., & Koumaras, P. (2001). The contribution of the history of physics in physics education: A review. Science & Education, 10(1&2), 153–172. Shulman, L. S. (1986). Those who understand: Knowledge growth in teaching. Educational Researcher, 15(2), 4–14. Shulman, L. S. (1987). Knowledge and teaching: Foundations of the new reform. Harvard Educational Review, 57(1), 1–22. Stinner, A. (1995). Contextual settings, science stories, and large context problems: Toward a more humanistic science education. Science Education, 79(5), 555–581. Stinner, A. (2006). From theory to practice: Placing history into the science classroom. Paper presented at the 6th international conference for the History of Science in Science Education, Oldenburg, Germany. Stinner, A., McMillan, B., Metz, D., Jilek, J., & Klassen, S. (2003). The renewal of case studies in science education. Science & Education, 12(7), 617–643. Tignanelli, H., Bahamonde, N., & Adúriz-Bravo, A. (2009). Pequeñas historias de humor y de horror: Usando narrativas y casos en la formación del profesorado de ciencias. Paper presented at the VIII Congreso Internacional sobre Investigación en la Didáctica de las Ciencias, Barcelona, Spain.
Agustín Adúriz-Bravo Grupo de Epistemología, Historia y Didáctica de las Ciencias Naturales (GEHyD), Centro de Formación e Investigación en Enseñanza de las Ciencias (CeFIEC), Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales (FCEyN), Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA). CeFIEC, 2º Piso, Pabellón 2, Ciudad Universitaria, Avenida Intendente Güiraldes 2160, (C1428EGA) Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina e-mail:
[email protected]
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15. WHICH HPS DO/SHOULD TEXTBOOKS REFER TO? THE HISTORICAL DEBATE ON THE NATURE OF ELECTRICAL FLUIDS
1. INTRODUCTION
There is an agreement in Brazilian and international science teaching community concerning the relevance of teaching history and nature of science notions at schools (Martins, 1990; Matthews, 1994). The nature of science is part of national curricula in many countries. However, curricular recommendations are usually vague. For instance, Brazilian National Standards emphasizes the social and cultural contextualization as necessary and point some abilities to be developed in physics teaching: – Recognizing physics as a human endevour; – Teaching aspects of its history and its relationship with cultural, social, political and economic context; – Recognizing the role of Physics in the production system, understanding the evolution of technology and its dynamic relationship with the evolution of scientific knowledge; – Establishing relationships between physical knowledge and other forms of expressing human culture; – Being able to issue value judgments regarding social situations involving relevant aspects of physics and/or technology; – Recognizing that there is no step-by-step scientific method. 2. HPS IN TEXTBOOKS
There are a lot of sources for teachers’ and students’ views about the nature of science. Among them are public vision of science on TV, internet or videos. For school science education it is of major importance which messages about the nature of science are conveyed. Historical-philosophical aspects can contribute to promote science teaching for the benefit of the development of more adequate views about the nature of science. On the other hand its absence and above all its misuse generates distorted views about what science is all about including epistemological beliefs. In order to figure out messages about the nature of science conveyed by textbooks more in detail we analyzed how history of electricity is presented in 12 of the most popular science textbooks for fundamental and secondary schools in Brazil. In particular we focused on the 18th century debate on the nature of electrical fluids with a special regard of Benjamin Franklin’s studies on electricity. This study took P.V. Kokkotas et al., (eds.), Adapting Historical Science Knowledge Production to the Classroom, 205–212. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
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into account the quality of historical information and ideas on the nature of science conveyed by these historical narratives (Silva & Pimentel, 2008). Here three examples of our results will be demonstrated allowing for a detailed account on NOS aspects conveyed by the historical narratives under scrutiny (our emphasis). Book A: “The famous American politician and scientist Benjamin Franklin, after carrying out a big number of experimental observations, proved that when two bodies are rubbed one against the other, if one of them is positively electrified, the other, necessarily will have negative electric charge. [...] Looking for an explanation for this fact Franklin formulated a theory according to which electric phenomena were produced by the existence of an electric fluid that would be present in all bodies.” Book B: “In 18th century a curious scientist called Benjamin Franklin lived in United States. We acknowledge him a very simple experiment that shows that electricity is a phenomenon present in nature. With a large silk handkerchief and a metallic cross, Franklin made a kite and raised it in a stormy day. For this purpose he used a cotton string which is an electric insulator that is, does not allow electric charges move in its interior [...]” Book C: “The North American Benjamin Franklin established definitively in 1752 the electric nature of lightning, with the following experience: he constructed a kite and fixed a needle in it. The string was made of cotton. In one string’s extremity, he fixed an iron key. He attached the iron key with a silk line (electric insulator) to a tree, keeping the silk line protected of rain and, therefore, dry.” Obviously these extracts are based on a strong empirical-inductivist view of science. Historical narratives are mainly based on the exemplification of personages and celebrities ignoring or despising the contribution of other researchers, the relevance of social aspects and cultural contexts of science. Many people before Franklin had already studied the electricity and its production. Even their names are seldom mentioned (Heilbron, 1999). There is no agreement among historians of science that Franklin actually performed the kite experiment. One has to keep in mind the enormous dangers for the lives of those who performe kite experiments during a thunderstorm. The kite experiment was furthermore designed to show that the electric nature of lightning causes similar effects like electricity produced by friction. However, further experiments with the electricity of lightning accumulated in a Leyden jar are indispensable. The idea that electricity is a unifying concept covering phenomena like attractions and repulsions as well as lighting was far from being well established. For Franklin it was not possible to affirm with certainty that the natures of both “electricities” responsible for different kinds of phenomena were the same. It is necessary to use epistemological arguments as “Occam’s razor”. According to this epistemological rule, one should choose the simplest theory, and not multiply entities if this is not necessary. Thus, it is simpler to assume that lighting and other electrical phenomena were of the same kind. This kind of epistemological argument is used in many 206
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experiments popular in teaching situation as in Newton’s experiments with prisms (Martins & Silva, 2001). Additionally, neither the general meaning of experiment, the role of experimental experience and skill nor the role of scientific observation and inference are pointed out clearly and demonstrated properly. The role of many details for achieving experimental success is not mentioned at all. Among them are procedures like tying cotton string in a tree… Such a representation of science and its history is hardly appropriate to develop teachers’ and students’ understanding of the nature of science towards more sophisticated views. Instead massages of simple experimental procedures leading to clearcut and unquestionable insights are supported. In previous research we have found that this sort of problem is recurrent in Brazilian physics textbooks (Silva & Pagliarini, 2007). The lack of adequate representations of scientific discourse in textbooks leads us to important questions of research and development: “Which content and which aspects of HPS should be stressed and included in textbooks in order to support the development of a more sophisticated understanding of science?”. 3. SOME CONSIDERATIONS REGARDING TEXTBOOKS
There are several papers discussing the relevance of curricular changes and teacher training programs in fostering the implementation of HPS in classrooms (for instance, Monk & Osborne, 1997; Adúriz-Bravo et al., 2002). However, a key element in this process is not often addressed: the textbooks. Actually, the effect of including history of science in science education depends mostly on what history of science is used and how it is used. Usually teachers lack initial education on history and philosophy of science. Therefore, their own professional development and teaching practice in this field heavily depend on accounts on science demonstrated in their textbooks. Hence, it seems to be likely if a teacher decides for addressing explicitly the nature of science, he or she will heavily rely on how science is portrayed, which history of science is considered and which views on the nature of science are conveyed in his or her textbook (Leite, 2002). In order to raise elements to help us to answer the question posed above I would like to discuss briefly some aspects of the tension existing between historians of science, science educators and teachers concerning curriculum contents. The issues I will address are – Different perspectives on what a proper HPS and NOS is – Didactic transposition – The need of an explicit approach to NOS issues – Textbooks and teachers practice – Other issues to be considered further 3.1 Different Perspectives Teacher believes and scholar believes about what a proper HPS and NOS teaching is differ radically. What counts as adequate material, textbook, experiment, case 207
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studies, etc from a historian of science viewpoint is different form a science educator and policy makers’ viewpoint. Thinking about HPS and NOS conveyed by textbooks means nothing else but thinking about bridging these gaps after having realized that there are gaps! My suggestion in this talk it that we must clearly admit the existence of at least 3 different levels and kinds of expertise relevant for the inclusion of HPS in science textbooks and a wide implementation in teaching practice. Instead of thinking in a general HPS in science teaching, we should firstly admit and accept that the scholars and teachers have different views and perspectives. The gap between professional cultures is not essentially problematic since teachers are not historians of science and historians of science are not school teachers and both do not have to do the job of the others. The gap is unavoidable, because the expertise necessary for doing a good job in each field is very different. Each side has different roles in the process, different everyday work, and faces different tasks and problems. It is a challenging objective to our HPST community to help to bridge this inevitable gap. And this would be softened if the main actors in each level admit the existence of levels of “didactic transposition” where the knowledge is necessarily transformed and adapted to different types of expertise, interests, goals, believes, etc. 3.2 Didactic Transposition From the expertise viewpoint textbook knowledge is fragmented, since just some topics are chosen by curriculum developers. It also applies to HPS knowledge, thus it is not possible to cover all relevant aspects of a historical topic in the small space devoted to HPS in science textbooks. Therefore, the first step in establishing a body of knowledge as teachable knowledge consists in making it into a body of knowledge, i.e., into an organized and more or less integrated whole that explicitly discuss NOS notions incorporated with scientific contents. Decisions about this “integrated whole” is influenced by experts. For instance, school physics has evolved from physicists’ physics, although their resemblance is pale. However, it is not the case with HPS contents, since curricula do not have a list of HPS topics to be taught as they have a list of physics topics to be taught, in addition historians of science and philosophers are hardly ever consulted in the curricula development process. Considering that we do not expect students in school courses to be experts in history of science, we should work on some standards enabling well founded decisions on what historical content should be included in curricula and textbooks and on which level of elaboration. Moreover, such criteria are not univocal, they strongly depend on social and pedagogical school realities, national standards as a whole and also on the target group a textbook addresses (e.g. teacher trainers, teachers own learning, students at school). How curricular contents are introduced in schools is different from what experts have worked them out. To adapt contents to teaching does not mean just simplifying them, eliminating the more difficult or abstract aspects, but is a much more complex 208
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process. The process by which scientific knowledge become school knowledge was called by Yves Chevallard (1985) didactic transposition. Didactic transposition firstly proposed in didactics of mathematics concerns the evolution, from the knowledge of reference to the teachable knowledge and then, to the finally taught knowledge. Chevallard defines three spheres of knowledge as illustrated in Figure 1. Each one has its own epistemology, contents and objects, production and validation rules, social influences, etc.
Figure 1. Three spheres of knowledge according to didactic transposition framework.
According to Chevallard school knowledge (including teachers’ content knowledge and didactic material contents) is not merely a simplification of the content knowledge of experts. On the contrary it is a new knowledge able to respond to demands of two different epistemological domains: science and classroom. Didactic transposition encompasses the idea that the teacher’s content knowledge about fermentation for instance is not the reduced content knowledge of a biochemist. What science teachers must know about fermentation is less deep, but without being superficial. On the other hand science teachers must know more about the didactic and pedagogical dimensions of teaching fermentation. Thus, knowledge about fermentation is “transposed” from the expert (scientist) level to teacher level. It loses technical aspects and wins didactical aspects. It is clear that not all aspects of expert knowledge will be transposed to teachable knowledge. There are some basic characteristics that teachable knowledge must have (Forato, 2009). – Consensual: experts, policy makers, curriculum developers, and in some extend parents and students must agree that teachable knowledge is “correct”. In the case of historical and epistemological knowledge about science, it is not rare to find disagreement among historians and philosophers. Notwithstanding, textbooks must incorporate a sort of “consensual history”. – Actual: This means that it must be considered as relevant to school reality. For instance, to teach about Faraday’s induction experiment is relevant, while to teach about the geometrical analysis of the duration of days and nights in Sacrobosco’s “Treatise on the sphere” is not a topic to be included in textbooks, although very interesting to a historians of astronomy. – Operational: teachable knowledge must allow activities, exercises, assessment. It is necessary that historical and philosophical contents included in textbooks can be assessed. Assessment opportunities provides clear messages to teachers about the relevance of content to be taught and to students on how to prepare their assessments and how much studying time to devote for learning a specific content. 209
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3.3 Explicit Approach Of course, there are guidelines and curricular documents for teachers like national standards which pre-define what content to teach. However, most teachers do not read (or understand) them carefully and rely on textbooks contents. At least in Brazil, teachers usually think they must teach what is in textbooks. It makes sense since someone thought about it, it follows curricular policies, it was supposedly reviewed by experts and so on. Due to this sort of visceral relationship between teachers and textbooks, teachers (consciously or not) take the (implicit or explicit) NOS ideas conveyed by textbooks as true. Students and teachers do not learn relevant nature of science lessons through examples alone or as a consequence of reading historical case studies and books. It is indispensable that complex and subtle ideas such as NOS ideas be explicitly addressed by textbooks, with clearly formulated learning activities for both students and teachers. How can explicit approach to history and philosophy be included in a textbook? The author should suggest issues for discussion, put questions teachers can ask, design activities for addressing the NOS explicitly and reflectivly. It is desirable to research about which scientific contents are appropriate to be taught with history and which are not, keeping in mind that a combination of learning about scientific content, history and nature of science is crucial. Few teachers consider history of science and nature of science aspects as subjects to be taught. History of science is considered as another didactic strategy that complements other approaches and introduces new dimensions to school knowledge. Research with Brazilian teachers show that they see teaching HPS contents as an “extra” activity, as they were not part of the mandatory curriculum, and something to be worked apart regular classes. Since time for covering all syllabus items usually is insufficient and they see HPS contents as something extra, teachers also regard the little time available as an impediment for introducing HPS in their classes (Martins, 2007). Hence, just the inclusion of explicit NOS contents is not enough to promote an effective implementation of HPS at classrooms. It is necessary that those contents be concretely part of school curriculum, not as vague items as they usually appear, otherwise teachers and students tend to ignore them. It becomes clear that in the absence of explicit curricular specification and formal assessment, the nature of science seldom is intentionally and explicitly taught. Neither included in textbooks. 3.4 HPS Textbook Contents and Teachers’ Practice When considering the different spheres of knowledge in didactic transposition, the closer to schools we are, the closer we need to collaborate with teachers for an effective implementation of HPS. Usually teachers have epistemological beliefs and beliefs about teaching and learning, which guide and shape their interpretation and use of textbooks (empirical-inductive). Therefore, we have to consider the role of textbooks for teachers’ own learning and regard teachers as part in the teaching material development process. A textbook has to offer learning opportunities to 210
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explicitly confront teacher’s as well as students’ beliefs with more elaborated beliefs on how science proceeds. Taking into account the fact teachers learn HPS and NOS with textbooks, we can ask how textbooks can be useful to fostering teachers’ learning at same time they are designed for students. In addition, there is the textbook writers and publisher side. The publisher houses are not very often in the mood to change a system that “works”, then little historical content should be expected to enter science lessons. They know a kind of book sells and teachers choose them. So, changing all the system takes time and demands active government intervention. 3.5 More Issues to be Considered An adequate inclusion of history and nature of science contents in textbooks is not the only issue to be considered in fostering the implementation of them in science classes. There are many other issues involved that should be more extensively investigated, such as: – How teachers and future teachers of scientific disciplines see the use of HPS in their classes? – In what extend do teachers already implement HPS and NOS notions in their classes and for what specific purpose? – Studying HPS disciplines during pre-service course does lead to a change in teachers practice? – Which main obstacles do teachers face for implementing HPS, from their own perspective? It seems we have a long way ahead in developing adequate case studies and also in research on pedagogical issues related to inclusion of HPS. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I would like to acknowledge and thank fruitful discussions I had about this talk with Prof. Dr. Dietmar Höttecke. REFERENCES Adúriz-Bravo, A., Izquierdo, M., & Estany, M. A. (2002). Una propuesta para estructurar la enseñanza de la filosofía de la ciencia para el profesorado de ciencias en formación. Enseñanza de las ciencias: revista de investigación y experiencias didácticas, 20(3), 465–476. Chevallard, Y. (1985). La transposition didactique. Du savoir savant au savoir enseigné. Grenoble: La Pensée Sauvage. Forato, T. C. M. (2009). A Natureza da Ciência como Saber Escolar: Um estudo de caso a partir da história da luz [The nature of science as scholar knowledge: A case study from the history of light]. Doctoral Thesis, University of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo. Heilbron, J. L. (1999). Electricity in the 17th and 18th centuries. A study in early modern physics. New York: Dover Publications. Leite, L. (2002). History of science in science education: Development and validation of a checklist for analysing the historical content of science textbooks. Science & Education, 11, 333–359.
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SILVA Martins, A. F. P. (2007). História e filosofia da ciência no ensino: Há muitas pedras nesse caminho... Caderno Brasileiro de Ensino de Física, 24, 112–131. Martins, R. de A. (1990). Sobre o Papel da História da Ciência no Ensino. Boletim SBHC, 9, 3–5. Martins, R. de A., & Silva, C. C. (2001). Newton and colour: The complex interplay of theory and experiment. Science & Education, 10(3), 287–305. Matthews, M. R. (1994). Science teaching – The role of history and philosophy of science. New York: Routledge. Monk, M., & Osborne, J. (1997). Placing the history and philosophy of science on the curriculum: A model for the development of pedagogy. Science Education, 81, 405–424. Silva, C. C., & Pagliarini, C. (2007). History and nature of science in Brazilian physics textbooks: Some findings and perspectives. Proceedings of ninth international history, philosophy & science teaching conference. Silva, C. C., & Pimentel, A. C. (2008). Uma análise da história da eletricidade presente em livros didáticos: o caso de Benjamin Franklin. Caderno Brasileiro de Ensino de Física, 25, 141–159.
Prof. Dr. Cibelle Celestino Silva Institute of Physics of Sao Carlos, University of Sao Paulo Brazil
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16. A WIKI-COURSE FOR TEACHER TRAINING IN SCIENCE EDUCATION Using History of Science to Teach Electromagnetism
1. DESIGNING A WEB-BASED LEARNING ENVIRONMENT
A web-based learning environment should include collaborative learning tools as well as control tools. The collaborative learning tools should provide to the participating facilitators and in-service teachers the capability to research, organize, put together, save, and share with all participants a variety of objects such as texts, files, directories, relevant websites, images, notes etc. The creation of data bases, chat rooms and digital images, texts, music and video should be provided from the facilitators. A useful contribution of the control tools should foster quantitative and qualitative evaluation for the interaction between facilitators, in-service teachers and the web-based learning environment concerning the e-teaching courses and the research projects being developed. Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) is based on the idea that information technology applications may create evolving socio-cognitive procedures that encourage knowledge construction and dissemination. From the Harmon and Jones scale (Harmon & Jones, 1999) of five levels of web-based learning environments, that is: informational, supplemental, essential, communal and immersive, the last communal to immersive are considered as prerequisites in our case. Such a web-based learning environment may store units of multimedia information and provide free and easy (at any time) access to all participants (Wang & Beasley, 2002), while interacts with sources and qualities of the World Wide Web (WWW) in order to facilitate the learning process (Piguet & Peraya, 2000). Another important characteristic of such a web-based learning environment should be its global accessibility to a certain section of it, while another topic - theme should be entered only with the use of a user name and a password in a web browser. A very common analysis technique used for web-based learning environments is the configuration of access frequency and time in order to describe the various forms of their use (Ingram, 1999; Peled & Rashty, 1999). In the web-based learning environment under development in this case, other analysis parameters are also taken into account, such as the sources used, the duration of their use and may be even further statistical analysis of its use at the second stage of this application. The categories of web pages of web-based learning environments are presented and briefly described at Table 1 (Sheard et al, 2003): P.V. Kokkotas et al., (eds.), Adapting Historical Science Knowledge Production to the Classroom, 213–227. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
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Table 1. Description of page categories in a web-based learning environment (Sheard et al, 2003) Page category Home Page Time Tracker
File Manager
Document Templates Risks Lists General Information Group Forum Group News System Calendar of events Past Projects Database
Discussion Groups Resource search Administration Surveys
Description
Group/ Individual
Static/ Dynamic
Passive/ Interactive
Entry page for site, news, announcements Facility to record project tasks and times spend. Generates task and time reports Facility for groups and individuals to store and retrieve files in a webaccessible location. Configuration management facilities Document templates and examples of documents from past projects Facility to assist project risk management Static documents, guidelines, assessment guides Group based discussion forum Facility to post news items to group members Allows viewing and scheduling of events Storage area of past projects. Facilities to search projects from previous years with the possibility of reusing parts Discussion forum for all
I
D
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Searchable database of online resources and printed material Not accessible On-line surveys to provide feedback about the site
Web-based learning environments such as Blackboard, WebCT, Fle3, Virtual Campus, Wikis etc. are some examples of Web implementation to education. In some of them, like Blackboard in the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, there is a need of an expert to manage and administer the whole complex system. Facilitators 214
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of virtual learning communities who have access to a web-based learning environment will find that they have access as well to a variety of web-based tools that they may organize in order to offer to the web-based learning community only those functional necessary tools to interact. A flexible and useful web-based learning environment must provide a message communication system for participants, a discussion board where facilitators and in-service teachers participating can communicate or start discussing with each other, announcement boards which are used to distribute files, data, notices etc. A web-based learning environment must have a design that offers to the facilitator the opportunity to provide to Participants access to information sources via network connections, hot internet links or via direct use of it. Navigation through hot links fosters direct access to information sources on screen. Some examples of information sources are presented: – Search engines related to libraries hot links – Newspapers links and information sources – Subject portals – Information - site hot link - about the department – Information about the web based learning community – Past projects database. Some additional programs should include multimedia packages, self-study materials, designing programs, additional software, a data bank of learning and training materials, a help desk or ‘how to use this environment’ manual, assessment tools such as: questionnaires, on-line discussion forum analysers, and finally traffic analytics. Also they provide some personal management facilities like: – Keeping a personal diary or calendar or a desktop when using the environment – Update participant details, like password, e-mail details, personal data required – Creating a personal web page with information each individual want to share to each other. Finally web-based learning environment facilitators require access to a control panel tools that enable them to: – Create and manage groups and individuals – Manage and update the web-based learning environment – Record feedback and monitor user-trainees’ activity (login, on-line time duration, results of on-line assignments) – Maintain the system. Web-based learning environments allow many types and levels of access. Facilitator’s, administrator’s and in-service teacher’s participating accesses are different in character and activity. Each in-service teacher participating forms a potential for interaction that is characterized by the different environment capabilities provided. For example, in a web-based learning environment, in-service teachers participating have access to communication tools, information sources and personal management tools. Facilitators have access to information control tools, assessing the in-service teacher’s participating roles, on-line activities, login, on-line time duration and evaluating the outcomes of the projects developed by the user-trainees. 215
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In addition the administrator has the possibility to add new groups or programs and to provide access to the system to everyone else. 2. WHY WE ARE USING A WIKI IN EDUCATION?
These instructions are intended to provide guidance to authors. After the fast development of web-based learning environments in the first years where the main focus was on technology, recently it becomes clearer to the researchers’ and developers’ eyes that the need of certain pedagogical principles is crucial. The use of webbased environments in education may play an important role in facilitating learning under certain circumstances which allow technology to bring forward educational improvement and innovation. Technology now gains its primal role as the ‘medium’ for the learning interaction, and loses its mystical role of the focus theme in communication. The demystification of technology opens the way towards effective web-based learning environments providing fruitful feedback on the learning procedure. A balance between pedagogical, technical and structural aspects is needed for a successful web-based learning environment. Such environments won’t replace the traditional educational forms and techniques but will foster teaching and learning interactions becoming vitally incorporated to the ‘game’ of education. (Koulountzos & Seroglou, 2007a). Our first intention was to combine the basic principles that rule web based learning environments and especially the extra features a wiki-based learning environment can offer to teach pre- and in-service teachers science literacy. A wiki-based learning environment can offer a cooperative environment in which in-service teachers participating can: – be isolated as a group – work as a team and individually – interact continuously and with no interruptions with each other – communicate and make common the sources – construct knowledge – present research result. In a wiki-based learning environment traditional roles are changing and a transformation is taking place (Mezirow, 1991), therefore such a web-based learning environment is an advanced environment using its own rules. There is no centrebased learning process, but a process characterised by dissemination, co-operation, contribution, co-dependency and group responsibility. Facilitators and in-service teachers share their ideas and construct knowledge. This is the next stage which triggers results and changes the way of information-knowledge transmission. This knowledge-information from one-dimensional as well as time and space limited shifts to multi-dimensional while time and space independent. Finally, in the first development stages of a wiki-based learning environment, the sense of humor and the creation of a pleasant disposal between the facilitator and the users-trainees play an important role. The facilitator should care to give a sense of humor to the on-line procedures, answers and advices for users-trainees, to create a positive climate of development and collaborative improvement of the web-based learning 216
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environment and to activate the co-operation of all. It is vitally important for a web-based learning environment to activate users-trainees participation and nourish collaboration and long-term function. Nevertheless, a series of potential barriers may be identified and confronted concerning resourcing, institutional infrastructure and politics, staff development, teaching and learning, content and access (Koulountzos & Seroglou, 2007b). In the 1930’s Bertolt Brecht commenting on the uses of radio said: “...radio is purely an apparatus for distribution, for mere sharing out. So here is a positive suggestion: change this apparatus over from distribution to communication. The radio would be the finest possible communication apparatus in public life, a vast network of pipes. That is to say, it would be if it knew how to receive as well as to transmit, how to let the listener speak as well as hear, how to bring him into a relationship instead of isolating him...” (Brecht, 1930). Brecht’s prophetic suggestion is fulfilled in our days by wikis, presented by Cunningham in 1994. Bertolt Brecht’s radio theory leads us to Cunningham’s wikis 64 years later. From the traditional web to the wikis, we observe the transformation of a medium from one-dimensional to multi-dimensional, multi-functional, interactive and fully-communicational. The Hawaiian word “wiki” that means quickly inspired Ward Cunningham and decided to use “wiki” to name the collaborative tool he developed for use on the internet in 1994. Wikis are fully editable websites. Users may visit, read, re-organize and update the structure and content (text, pictures, and videos) of a wiki as they see it. This functionality is called open editing (Leuf & Cunningham, 2001). A functional and well growing wiki-based learning environment should encourage the creation of a climate of commitment and trust between its members: the facilitators and the pre and in-service teachers in our case. Our design scopes to achieve a user-centered, trainee-centered, interactive, collective, collaborative structure for the atlaswiki learning environment that allows the individual to collect organize and re-contextualize knowledge. A double shift of roles is expected to take place during the above interaction: the teacher is there not to teach but to advise, encourage and facilitate while the learner participates and re-structures the teaching and learning procedure. A balance between pedagogical, technical and structural aspects is needed for a successful wiki-based learning environment, that won’t replace the traditional educational forms and techniques but will foster teaching and learning. Some of the wiki advantages are the free availability, the reliability and the easiness to use. Our scope is to implement wikis in the education area. With our atlaswiki proposal we illustrate how wikis can be used to create collaborative virtual learning environments (http://atlaswiki.wetpaint.com). To participate in atlaswiki you don’t have to use special equipments and software, but a simple personal computer connected to the internet with a browser installed like Mozilla, Netscape or Internet Explorer. Everything that a pre- or in-service teacher needs in order to present his work is included in the wiki. Furthermore, all e-material that a pre- or 217
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in-service teacher wants to present in the atlaswiki by the saving function is automatically published in the web-environment. In our atlaswiki there are two different writing modes, the document mode and the thread mode. In the document mode pre- and in-service teachers create collaborative documents enriched with multimedia materials as pictures, videos etc. All authors can edit and put comments in the content of documents and gradually the content becomes a representation of the shared knowledge or beliefs of the contributors (Leuf & Cunningham, 2001). In the thread mode pre- and in-service teachers start a dialogue in the atlaswiki environment by posting signed messages. The community responds to them, leaving the original messages intact and eventually a group of threaded messages evolves (Leuf & Cunningham, 2001). In the atlaswiki we have two states: read and edit. In the read state, atlaswiki is by default; this means that the atlaswiki page looks just like a normal webpage. When pre- and in-service teachers wanted to edit on the atlaswiki page, they have to sign in first, and then click on the atlaswiki edit toolbar. Atlaswiki uses a version of syntax that helps pre- and in-service teachers to format the atlaswiki content (e.g. bold, underline, etc., hyperlink text formatting, upload photos and videos). Pre- and in-service teachers need to learn a set of basic mark up or syntax rules. The editing toolbar is provided so the user can type in their content and format or elaborate it by clicking on the toolbar. When teachers are signed in, they can add new pages to atlaswiki and format the required text using the internal edit tool. 3. INSTRUCTIONAL E-MATERIAL DEVELOPMENT FOR AN E-COURSE INSIDE ATLASWIKI: FILMS AND VIDEOTAPED ROLE-PLAYS PRESENTED IN AN EDUCATIONAL WIKI
In the presented atlaswiki case the instructional e-material for pre- and in-service teachers e-training in electromagnetism consists of short films, photographs, worksheets, guidelines for the teacher, teaching strategies, etc. Two sets of tasks have been designed. The first set, based on the experiments of Gardano and Gilbert addresses the differentiation between electrostatic and magnetic phenomena (Seroglou et al, 1998; Seroglou & Koumaras, 2003). In these tasks, learners are provided with the opportunity to observe the similarities and differences between the two kinds of phenomena, as listed by Gardano and Gilbert. In the current application, the designed tasks have been filmed and are presented in the atlaswiki learning environment through video-streaming. For example, in order to differentiate electrostatic and magnetic attractions a series of videos with a magnet and a plastic strip charged by friction have been developed showing that: a) a magnet attracts iron fillings, b) a plastic strip charged by friction also attracts iron fillings, c) a magnet does not attract small pieces of paper and d) a plastic strip charged by friction attracts small pieces of paper (Seroglou et al, 1998; Koulountzos et al, 2007). In the same line of thought, tasks inspired by Faraday’s work were designed, aiming at the connection between electrostatic and electrodynamics phenomena (Seroglou et al, 1998; Seroglou & Koumaras, 2003). In these tasks, learners have 218
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the opportunity to observe the same electric effects produced either by friction or by the use of a battery or a high-voltage power supply. For example, in this case, it is shown that a fluorescent strip light lights up when connected to the lighting circuit, but also gives out light visible in a dark room, when it is rubbed with a piece of woollen cloth or a piece of fur (Seroglou et al, 1998; Koulountzos et al, 2007). All developed sets of videos with the designed tasks supporting the teaching of electromagnetism, have been incorporated in the atlaswiki learning environment aiming to help teachers themselves initially to get familiar with some electromagnetic concepts and phenomena and, at a second level, to be able to teach those concepts and phenomena, either with the use of the developed videos or by actually recreating and performing the designed tasks in the classroom. The designed tasks focus on the cognitive dimension of learning and especially on differentiating electrostatic and magnetic attractions and relating electrostatic phenomena and phenomena of the electric current. In order to provide a meta-cognitive focus on relating scientists’ work with the social and cultural context in which the theories of electromagnetism were developed, we have designed a set of activities using a short film about the life and work of Faraday and short videos presenting role-plays inspired by the film and performed by in-service teachers. The developed activities have been applied in the context of a face-to-face postgraduate course for in-service teachers. During the course, in-service teachers watched the Faraday film, discussed on the science-society interrelations and on nature of science aspects presented in the film, designed their own role-plays concerning aspects of Faradays life and work and performed them in the classroom. The performed role-plays were videotaped, uploaded on youtube, and incorporated as short films in the atlaswiki learning environment. This way, pre and in-service teachers participating in the e-training course are provided with examples of role-plays they could develop in their classroom, as well as with a fruitful source for discussion, evaluation and reflection on social and cultural contexts around the scientist’s work (Koulountzos et al, 2007). 4. RESEARCH FOCUS
Our research interest focuses on how pre and in-service teachers interact with each other, with atlaswiki designers and facilitators and with the atlaswiki environment, while being “in the atlaswiki and part of atlaswiki”. Thus, qualitative data are collected and analyzed through the threads mode, while quantitative data concerning the site and the visitors’ “behavior” inside the wiki are raised and studied using google analytics. In the qualitative analysis in the thread mode of the wiki, facilitators and preand in-service teachers put and respond questions about: – multimedia information – impressions & suggestions – wiki communication – experiments in the classroom 219
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– watching videos – role-play & history of science – history of science in teaching. In the quantitative analysis the questions concerning how many: – visitors – new visitors versus returning visitors – times visiting – length & depth of visiting – page views. The discussion - dialectics that happened trigger a dialogue about impressions and suggestions for atlaswiki: Is adequate and clarifying multimedia information and communication inside atlaswiki? On the other hand the dialogue focuses on experiments and videos presented in the classroom. The dialogue between participants seeks for the relation between role-plays, history of science and the contribution of history of science in science teaching. 5. RESEARCH AND DATA ANALYSIS
The atlaswiki web based learning environment offers the capability of integrating multimedia information in multiple web pages. It can provide text (web) pages with pictures on-line, enhanced with experimental and role-play videos, hyperlinks to external sources and discussion boards. History of science provides the opportunity to reproduce and replicate experiments as well as repository them on-line via atlaswiki environment, introducing in-service teachers to science. Never the less, inservice teachers have the opportunity during the activities to seek multiple interpretations of the scientists’ profile, way of research, effect on his contemporary culture as well as the affect of the social and cultural matrix on the scientists’ life and work. They attend role-plays in videos, develop their own role-plays, rehearse and perform. The feedback from in-service teachers participating in atlaswiki has been fruitful. The in-service teachers’ impressions have been positive from the beginning. It was easy to sign up for the first time, there was no need to have special skills and someone with basic computer literacy could interact easily with the environment. The basic knowledge was the ability to operate a personal computer with an internet connection and an internet browser. The atlaswiki environment offers an easy add page and edit function, offering the ability to in-service teachers to “forget” the medium and focus on their community collaboration and knowledge construction. In-service teachers were saying that with multimedia information you can understand science better and you can change your opinion about science teaching. They suggest more e-material existence, more ideas and themes to teach inside atlaswiki. Atlaswiki web-based learning environment brings science to the people, showing alternative methods in science teaching by implementing ideas from history of science and from “life outside the classroom” in science education. 220
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Figure 1. Introduction page of our atlas wiki-based learning environment ATLASWIKI (2008): http://atlaswiki.wetpaint.com
They also suggest performing experiments with simple materials and devices, acting themselves in videos with experiments, elaborating those videos with audio inputs, so that in-service teachers visiting atlaswiki will be able to watch with sound and narratives the performed experiments, making them this way more interesting and communicative. Concerning role-plays, pre- and in-service teachers focus on the opportunity to be “in the scientist’s shoes” and support that when they are reproducing an era and an environment in the context of role-plays, they are introduced to an understanding of how all those inventions happened and how scientists come to their results and theories. In other words, science starts to “make sense” for them. Finally, concerning the history of science pre and in-service teachers suggest that more cases about women in science, science and technology, and the relations between science and politics, economy, religion, ethics, myths and preconceptions should be developed. A quantitative analysis of incoming data as we can see in Figure 2, illustrates the traffic in the atlaswiki learning environment. In a period of six days, data have been recorded by Google analytics show 63 absolute unique visitors a) navigating 154 times through atlaswiki learning environment, b) seeing 2,139 web pages, d) giving a ratio of 13.89 pages per visit and d) spending 15:52 minutes inside the atlaswiki learning environment. Most teachers visited back atlaswiki 9 to 14 times, 79% of them were returning visitors and most visits lasted from 181 to 600 seconds, opening at least 20 pages. 221
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Figure 2. An overview of our atlas wiki-based learning environment.
Our results show that in-service teachers (without any previous introductory workshop) can interact, collaborate within the environment, use all the wiki facilities and elaborate the communicated knowledge. The only precondition is to have basic computer knowledge, to understand the operation of a computer with an internet connection. Beyond that, the multimedia enriched atlaswiki web-based learning environment guides in-service teachers to accomplish their tasks and present their results. 222
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Figure 3. Visits for all visitors.
In Figure 3, as we can see in this six days period, an average of about 26 visits per day has been recorded showing that almost half of the 63 visitors were visiting the atlaswiki environment on Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Monday proving that this environment can inspire people to work collaboratively on weekdays, as space and time limits are overcome in such an environment. This conclusion also shows that the atlaswiki environment encourages participants to work together collaboratively and to achieve goals in group work more easily. Also the atlaswiki web-based learning environment offers a comfortable space which allows in-service teachers to “live” and work there continuously with no space and time limitations and produce collaboratively a remarkable result. The atlaswiki platform offers a user-friendly web-based learning environment that incorporates aspects of history and philosophy of science, encourages the understanding of science, facilitates the teaching of science with instructional e-material, tasks and activities in the classroom and aims to activate teachers towards innovative teaching interventions. One of our initial goals to make the work of teachers in atlaswiki environment “like a game”, pleasant and easy seems to have been fulfilled as in-service teachers collaborate inside atlaswiki environment, participate in discussions, produce pages after pages and propose even more science lessons based on the history and philosophy of science. Most people (25, 32%) visited atlaswiki environment 9 to 14 times, as we can see in Figure 4. Some of the participants (12, 99%) visited atlaswiki environment 15 to 25 times. An interesting and user friendly learning environment teases participants to visit it again and again, producing interest feedback and data to analyze and present. It is a comfortable zone in which in-service teachers can collaborate, 223
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Figure 4. Visitor loyalty.
ex(inter)change opinions, debate and elaborate knowledge. The easiness in the use of the atlaswiki is shown in Figure 4, by the participation of in-service teachers inside the atlaswiki web-based learning environment, as well as the easiness in the navigation through the wiki. 6. THREADS ANALYSIS
In-service teachers comments have been even enthusiastic concerning the atlaswiki electromagnetism e-course: “It is an excellent attempt. I believe that it will be helpful in the educational procedure. In the era we are living and the following years, everyone demands and requests new approaches to teach science” a teacher supports, while someone else goes on in the same mode: “It’s an innovative attempt for students, pre- and in-service teachers to communicate by distance, to understand, exchange ideas and follow new developments and research in science”. The above are some of the responses to the facilitators’ question “How do you believe that a program like this would facilitate teaching?” The electromagnetism case in atlaswiki has been welcomed by all participating teachers and they all comment that the electromagnetism case showed them an alternative and innovative way to teach science through a web-based learning environment such as atlaswiki wble. Another thread discussion has been recorded concerning an initial question whether the atlaswiki web-based learning environment has been manageable and easy to handle. All participants found the site easy to use, friendly as a tool to learn and teach science. They appreciated the dissemination of information to all visitors and the opportunity to connect and interact according to their own time and space needs. 224
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Furthermore, when in-service teachers comment on the facilitators’ question “What do you expect for a web-based learning environment to contain in science teaching”, they say that they seek for interesting, pleasant, understandable and alternative solutions to teach science: “Atlaswiki web-based learning environment offers to pre-and in-service teachers a certified and up-to-date informational and educational source”, and “It is a well structured tool for the educators to teach science inside the schools”. They suggest that new and fresh ideas coming from the life and work of great scientists would help and support teachers, especially in the beginning of their careers, to make science lessons more interesting and easier to understand for pupils in the classroom. Here follow some of their comments: “A web-based learning environment in science education, is expected to provide new didactical ways to the learning procedure with more educational material such as videos, worksheets, scenarios and experiments, but also to illustrate problems of the real world based on the peoples unfamiliarity and misunderstanding of science”. Concerning history and philosophy of science in teaching science and especially the question about the use of history and philosophy of science aspects in science teaching, some participants mentioned the historical reviews in the beginning of science books, but all of them suggested themes to teach from stories about scientists like Faraday, Einstein, Curie etc that also might have appeared with an unconventional profile to the public. Some of them “…believe that most interesting science topics are those concerning the bridging of science with technology, politics, economy, religion, ethics, myths, prejudice and bias. Such examples could be DNA research, space, cloning etc.” In their discussions about multimedia information and the use of videos in science teaching, all of participants acknowledged that it is a source of infinite information and motivation for learning science. A thousand of words is a picture, more of that is a video. In-service teachers support: “Videos with science experiments will help teachers to understand and teach science phenomena” and it is “…a useful tool to teach science, delivered to the hands of teachers”. They go on saying that: “Videos with experiments and multimedia material in general are pleasant to participate and most of people find them as entertainment than as a lesson”, or “It’s really nice a worksheet to be accompanied by a video with an experiment. An idea is performers to act in videos with experiments, so the whole result is going to be more interesting for participants…”, “…be more colorful with sound…”, instructions, “…dramatization…” and actual performing in the video. Finally, to the question concerning “…role-play design for teaching science inspired by history and philosophy of science”, all participants agree that the opportunity to be in the scientists’ “role” as well as the recreation of the scientists’ times “…gives us information not only about the scientific event we are discussing, but for the characters involved, the way that they interact and how they influence the evolutions, shown through the prism of the socio-cultural matrix of their contemporary conditions”. 225
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All teachers participating in the electromagnetism case of the atlaswiki webbased learning environment confirmed that web2 with wiki delivery may move the education procedure a step forward. The atlaswiki web-based learning environment offers to pre- and in-service teachers a context to support and foster science teaching, although atlaswiki can be a powerful source to help pre- and in-service teachers understand and teach science to young students. 7. DISCUSSION
The development and reform of educational material is vital for pre- and in-service teacher-training. The aim of the ATLAS Research Group is to go beyond the traditionally developed instructional material that has a static, permanent form not allowing reform, change and meaningful improvement. While, the development of instructional e-material carries the ability to reform, change and improve towards an advancing effectiveness and efficiency. In-service teachers, acting as userstrainees in the atlaswiki web-based learning environment, “publish” and communicate their ideas in the form of texts, videos, multimedia material etc. minimizing both time and storing space needed. Atlaswiki web-based learning environment gradually overcomes a series of time and space obstacles, encouraging free and global communication and interaction. At the same time, a double shift of roles is expected to take place during the above interaction: the teacher is there not to teach but to advise, encourage and facilitate (that’s why the term facilitator is used in this paper), while the learner (in-service teacher in this case) participates and re-structures the teaching and learning procedure. REFERENCES Brecht, B. (1932). Brecht on theatre: The development of an aesthetic (W. John, Trans.). New York: Hill and Wang (1964), pp. 129. Initially published as «Der Rundfunk als Kommunikationsapparat» in Blätter des Hessischen Landestheaters, Darmstadt, No. 16, July 1932. Harmon, S. W., & Jones, M. G. (1999). The five levels of Web use in education: Factors to consider in planning online courses. Educational Technology, 39(6), 28–32. Ingram, A. L. (1999). Using Web server logs in evaluating instructional Web sites. Journal of Educational Technology Systems, 28(2), 137–157. Koulountzos, V., Primerakis, G., & Seroglou, F. (2007). Instructional e-material design for teacher e-training: The case of electromagnetism. Paper presented at Ninth International History, Philosophy & Science Teaching conference, 24–28 June 2007, Calgary. Koulountzos, V., & Seroglou, F. (2007a). Designing a Web-based learning environment: The case of ATLAS. Paper presented at IMICT 2007 conference “Informatics, Mathematics and ICT: A Golden Triangle”, 27–29 June 2007, Boston. Koulountzos, V., & Seroglou, F. (2007b). Web-based learning environments and teacher training in science literacy. Paper presented at ITET 2007 and ETLLL 2007 Joint Working Conference “Information Technology for Education and Training”, 26–28 September 2007, Prague. Leuf, B., & Cunningham, W. (2001). The Wiki way: Quick collaboration on the Web. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Addison Wesley. Mezirow, J. (1991). Transformative dimensions of adult learning. Jossey- Bass. Peled, A., & Rashty, D. (1999). Logging for success: Advancing the use of www logs to improve computer mediated distance learning. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 21(4), 413–431. 226
A WIKI-COURSE FOR TEACHER TRAINING Piguet, A., & Peraya, D. (2000). Creating web-integrated learning environments: An analysis of WebCT authoring tools in respect to usability. Australian Journal of Education Technology, 16(3), 302–314. Seroglou, F., Koumaras, P., & Tselfes, V. (1998). History of science and instructional design: The case of electromagnetism. Science & Education, 7(3), 261–280. Seroglou, F., & Koumaras, P. (2003). A critical comparison of the approaches to the contribution of history of physics to the cognitive, metacognitive and emotional dimension of teaching and learning physics: A feasibility study regarding the cognitive dimension using the SHINE model. THEMES in Education, 4(1), 25–36. Sheard, J., Ceddia, J., Hurst, J., & Tuovinen, J. (2003). Inferring student learning behavior from website interactions: A usage analysis. Education and Information Technologies, 8(3), 245–266. Wang, L.-C., & Beasley, W. (2002). Effects of learner control and hypermedia preference on cyberstudents performance in a web-based learning environment. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, 11(1), 71–91. Weiss, J., Nolan, J., Hunsinger, J., & Trifonas, P. (Eds.), (2006). The international handbook of virtual learning environments (pp. 1251–1259). Springer.
Vassilis Koulountzos and Fanny Seroglou ATLAS Research Group, School of Primary Education Faculty of Education, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece E-mail:
[email protected],
[email protected]
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17. COULD SCIENTIFIC CONTROVERSIES BE USED AS A TOOL FOR TEACHING SCIENCE IN THE COMPULSORY EDUCATION? The Results of a Pilot Research Based on the Galileo – Del Monte Controversy about the Motion of the Pendulum
1. INTRODUCTION
In most countries it is generally accepted that science has a legitimate place in the secondary school curriculum. In contemporary aims of science education, there is an increasing interest in the “nature of science” (NOS). A scientifically literate person should also develop a functional understanding of the nature of science (Abd-EI Khalick et al, 1997). It is commonly accepted that scientific literacy includes not only scientific knowledge but knowledge about science, its history, philosophy, social and cultural aspects of science. However research has shown that this aim has not been fulfilled (Lederman, 1992). 2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
2.1 The Contribution of History and Philosophy of Science to Scientific Literacy of the Adolescent The crisis in contemporary science education, as it is demonstrated by the escape of teachers and students from science classes, as well as by scientific illiteracy, reveals a need to make concise efforts at two levels: through curricula modification and at personal level, for every teacher. In the last few years the necessity to introduce elements from the history and philosophy of science has been recognized. The history and philosophy of science is certainly not enough to solve every kind of problem appearing in science education; however it can help a lot in dealing with several of them. An extensive amount of research has been carried out on the importance of history of science in teaching science. Convincing arguments are provided, among others, by: Stephen Brush (1969), Bernard Cohen (1950), James Conant (1947), Leo Klopfer (1969a), Helge Kragh (1992), Walter Jung (1983), Michael Matthews (1992). Interesting teaching suggestions based on the history of science have been made by Kipnis (1992), Conant (1957), Klopfer (1969b), Seroglou & Koumaras (2001), Malamitsa, Kokkotas, and Stamoulis (2005), Binnie (2001). P.V. Kokkotas et al., (eds.), Adapting Historical Science Knowledge Production to the Classroom, 229–248. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
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There has been a developing interest in incorporating history of science into curricula, in several countries around the world. Some of the above writers’ arguments in support of this view are presented by Matthews (Matthews, 2007). Matthews (2007) summarizes the main findings of these researches: – The history of science encourages understanding of scientific concepts and methods – Historical approaches combine the development of personal thinking with the development of scientific ideas – The history of science carries very important data. Everyone should be aware of Scientific historical events, such as scientific revolution, Darwinism, the discovery of penicillin, … – History of science is important in order to understand the nature of science – History of science counteracts scientism and dogmatism which appear in scientific writings – History of science, through scientists’ life and work makes human dimension appear, making sciences more attractive for the students – History of science displays the unity and continuity of the scientific enterprise. According to Malamitsa, Kokkotas, and Stamoulis (2005), the use of history of science in teaching science: – Helps creating teaching tools, which can improve the teaching of sciences adopting a pluralistic methodology – Contributes to the development of students’ critical reasoning abilities. Not only history of science but philosophy of science may help in science education as well. Even if teachers do not realize that, philosophy of science is usually incorporated in their teaching. For example, all science teachers use concepts such as method, explanation, experiment, theory, law, hypothesis, truth, idealization, etc. These terms are philosophical ones, and especially belong to the field of epistemology. As Matthews (2000) points out: in Germany, at the end of 19th century, Ernst Mach argued that both history and philosophy of science should be a part of all school and university science instruction. Nowadays, there is a developing interest in epistemological subjects. Aims and objectives referred to epistemology are included in Science Curricula depicting science teachers’ concern about the issue. The nature of science has long been of concern to science teachers and curriculum developers. Since the early 19th century, when science first won its place in the curriculum of some schools, it has been hoped that science teaching would have a beneficial impact on the quality of culture and personal life in virtue of students not only knowing science, but also internalizing something of the scientific spirit. Clearly these longstanding aspirations for science education depend upon some understanding by teachers and curriculum developers of the methodological and epistemological aspects of science. That is, they depend on some knowledge of the nature of science (Matthews, 2000). 230
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The teaching of the nature of science is among the aims of Greek and international curricula, since it helps achieving the objectives of scientific literacy. The Greek curriculum, concerning the objectives of sciences states that aims at: …students’ familiarization with scientific thinking and scientific methodology (including observing, collecting and utilizing data, forming hypothesis, experimenting, analyzing and interpreting data, drawing conclusions, making generalizations and constructing models (Cross Thematic Curriculum Framework, p. 177). Before we decide how to teach the nature of science we must address two obvious questions: What is the nature of science and why is it important for students to understand it? It is true that many answers have been given to both questions. In regard of the first question, although debate exists about certain aspects of NOS, scientists and science educators can agree that the scientific enterprise possesses a set of general characteristics that separates it from other disciplines or ways of knowing. According to McComas: nature of science is the sum total of the “rules of the game” leading to knowledge production and the evaluation of truth claims in the natural sciences (McComas, 2004). McComas presented nine key ideas about the nature of science which represent a concise set of ideas about science and a list of objectives for every science classroom. The key ideas about NOS are (McComas, 2004): – Science demands and relies on empirical evidence – Knowledge production in science includes many common features and shared habits of mind. However, in spite of such commonalities there is no single stepby-step scientific method by which all sciences is done – Scientific knowledge is tentative but durable. This means that science cannot prove anything because the problem of induction makes “proof ” impossible, but scientific conclusions are still valuable and long lasting because of the way that knowledge eventually comes to be accepted in science – Laws and theories are related but distinct kinds of scientific knowledge – Science is a highly creative endeavor – Science has a subjective element – There are historical, cultural, and social influences on science – Science and technology impact each other, but they are not the same – Science and its methods cannot answer all questions. In regard to the second question, some of the reasons students should understand the nature of science is that it is crucial for reasonable decision making and responsible local and global citizenship (Bell, 2003). On the other hand, understanding science prepares people to lead personally fulfilling and responsible lives. The key driving force for the nature of science education is the need for students to 231
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acquire social skills, supported by individual skills, thus enabling students to play a responsible role within society in terms of (Holbrook et al, 2007): (a) developing social values such that a person can act in a responsible manner within the community, system, nation, or, as in the school situation, at a smaller group level; (b) being able to function within the world of work at whatever the skill or responsibility level; and (c) possessing the conceptual background or skills of learning to learn to cope with a need-to-have, relevant public understanding of science and technology in a changing society. The above findings suggest that nature of science not only enhances scientific literacy, but it can humanize the sciences and make them more connected with personal, ethical, cultural, and political concerns as well. 2.2 Contribution of Scientific Controversies to Science Education Many major steps in science, probably all dramatic changes, and most of the fundamental achievements of what we now take as the advancement or progress of scientific knowledge have been controversial. Scientific controversies are found throughout the history of science. Some examples of scientific controversies are between Aristotle, his precursors and predecessors about atoms, void, space, movement, celestial spheres, and so on, between Galileo and contemporary seventeenthcentury Aristotelians about the fundamental laws of motion, the structure of the universe, the causes of tides, floating bodies, and so on. Moreover, Newton quarreled with Descartes, Hooke, Boyle, and many others about colors, light, and other topics. Einstein had extent controversies with Poincaré and Lorentz about absolute space and time, and with Bohr, Born, and many others about the interpretation of quantum mechanical laws. Scientific controversies are distinguished characteristics of the nature of science in the way scientific ideas change. According to the British National Curriculum Council (NCC, 1988, p. 113), among other skills, students should be able to study scientific controversies and the ways in which scientific ideas change. History of science displays the existence of great crisis in the development and growth of science, for instance from Aristotelian to classical physics, from classical to modern physics. The United States National Research Council (NRC, 1994) indicates that students completing a program of science should, among other things, know that: tracing the history of science can show how difficult it was for scientific innovators to break through the accepted ideas of their time and reach to conclusions that we currently take for granted. There are at least four reasons for using scientific controversies in science teaching. There is evidence (Gil & Solbes, 1993) that scientific disputes 232
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can help to cause conceptual changes in pupils, so that they comply with major changes in concepts, models and theories of the evolution of science. Some ideas non prevailing at present, not only show the tentative character of science but also unveil some pupils’ preconceptions and become important epistemological obstacles to overcome. Secondly, following a scientific debate can improve students’ understanding of the inner workings of science. Thirdly (Kipnis, 2001) suggests that: showing scientific results as debatable issues makes science more similar to other human activities that are easier to comprehend, such as a political debate or a court proceedings, which may sparkle an interest in science in some students. Finally, scientific controversies can be useful in science teaching as students are informed about nowadays scientific controversies, i.e. in bio-ethics, nuclear plants, etc. and prefer group discussion about authentic issues than attending lectures. 2.3 Galileo’s and Del Monte’s Dispute on the Motion of the Pendulum Since 4th century B.C, it was believed that motion of uniform velocity requires the application of uniform force, which was Aristotle’s causative view about motion. At the beginning of 17th century A.D, Galileo was the first who stated that uniform motion requires no force, conducting his experiments on horizontal and inclined planes. A body in motion will continue to move eternally unless there is a force that stops it. Galileo’s New Science is fully appreciated by the majority of historians of western science. Galileo has proposed one of the most revolutionary ideas: the idea of inertia. His argument was opposite to Aristotle’s common-sense view about motion. Aristotle’s idea of motion, that it requires the constant application of force, is familiar to us in a way that Galileo’s never can be. According to Wolpert (1992), the enormous conceptual change that the thinking of Galileo required shows that science is not just about accounting for the “unfamiliar” in terms of the familiar. Quite the contrary: science often explains the familiar in terms of the unfamiliar. Galileo’s study on pendulum’s motion was very important in scientific revolution. Galileo used pendulum motion to establish his law of free fall, his law of conservation of energy, and to undermine the crucial Aristotelian conceptual distinction between violent and natural motions (Matthews, 2000, p. 2). The importance of the pendulum for the scientific revolution has not been as widely recognized as it deserves. Even Descartes, who didn’t appreciated Galileo’s works, wrote Galileo seems to have written all his three dialogues for no other purpose than to demonstrate that the descents and ascents of a pendulum are equal (Works, letter 146, in Matthews, 2000, p. 2). 233
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Recognizing the role of the pendulum in the Newtonian science, Westfall says: it is not too much to assert that without the pendulum there would have been no Principia (Westfall, 1990, p. 67 in Matthews, 2000, p. 2). In spite the scientific, technological, cultural and philosophical importance of the pendulum, it is placed in science curricula without his context. Science textbooks pay little attention to the historical and philosophical background of the pendulum. Often, it is introduced as an instance of simple periodic motion or as an application of Second Newton Law (Textbook 2, Textbook 3). Usually the formula for pendulum’s period is introduced as a matter of learning something, without any history, philosophy or technology mentioned. The debate between Guidobaldo del Monte and Galileo over the isochronous motion of the pendulum, introduces the scientific community of the 17th century to the New Science Era. The controversy between Galileo and del Monte was much more philosophical than scientific. It was about the role of idealization in science, the role of mathematics and the role of theory in observation. But how did this crucial chapter of the scientific revolution started? Many historians of science maintain that the curtain opened when the young Galileo observed the regular swaying of the chandelier of a cathedral during Mass. Galileo himself, mentions something relevant to this story in the “Two New Sciences”, where Sagredo says: you give me frequent occasion to admire the wealth and profusion of nature when, from such common and even trivial phenomena, you derive facts which are not only striking and new but which are often far removed from what we have had imagined. Thousands of times I have observed vibrations especially in churches where lamps, suspended by long cords, have been inadvertently set into motion, but the most which I could infer from these observations was that the view of those who think that such vibrations are maintained by the medium is highly improbable… But I never dreamed of learning that one and the same body, when suspended from a string a hundred cubits long and pulled aside through an arc of 90o or even 1o or ½o, would employ the same time in passing through the least as through the largest of these arcs, and, indeed, it still strikes me as somewhat unlikely (Galileo, 1638/1954, p. 97). Regardless whether the story about the chandelier is accurate or not, Galileo’s preoccupation with the motion in general and especially the motion of the pendulum, had deep philosophical foundations and extensions. His interest in mathematics was demonstrated, since 1588, during his lectures on mathematical issues in the University of Pisa. The formal method which Galileo used for the study of the pendulum is the one he created to study the motion on the inclined plane. More precisely, he studied the different forces required for a body to ascend inclined planes of various inclinations. Taking fast and steady steps, Galileo was bidding farewell to the Aristotelian science and philosophy. It is obvious that Galileo’s methodology was contradicting the Aristotelian “reality”. 234
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According to the Aristotelian philosophy, we should study the world as it is and not as we would like it to be. Galileo was the first to use mathematics and experiments guided by mathematics to discover the properties of pendulum motion. Until 1600 Galileo had managed to study the motion of the pendulum through the motion of a sphere inside a concave spherical surface, applying mathematics in conjunction with idealization. Galileo at different stages made four claims about pendulum motion (Matthews, 2000, p. 95): – Period varies with the square root of length: the Law of Length. – Period is independent of amplitude: the Law of Amplitude Independence. – Period is independent of weight: the Law of Weight Independence. – For a given length all periods are the same: the Law of Isochrony. A major rival of Galileo’s who opposed his views on the motion of the pendulum was his academic patron Guidobaldo del Monte (1545–1607). Del Monte had been a follower of the Aristotelian natural philosophy. A distinguished engineer and mathematician of his era, he had also writings on timekeeping. His relationship with Galileo was far from being antagonistic. Galileo in fact owed him his position in the universities of Pisa and Padua. His disagreement with Galileo was mostly philosophical than anything else. Del Monte believed, as every Aristotelian of his era, that knowledge is embedded in experience. Whatever is not perceived through the senses, particularly sight could not be correct. In our case, he had been unable to prove experimentally the theoretical positions of Galileo about the isochrony of the pendulum’s motion. On the other hand, Galileo was the first to use the idealization approach in a concise manner, so as to refer to an “ideal” pendulum and not to the “real” one with which Del Monte conducted his experiments. Del Monte believed theory should not be separated from application, believed that mind and hand should be connected (Matthews, 2000, p. 101). This great historical dispute between the old and new science reaches its peak through their correspondence in 1602, part of which is quoted below. Galileo writes: You must excuse my importunity if I persist in trying to persuade you of the truth of the proposition that motions within the same quarter – circle are made in equal times… The moveable B passes through the large arc BCD and returns by the same DCB and then goes back toward D, and it goes 500 or 1000 times repeating its oscillations. The other goes likewise from F to G and then returns to F, and will similarly make many oscillations; and in the time that I count, say, the first 100 large oscillations BCD, DCB and so on, another observer counts 100 of the other oscillations through FIG, very small, and he does not count even one more – a most evident sign that one of these large arcs BDC consumes as much time as each of the small ones FIG. Now, if all BCD is passed in as much time [as that] in which FIG [is passed], though [FIG is] but one-half there of, these being descents through unequal arcs of the same quadrant, they will be made in equal times. But even without troubling to count many, you will see that moveable F will not make its small oscillations more frequently than B makes its larger ones; they will always be together. The experiment you tell me you made in the [rim of a vertical] sieve 235
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may be very inconclusive, perhaps by reason of the surface not being perfectly circular, and again because in a single passage one cannot well observe the precise beginning of motion. But if you will take the same concave surface and let ball B go freely from a great distance, as at point B, it will go through a large distance at the beginning of its oscillations and a small one at the end of these, yet it will not on that account make the latter more frequently than the former… (Drake, 1978, pp. 69–71). The above letter is considered a milestone in the history of science for many reasons. It sheds light on Galileo’s crucial steps in the development of New Science. In the scope of the present work we shall focus on the use of idealization and mathematics in science construction. Galileo argued that the movement of a sphere inside a concave ring was isochronous, in the sense that the period of the sphere’s oscillation is independent from the amplitude of the oscillation. Del Monte was unable to prove Galileo’s argument experimentally. Galileo argued that his “theory” was correct provided that the surface is perfect and perfectly spherical and the oscillating object is perfectly spherical. This statement depicts the step he made moving from real to ideal conditions. He had made similar transitions in the past while studying motion on a horizontal plane. Then he stated that “if external interferences” (friction) were negligible, then the body will move forever in constant speed”, rejecting thus the Aristotelian doctrine, according to which a body maintains constant speed when under constant force. Del Monte who was an Aristotelian and an engineer failed to believe Galileo since his own experiments on the subject failed. Galileo maintained that the experiments failed due to some mishaps, urging del Monte to repeat them bearing in mind his remarks. Galileo’s idealizations may seem to us absolutely rational and self explanatory, but at that time they were unheard of. We have been nurtured with Newtonian physics, but we must not forget that at the time the above mentioned dispute took place, the Aristotelian philosophy was prevalent and Aristotelian doctrines matched to common logic much better. Both Galileo and del Monte felt that mathematics should be employed in the task of explaining phenomena, but Guidobaldo never compromised with the differences between mathematical theories and the real world. Galileo, though initially sharing this view with his patron was intent on combining mathematics with scientific explanations. The interaction between the two great figures of the history of science had been exceptionally constructive since del Monte’s criticism was a source of inspiration for Galileo for the study of motion in general. …it was primarily the contact with Guidobaldo del Monte which, in a decisive moment of Galileo’s intellectual development, encouraged him to take up the life-perspective of the risky but rewarding career of an engineer-scientist (Renn et al., 1998, p. 41). 3. RESEARCH DESIGN AND PROCEDURES
3.1 Purpose and Choices According to theoretical framework and the educational needs mentioned above, the controversy between Galileo and del Monte is suitable not only as a tool for the 236
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study of the simple pendulum, but also as a teaching tool for some aspects of the nature of science that both students and teachers must be interested in. The purpose of the present pilot research is to incorporate the nature of science in teaching using as a tool the scientific – philosophical controversy between Galileo and del Monte, and especially the concept of idealization. Particularly, a handy teaching tool is constructed through the view of nature of science based on the historical elements of the controversy between Galileo and del Monte. Considering the curricula objectives, students’ previous knowledge, time available and contemporary tendencies in science education, specific activities were integrated in the teaching interventions, so as to increase students’ interest and let the “big picture” of science be revealed. Particularly, the controversy of Galileo and Del Monte on the isochrony of the simple pendulum’s motion was chosen based on the following: – The simple pendulum is included in Greek physics textbooks used at the upper secondary level of education (Lyceum, 10th – 12th grades). – The content on the simple pendulum, as it is presented in textbooks is no more than an introduction to oscillations or an application of the 2nd Newton Law, offering only the formula of the period of the simple gravity pendulum (Textbook 2, Textbook 3). – The study of the simple pendulum offers a chance for the study of the processes trough which science evolves. – More precisely, working on the disagreement about pendulum motion, students can experience the idea of idealization, as it was put forward, for the first time in the history of science by Galileo, introducing them in a subtle way to the philosophy of science. – By studying the letters exchanged by Galileo and Del Monte which depict the controversy between them, students have a chance to understand and identify a lot of the characteristics of the nature of science in practice. – The setup for the simple pendulum experimentation is based on easily obtainable cheap materials, and transformable to resemble the historical experiments. – Galileo’s study of simple pendulum enforced the change of his contemporary scientific view on motion. – Through the study of the simple pendulum, students can realize the relation between sciences and mathematics, especially geometry, and part of their interaction with philosophy (Matthews, 2007). – The study of pendulum motion by Galileo is suitable for presenting the main epistemological views and how the episode of pendulum can support some of them. – The simple pendulum in its historical context can be used for cross-disciplinary teaching (Seroglou, 2007). 3.2 Sample – Place – Time The sample of the present survey is a convenient sample, parameter which classifies this research as “Pilot”. The sample of students was drawn from a class of the 2nd grade of Lyceum (11th grade) of the 1st Lyceum of the municipality of Vyronas 237
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close to Athens. This defined population numbered 19 students. In the first lesson, 3 students were absent and in the second one another 3. Thus the sample was restricted to 13 students, who attended all three phases of the research. This small sample does not allow statistic analysis of results and of course neither their generalization. The majority of the students who participated in the survey were oriented to study Humanities at the University. Some of them were not interested in sciences while there was a settled opinion that science is so difficult that they could not manage with it. It is worth noting that Humanities oriented students responded positively, when they realized that no formulas and mathematics were included. With regard to students who were natural sciences oriented, they immediately recognized that the particular lesson had nothing to do with the “preparation for the national entrance examinations”. As a result, their interest was diminished. The intervention lasted two teaching periods of 90 minutes and took place in the school laboratory. The present pilot research started in the beginning of April 2009 and was completed at the end of the same month. The research was conducted in the following phases: – Students completed the pre- test questionnaire to assess their knowledge before the specific teaching interventions. – Two 2 hours teaching interventions, the course of which is presented in detail. – Students completed the post- test questionnaire after the research to assess the attaining of the teaching objectives. 3.3 Instrumentation The objectives of intervention. After the two 2 hour sessions teaching intervention, students should be able to: – Experimentally ascertain the isochrony of pendulum motion. – Discriminate some of the nature of science aspects, such as that science is developing not only through experimentation but through theory conception as well. – Identify the way science works in its social context, using the dispute between Galileo and del Monte for pendulum motion. – Appreciate the idealization’s role in science development. The Worksheets. During the two teaching interventions, students used worksheets which included activities such as: traditional lab work, i.e. measuring the period of oscillation at different pendulum lengths and different amplitudes, studying modified texts from History of Science, group discussions, debates. The Questionnaires. The questionnaires used for pre and post test were improvised by us, according to the research purpose. They consist of 19 questions in total, 2 of which are multiple–choice, 5 of true–false type, 10 Likert scale, and 2 free-response questions (written paragraphs). Each teaching objective is assessed by more than one type of question. 238
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3.4 Learning Impediments – The majority of the students are adhering to empirical data. They believe only what they see. The main reason is that most of them haven’t reached the stage of abstract thinking yet. – Most of our high school students (and lower level college students) are at a dualistic stage of intellectual development at which they are incapable of understanding one philosophical view while holding an opposing one (Smith et al, 1998). – Taking into consideration the structure and the content of science textbooks, students have not experienced the social character of science. – Students are not familiar with teaching textual material (Demopoulos, 2007). – In science textbooks, scientific knowledge is mainly presented through its products, diminishing the role of its processes (Koulaidis, 2002). 3.5 Choices for Overcoming Learning Impediments – With respect to the first impediment, we suggest that students should do the first worksheet activity. The suggested activity to be an optical illusion. Trying to answer the questions, students might doubt their beliefs about the role of experience as truth criterion. They may realize that a statement is not true just because it can be verified by experience. – In regard to the second, third and fourth impediment, we prepared the ground for familiarization with scientific processes and textual material, before the teaching interventions. Particularly, during the preceding lessons, students had some exercise in reading comprehension using texts and dialogues related to scientific processes. This way, they got familiar with textual context and besides encountered some of the social aspects of scientific enterprise. 3.6 Other Constraints Beyond the above mentioned impediments the intervention and the learning results were influenced by the fact that the pilot research took place at the end of the school year. Students were engrossed in recaps for their exams. In addition, their reactions were influenced by the following: – The students were not accustomed to the environment and the procedures of the school science laboratory. As such, they were belayed and required some additional guidance to accomplish measurements. – The nature of the teaching objectives is different from what the students were used to in their science classes. Thus, the students had to adapt their thinking to the new requirements. – Students had limited experience in group work or collaborative learning. This impeded their collaboration in measurement tasks and their joining in discussions. 239
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4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
In Tables 1, 2, 3, and 4 we present the obtained results, separately for every teaching objective. For every question there is the number of accepted, non accepted and partially accepted answers in the pre and post test. The “true-false questions” and the “multiple choice questions” are categorized as accepted or non accepted answers. Regarding the “Likert scale questions”, they are categorized as accepted, partially accepted or non accepted answers. Accepted and non accepted answers are the answers that correspond to A and B or D and E or conversely. Partially accepted answers are the answers that correspond to C. Accepted means accepted within the framework of intervention. This framework is described by the teaching objectives referring either in scientific knowledge, or in epistemological issues. For example, one of the questions of the pre-post test is question 9, which mentions “If two scientists have different views on a topic, it is meaningless for them to discuss and interact”. In this specific question, accepted answer is considered D and E, non accepted is considered A and B, and C is a partially accepted answer. Regarding the written paragraphs, we adopted the following marks distribution. Supposing that 5 marks are given to a perfect answer, understanding of the answer contributes with 1 mark, use of the language is marked with 1 mark, 2 marks are given to rational thinking and 1 mark is given to the conclusion. That means that 3 of the 5 marks are given to the whole concept of the paragraph. We consider an answer as accepted when it takes 3 marks or more, partially accepted when it is marked with more than 2 marks and less than 3, and non accepted when it is marked with 2 marks or less. 4.1 Teaching Objective 1 The first teaching objective: “Students to verify experimentally if the motion of the simple pendulum is isochronous or not”, was assessed by questions 1, 4, 5, and 16. Questions 1, 4 and 5 are true – false questions while question 16 is a multiple choice question. The first objective’s findings can be shown in Table 1. Table 1. Findings on first teaching objective Objective 1: “Students to verify experimentally if the motion of the simple pendulum is isochronous or not” Pre test (% of answers) Post test (% of answers) Change Question 1 4 5 16 Total % of 1 4 5 16 Total % of % answers answers Accepted 8 3 5 5 21 40.38 10 3 7 4 24 46.15 5.77 Partially 0.00 accepted Non 5 10 8 8 31 59.62 3 10 6 9 28 53.85 -5.77 accepted Total 13 13 13 13 52 100 13 13 13 13 52 100 0.00 240
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From the above findings we could reach the following conclusion for the first objective. The teaching intervention had a limited impact on students’ knowledge about the period of the pendulum. There is 5.77% increase in accepted answers comparing pre and post tests. One of the possible reasons is that the particular students are not familiar with laboratory work. It means they cannot easily interpret the experimental data in a theoretical framework. Although they got the right data, they couldn’t reach a safe conclusion of what these data were. Previous studies of students’ views about data interpretation have suggested that students often do not recognize the role of theoretical ideas in the interpretation of data (Ryder et al, 2000). Apart from that, it is possible that some questions were not enough on-spot. For example question 4 had the same number of accepted answers before and after the intervention. A possible reason is that during the 1st lesson, through Activity 2, students conducted the experiment 2, referring to the different shapes of the pendulum bob, but it was not emphasized that the air resistance depends on the shape. Students easily concluded that pendulum period depends on the shape, but understandably they didn’t associate the shape with the air resistance. It is better to mildly differentiate both the activity and the pre- post- question. The results of question number 16 embarrass us too. According to this multiple choice question, students should decide whether the tenth oscillation of a simple pendulum has a bigger, smaller or the same period with the first oscillation. We should have mentioned that the oscillation was a small amplitude one. 4.2 Teaching Objective 2 The second teaching objective for students to “Discriminate some of the nature of science aspects, such as that science is developing not only through experimentation but through theory conception as well” was assessed by questions 6, 7, 14 and 18. Questions 6, 7 and 14 are “Likert” questions, while question 18 is a written paragraph. The second objective’s findings are shown in Table 2. Table 2. Findings on second teaching objective Objective 2: “Discriminate some of the nature of science aspects, such as that science is developing not only through experimentation but through theory conception as well” Pre test (% of answers) Post test (% of answers) Change Total Question 6 7 14 18 Total % of 6 7 14 18 % of answers answers Accepted 9 4 12 5 30 57.69 9 5 11 6 31 59.61 +1.92% Partially 1 4 1 3 9 17.31 3 2 2 7 13.46 -3.85% accepted Non 3 5 5 13 25 1 6 2 5 14 26.93 +1.93% accepted Total
13 13 13 13
52
100
13 13 13
13
52
100
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From the above findings we can reach the following conclusion for the second objective. A large amount of students had already adopted an accepted or partially accepted point of view before the teaching interventions. The teaching interventions had a marginal positive and negative impact on students’ knowledge about the role of theory in scientific development. It is worth commenting that some students seemed to deteriorate their opinion about the role of theory in observation. In this point two things can be inferred. According to Mayling (1997): changes in the epistemological profile of students may occur, but it is a long term objective. On the other hand, there might be a problem with the Likert questions as Aikenhead et al. (1987) mention: they give little guidance for understanding student viewpoints. Also, according to Aikenhead (1988): the Likert type responses were the most inaccurate, offering only a guess at student beliefs. Such guesswork calls into question the use of Likert type standardized tests that claim to assess student views about science. Additionally, it is the content of the questions that should have been different. For example question 14, “Science is not based solely in observations” cannot be considered a successful one, because it contains the word solely which makes it have an obvious answer. As a result, 12 out of 13 answers were accepted in the pre test. Regarding question 18, which is a written paragraph, we concluded that most students repeated their words in the pre and post tests. Some of the answers were also ambiguous. There is at least one reason for which the paragraphs were not clear enough. Students may not have understood the meaning of one or more words e.g. expand or contract so the accepted answers didn’t increase much. Moreover, improvement in written paragraphs requires improvement in reading comprehension, rational thinking and ability of students to express themselves. The skills mentioned are long term objectives not only of science education but of education in general. That’s why Aikenhead (1988) suggests that written paragraphs should be compared with semi-structured interviews, if possible, and we fully concur. 4.3 Teaching Objective 3 The third objective for students to “Identify the way science works in its social context, using the dispute between Galileo and Del Monte for pendulum motion” was assessed by questions 2, 3, 8, 9, 13, 15, and 17. Questions 2 and 3 are true - false questions, questions 8, 9, 13, and 15 are Likert questions and question 17 is a multiple choice question. The findings of the third objective are shown in Table 3. 242
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Table 3. Findings on the third teaching objective Objective 3: “Identify the way science works in its social context, using the dispute between Galileo and Del Monte for pendulum motion” Post test (% of answers) Change Pre test (% of answers) Question
2 3 8 9 13 15 17 Total
Accepted 10 9 9 11 12 10 12 Partially 1 3 accepted Non 3 4 3 2 1 1 accepted Total 13 13 13 13 13 13 13
73 4
% of 2 3 8 9 13 15 17 Total % of answers answers 80.22 12 10 9 10 9 12 13 75 82.42 +2.2% 4.39 2 1 2 1 6 6.59 +2.2%
14
15.39
91
100
1
3
2
2
2
13 13 13 13 13 13 13
10
10.99
91
100
-4.4%
From the above findings we can conclude that the teaching intervention had a quite limited impact on students’ behavior towards the social context of science. The majority of students had already adopted an accepted point of view before the intervention and maintained it. Pre test results show that most of the students had a quite positive background regarding the social aspect of science. Therefore there was little room for improvement. The number of non accepted answers diminished 4.4% while the corresponding number of partially accepted and accepted answers increased 2.2% each. 4.4 Teaching Objective 4 The fourth teaching objective for students to “Appreciate the role of idealization in science’s development” was assessed by questions 10, 11, 12, and 19. Questions 10, 11, 12 are Likert questions and question 19 is a written paragraph. Table 4. Findings on the fourth teaching objective Objective 4: “Appreciate the role of idealization in science’s development” Pre test (% of answers) Post test (% of answers) Question 10 11 12 19 Total % of 10 11 12 19 Total % of answers answers Accepted 8 8 3 6 25 48.07 9 6 11 6 32 61.54 Partially 3 2 4 7 16 30.78 3 1 7 11 21.15 accepted Non 2 3 6 11 21.15 1 6 2 9 17.31 accepted Total 13 13 13 13 52 100 13 13 13 13 52 100
Change
+13.47 -9.63% -3.84%
From the above results, it is clearly induced that the interventions had a quite positive impact on students view about the role of idealization in science. Specifically, there has been a slight increase of the accepted answers (13.47% of the total number of the answers) which demonstrate that some students appreciated the method of idealization in science making after the interventions. It is worth commenting that students showed stability in their written paragraphs in question 19. There was no 243
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change in their overall score. This partially has to do with the recognized impediment of textual material (Demopoulos, 2007). It was not easy for them either to express themselves neither to develop their writings in such a short period of time (Aikenhead, 1988). From Table 4 we can conclude that something goes wrong with question 11, which congregates more accepted answers in the pre test than the post test. Specifically, the question mentions that “The study of physical world should not be carried out using non physical terms, meaning objects that do not really exist, but exist only in theory, for instance “smooth plane”, “weightless string”, etc.”. The verbalization is not clear enough as the phrase contains three negative sentences. It should have been expressed better retaining the same meaning. Except of question 12 which noted very important positive changes between pre and post test, the rest of the questions had either limited impact, no impact or opposite impact. It is a prevalent belief among science educators that: idealization in science has been recognized as one of the major stumbling blocks to meaningful learning of science (Nersessian, 1992). Students are very deeply influenced by everyday concrete experience. As a result, they confront a problem in conceiving the abstract scientific ideas. 5. SUGGESTIONS
The pilot run showed the necessity to apply an amount of modifications to the research tools which are presented below as suggestions for improvement. These are presented separately for each teaching objective to facilitate tracking and control. 5.1 First Objective During the experiment 2 in the 2nd activity, students examine whether the period of the pendulum depends on the shape of the bob. After the question “According to your opinion, does the shape of the bob influence the pendulum period?” the questions “Why?”, “How can you explain the above dependence?” must follow. In this way students can make connections between the shape of the bob and the air resistance, and be more effective when answering question 4 about air resistance. Regarding question 16, we should have mentioned that the oscillation was a small amplitude one. So, it better alters to: “A simple pendulum needs 1 second for its first, small amplitude, oscillation. The same pendulum needs for its tenth oscillation: a. More than 1 second b. Less than 1 second c. Exactly 1 second d. Depends on the pendulum”. 5.2 Second Objective As it is above mentioned, Likert scale questions give little guidance in understanding students’ viewpoints. We suggest replacing questions 6 and 14 with a true-false and a multiple choice question. Specifically, question 6 alters to “Observations enhance, support and reinforce theories rather than prove them” while question 14 is replaced by “Scientists should: a. be continuously conducting experiments b. always 244
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trust the empirical data in interpreting their experiments c. be making theories no matter their empirical data d. pay attention not only in empirical data but in theory conception as well”. Regarding question 18, we fully concur with Aikenhead’s view that written paragraphs should be compared with semi-structured interviews. In order to remove any impediment caused by the vocabulary, it is suggested that we should explain the terms expand and contract. Regarding the semi-structured interview, we ask questions like: “Apart from the empirical data, which other factors influence scientists’ viewpoint?”, “What exactly do you mean saying…?”, “What do you mean saying that scientists are influenced by their colleagues?” Having in mind the already recognized impediment of textual material (Demopoulos, 2007), conducting semistructured interviews will allow students to express their views more explicitly. 5.3 Third Objective Trying to improve students’ results in future researches, we suggest that some questions should be embodied in activity 6. The questions directly refer to the social aspect of science as it is outlined by the dispute between Galileo and del Monte. The questions should be answered in a group work spirit. Such questions are: “What is your opinion about the relationship between Galileo and del Monte?”, “Why do you think Galileo was trying to persuade his colleague that he was right?”, “Which role did del Monte play in the development of Galileo’s theory of pendulum motion?” If students work on the above questions, they will attain better results in the specific objective. Referring to pre-post test questions, according to the results, we suggest that we should replace Likert questions 9 and 13, for the reasons mentioned above. So, question 9 is replaced by the following multiple choice question: “Scientists communicate with each other mainly because: a. it is obligatory by the institutions b. everyone wants to establish his viewpoint, especially when he deserves it c. they discuss their difficulties and become more effective d. today’s society appreciate such communications”. Concerning question 13, it is replaced by the following written paragraph: “Describe the role that colleagues play in scientists’ path”. A semistructured interview follows the written paragraph. The following questions are included: “What do you mean by…?”, “Which advantages and disadvantages of collaboration among scientists can you mention?”, “Is it worth for a scientist to collaborate with his colleagues?” 5.4 Forth Objective For reasons already mentioned above, we suggest that question 11 should be replaced by the following true-false question: “The study of the physical world should be carried out using physical terms, instead of non physical terms like “smooth plane”, “weightless string” that exist only in theory”. Referring to question 19, which is a written paragraph, we have to conduct semi-structured interviews. Such interviews include question like “What do you mean by …?”, “Why do you think we use free fall if it doesn’t exist?”, “In which cases the fall of a body is 245
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approximately a free fall?” After the interviews it is expected that students will express their change in view more explicitly. 6. CONCLUSIONS
The pilot intervention described above, in general terms, had a limited impact. The results are not suitable for statistical analysis and generalization because the sample was both limited and convenient. The best achieved goal was the one regarding the method of idealization in science. Second to that was the first goal of the research, about the isochronous motion of the pendulum. The second and third goals of the research were met with very little success. The students, who participated in the present study, had never before attended a lesson based in a teaching reconstruction in the context of history and philosophy of science. There were benefits and drawbacks in using the history and philosophy context for the first time. On the one hand, even students who avoid mathematic formulas, had the opportunity to make sense of the reasoning that was developing and actively participate in the group work. On the other hand, some students did not appreciate the absence of mathematical formulas and thought that the topic was not very important so as to devote attention. According to the literature, interventions of this kind, of a historical – philosophical approach, require considerably longer time to yield satisfactory results. The coexistence of experiments with teaching in a historical – philosophical frame is a matter of research. There are different learning impediments to overcome in these two cases. The pre and post test data gathering tool contained four types of questions: True– false, Likert, multiple choice and written paragraph. Judging the research results and the input from literature it is assumed that Likert questions are not reliable when used for measuring views related to the Nature of Science, because students choose the Likert degree mostly in random. Concerning the written paragraph questions, there is a doubt on the motivation of students, their ability to express themselves, moreover to express their change of view. For safer results, it is suggested to conduct an assessment with semi-structured interviews in conjunction with a questionnaire. This would provide a clearer comparison of the students’ views. The pilot research’s findings have provided useful material for us in order to make suggestions that refer both to the teaching tools and the pre- post- test. The alterations made raise much greater expectations for future researches. We can cautiously conclude that although a lot remains to be done, teaching nature of science using historical scientific controversies will prove its value in the long term and will justify the efforts of teachers and researchers in the field. REFERENCES Abd-el-Khalick, F., Bell, R., & Lederman, N. (1997). The nature of science and instructional practice: Making the unnatural natural. Science Education, 82, 417–436. Aikenhead, GS., Fleming, R. W., & Ryan, A. G. (1987). High school graduates’ beliefs about sciencetechnology-society. I. Methods and issues in monitoring student views. Science Education, 71(2), 145–161. 246
TOOL FOR TEACHING SCIENCE Aikenhead, G. S. (1988). An analysis of four ways of assessing sudent beliefs about STS topics. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 25(8), 607–629. Bell, R. (2003). The Role of Moral Reasoning on Socioscientific Issues and Discourse in Science Education (pp. 63–79). Kluwer Academic Publishers. Benchmarks for Science Literacy. http://www.project2061.org/publications/bsl/online/index.php, visited 19/10/2009. Binnie, A. (2001). Using the history of electricity and magnetism to enhance teaching. Science & Education, 10, 379–389. Brush, S. G. (1969). The role of history in the teaching of physics. The Physics Teacher, 7(5), 271–280. Cohen, I. B. (1950). A sense of history in science. American Journal of Physics, 18, 343–359. Reprinted in Science & Education 2(3), 1993. Conant, J. B. (1947). On Understanding Science. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Conant, J. B. (1957). Harvard case histories in experimental science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cross Thematic Curriculum Framework. (2009). http://www.pischools.gr/download/programs/depps/ english/19th.pdf, visited 19/10/2009. Drake, S. (1978). Galileo at work. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Galilei, G. (1638). Dialogues concerning the two new sciences (H. Crew & A. de Salvio, Trans., 1954). New York: Dover Publications. Gil, D., & Solbes, J. (1993). The introduction of modern physics: Overcoming a deformed vision of science. International Journal of Science Education, 15(3), 255–260. Holbrook, J., & Rannikmae, M. (2007). The nature of science education for enhancing scientific literacy. International Journal of Science Education, 29(11), 1347–1362. Jung, W. (1983). Toward preparing students for change: A critical discussion of the contribution of the history of physics to physics teaching. In Using history of physics in innovatory physics education (pp. 6–57). Italy: Pavia University. Reprinted in Science & Education, 3(2), 1994. Kipnis, N. (1992). Rediscovering optics. Minneapolis, MN: BENA Press. Kipnis, N. (2001). Scientific controversies in teaching science: The case of Volta. Science & Education, 10, 33–49. Klopfer, L. E. (1969a). The teaching of science and the history of science. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 6, 87–95. Klopfer, L. E. (1969b). Case histories and science education. San Francisco: Wadsworth Publishing Company. Kragh, H. (1992). A sense of history: History of science and the teaching introductory quantum theory. Science & Education, 1(4), 349–364. Lederman, N. G. (1992). Students’ and teachers’ conceptions about the nature of science: A review of the research. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 29, 331–359. McComas, W. (2004). Keys to teaching nature of science. Science Teacher, 71, 24–27. Malamitsa, K., Kokkotas, P., & Stamoulis, E. (2005). The use of aspects of history of science in teaching science enhances the development of critical thinking. Paper presented in The Eighth International History, Philosophy and Science Teaching Conference (IHPST 8) “Teaching and Communicating Science: What the history, philosophy and sociology of science can contribute”. University of Leeds, Leeds, England, 15–18 July 2005. Matthews, M. R. (1992). History, philosophy, and science teaching: The present rapprochement. Science & Education, 1, 11–47. Matthews, M. R. (2000). Time for science education, how teaching the history and philosophy of pendulum motion can contribute to science literacy (p. 321). Kluwer Academic, Plenum Publishers. Matthews, M. R. (2007). Teaching science, The role of history and philosophy of science in teaching science (p. 160–161). Athens, Greece: Epikentro Publishing. Mayling, H. (1997). How to change students conceptions of the epistemology of science. Science & Education, 6, 397–416. National Curriculum Council (NCC). (1988). Science in the National Curriculum. York: NCC. 247
STEFANIDOU AND VLACHOS National Research Council (NRC). (1994). National science education standards (p. 191) Draft. Washington: National Academy Press. Nersessian, N. J. (1992). Constructing and instructing: The role of “abstraction techniques” in creating and learning physics, philosophy of science, cognitive psycology, and educational theory and practice (p. 48–68). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Renn, J., Damerow, P., Rieger, S., & Camerota, M. (1998). Hunting the white elephant: When and how did Galileo discover the law of fall. Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. Ryder, J., & Leach, J. (2000). Interpreting experimental data: the views of upper secondary school and university science students. International Journal of Science Education, 22(10), 1069–1084. Seroglou, F., & Koumaras, P. (2001). The contribution of the history of physics education: A review. Science & Education, 10, 153–172. Seroglou, F. (2007). Science education for citizenship. Athens, Greece: Epikentro Publishing. Textbook 2. (2005). Physics 11th grade, general education (6th ed.). OEDB Greece. Textbook 3. (2007). Physics 12th grade, science education (7th ed.). OEDB Greece. Wolpert, L. (1992). The unnatural nature of science. Harvard University Press.
Constantina Stefanidou PhD candidate and Ioannis Vlachos PhD Faculty of Primary Education National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece
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18. RESOLVING DILEMMAS IN ACQUIRING KNOWLEDGE OF NEWTON’S FIRST LAW IS THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE HELPFUL?
1. INTRODUCTION
A historical approach has been regarded as one of the most useful ways of teaching science. Many studies in science education have in fact recognized the importance of the history of science (Niaz, 1998). For instance, Solomon (1989) argued that the teaching of the history of science would be useful in the following ways: displaying science as culture; illustrating the nature of scientific knowledge; showing the human face of science; and understanding the social relations of science. Matthews (1994) discussed the role of history of science in promoting science teaching. He saw it enhancing better comprehension of scientific concepts and methods, and aiding in connecting the development of an individual’s thinking with scientific ideas. The history of science is intrinsically worthwhile, being necessary for an understanding of the nature of science and counteracting the influence of scientism and dogmatism. It also humanizes the subject matter and allows connections to be made among different topics and disciplines of science. Recently, Stinner (2008) summarized his reasons for including historical components in science curricula as follows: i. History promotes a better understanding of scientific concepts and methods, ii. History is a storehouse for educational ideas, experiments, and interesting case studies, iii. History connects the development of individual thinking with the development of scientific ideas, iv. History presents science as a dynamic and often revolutionary process. This process can be seen as an adventure in ideas that adds to the totality of the human experience, v. Important episodes in the history of science and culture should be familiar to all students, vi. History of science is necessary to understand the nature of science, vii. Recent research has shown a parallel between the discovery process and the learning process, viii. History counteracts the scientism and dogmatism that are often found in the media and even in texts and classrooms, ix. History teaches that scientific theories are tentative, but sometimes very robust and shows how and why it is so difficult to overthrow critically established ideas in science, P.V. Kokkotas et al., (eds.), Adapting Historical Science Knowledge Production to the Classroom, 249–258. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
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x. History allows us to compare the difficulties we encounter in today’s scientific theories with those of earlier times. This comparison may help us understand the limits of our theories better, clearing a path toward further development in research, xi. History allows connections to be made within topics and disciplines of science as well as with other disciplines, xii. History often provides simple examples that show how science, technology and society are interdependent. Even the origin of certain scientific mythologies can be demonstrated through historical studies, xiii. History humanizes the subject matter of science. However, there are a number of objections to the inclusion of history of science in the science curriculum. For instance, there are several obstacles to its inclusion such as the lack of sufficient time for instruction or that the introduction of erroneous content and/or strange concepts may be confusing. Besides teachers may also lack the appropriate knowledge background (Galili, 2008). The first obstacle of insufficient time for instruction could be resolved if the historical content was interwoven into the regular teaching instead of being added as separate material. Many old ideas in the historical development of science have indeed been naïve and frequently controversial. This can certainly confuse students. However, this fact should not be an obstacle to learning science. We cannot understand science solely through the rhetoric of final conclusions, which most science textbooks emphasize. Important questions make sense only in the context of their own time. Any issue is illuminated by placing it in its historical context. There is good evidence that in order to engender meaningful learning, it is essential that teaching and learning methods be imbedded in an appropriate context (Kenealy, 1989; Martin & Brouwer, 1991). Historical contexts address the ‘why’ and ‘how’ aspects of the development of science and technology in a way that includes scientists as living, breathing persons who are concerned with personal, ethical, sociological, and political issues (Niaz et al., 2010). It is generally accepted that this form of presentation is likely to increase the motivation of students (Niaz et al., 2010). It is true that many science teachers are not sufficiently acquainted with the history of science. Teacher training seldom includes the history of science (Galili, 2008). However, this cannot be a legitimate reason for excluding the history of science in science curricula. As we indicated earlier, there are many reasons why the history of science is important in teaching science. In addition, history (and philosophy) of science can directly help the science teacher in many ways. For instance, Aduriz-Bravo and Izquierdo (2003) summarized the contribution of history of science to teachers as follows; i. it can provide content that teachers could use it in their science classes. An important aim of scientific literacy is to know about science, ii. it can help teachers find innovative methods of teaching scientific content, and iii. it can provide teachers with a ‘second-order’, meta-cognitive perspective that may favor their autonomy, self-regulation and professionalization. 250
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Kokkotas et al., (2009) argues that teachers studying case studies from history and philosophy of science could get a better understanding of how scientists design experiments, interpret results, pose questions, generate alternative hypotheses, etc, and thereby better understand the nature of science. Science teaching is an uncertain ill-defined domain of knowledge and practice. Teachers struggle to strike a balance among competing educational goals and practices. What could make contribution to science teachers to help solve their complex problems, especially dilemmas-ones which often cannot be resolved in simple ways? Can the history of science provide a “practical guide” to teachers who face dilemmas in their school science classrooms? The purpose of this study was to investigate the positive role of history of science in resolving such dilemmas. First, we examine the tension between personal experience and the formal representation of scientific knowledge in the case of a teacher’s presentation of Newton’s First law in a physics classroom. Secondly, we present the historical case of natural motion and its potential for resolving the dilemmas of teaching Newton’s First law. 2. DILEMMAS IN PRESENTING NEWTON’S FIRST LAW IN THE CLASSROOM
This study aims to explore the usefulness of history of science in addressing dilemmas in the teaching of physics. We choose a case found in John Wallace & William Louden’s book, Dilemmas of science teaching (2002). The book explores sixteen contemporary issues in science education, through an examination of the practical dilemmas these issues create for teachers. In our case, the dilemma generated between scientific law (formal representation of knowledge) and personal experience is illustrated by a story written by a physics teacher, David Geelan. The physics teacher is confronted by students’ disbelief in Newton’s First Law of Motion in a Grade 11 physics class. He begins: “We’re discussing Newton’s first law of motion. I’ve written it up on the board, in the form that I think flows the best: An object remains in a state of rest, or of uniform motion in a straight line, unless acted upon by an unbalanced external force. But it doesn’t interject Neil.” Here is the continuing discussion between Mr. Geelan and his students: Neils: “The first part is OK - if something’s not moving, you have to have a force to make it move. But if something is moving, it’s eventually gonna slow down and stop.” Teacher: “No” [I explain (patiently considering how I feel)], “that’s because there are forces acting that we don’t notice. When things are moving they often have friction forces, from air resistance or whatever. That’s what slows them down.” Neils: “Yeah, but the whole point is that Newton’s law isn’t right, because if something is moving it will slow down. So why make up a law that says it won’t? What’s a law like that good for?” Teacher: “OK then,” [I say]. “think about what happens in outer space, where there are no forces like friction and wind resistance. Out there, an object will continue in the same straight line forever.” 251
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Kelly: “But how do we know that?” [pipes up Kelly] “We’ve never been to outer space.” [James joins in] James: “Yeah, and you’re always telling us that science is about trying to explain our own experiences - in our experience, things always slow down and stop after a while. So, Newton’s Law is no good for explaining our experiences.” Phillip: “Lots of stuff in physics is like that though”, [says Phillip] “it took ages for the scientists to even work out whether light’s a particle or a wave, because you can’t see it or feel it or anything.” Jill: “Yeah, they still don’t know, and there are other things in science –like atoms and molecules– that you can’t experience: so what’s the use?” Mr. Geelan had no doubt that the Newtonian revolution was enormously important historically and philosophically. But he thought that to explain the kids’ normal, everyday experiences like rolling a skateboard along a car park, Aristotle’s impetus theory just works better. And he thought, “That being the case, it’s extremely difficult, from a science-for-all value position, to defend teaching Newtonian physics at the secondary school.” He said to students: “I’ll need some time to think about your point, but I think it’s well taken, … Perhaps we can investigate ways that Newton’s laws might be useful. Um … well, if you go on to do physics at university, you’ll need to do this stuff.” Even though he said things like that, he had different ideas in his mind. He said in his mind, “I hate this, even as I say it… If something has no intrinsic value for me now, but just the chance of being useful at some later time, why should I put energy into learning it now?” Finally, he recognized the dilemmas between students’ personal experience and formal representation of scientific knowledge. He mentioned that, “There is a gap between what I’m preaching-experiencebased science for all –and what I am teaching. So what should change –the students, the science or my educational values?” As one can see, here is a dilemma, specifically one between personal experiences and formal representation of scientific knowledge (formal knowledge, laws). So what should change? We simply cannot choose just one and eliminate the other. Each side of the dilemma has its own strengths, but also its own weaknesses. This very state of affairs heightens the dilemma. 3. INTERPRETING THE DUAL COMPONENTS OF THE DILEMMA
In this section, we will try to interpret the dual components of the dilemma. First, let’s examine the ‘personal experiences’ side. It is one of the most basic assumptions of constructivism that learning is experience-based, context-bound, and domainspecific. Personal experience is important and constitutes the basic resource for learning science. Considering, weighing, and connecting personal experiences are crucial for effective learning. Connecting with personal experiences can motivate students to actively engage learning and construct knowledge. However, an overemphasis on ‘personal experiences’ can create difficulties. Making sense of natural phenomena and of ourselves requires a greater, more concerted, effort than relying 252
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on personal experience or naïve observation. This is an example of a negative effect of overemphasizing ‘personal experience’ in a teachers’ mind. At the end of the episode, the teacher said, “If Aristotle’s impetus theory of motion explains our everyday experiences better than Newton’s or Einstein’s schemes, then we ought to teach it… Aristotle would be taught, not as a historical curiosity for ridicule or background, but as a viable, useful model for understanding what happens around us. To a science teacher this sounds almost heretical, but if we’re serious about our constructivist teaching innovations and about science for all students, then perhaps the science must come to the students, rather than vice versa.” Aristotle’s ideas would seem to be more intuitive and easier to grasp for students than Newtonian explanations. In addition it is also valuable to study that idea in order to understand how explanations of motion have changed over time. However, we cannot simply teach aspects of science which seems to make it easy to explain a particular phenomenon, but that in reality are naïve and limited. We need to help students learn how they can make sense of the physical world around us, not only in the past, but also in the present; not only from the student’s side, but also from science’s side. Secondly, let us consider the formal representation of scientific knowledge. It takes simple/abstract/elegant forms. Thus, it is an effective way to inform students of what scientists have discovered and how to apply discoveries in an efficient manner. In the early 1960s, the structure of the disciplines that Bruner and Schwab elevate to the forefront of science learning are theoretical objects of science: the structure of interrelating definitions and concepts in Newton’s Principia, the structure of geometry as contained in Euclid’s Elements, etc. (Matthews, 1994). In the early 1960s, based on this idea, the large-scale programs later known as PSSC, BSCE, CHEMS, ESCP curricula and SCIS for elementary science were developed. These were all heavily funded by NSF and had a specialist, theoretical, disciplinary emphasis (Stinner, 2008). However, an overemphasis on ‘formal knowledge’ creates its own, but different problems. It disconnects science teaching from students’ experiences, teachers’ knowledge, and other contextual factors of science such as the historical and cultural. Later, Stinner (2008) also recognized the problematic character of the 1960s science curricula because as he wrote: i. the emphasis was on the ‘processes of science’ rather than on developing conceptual frames of reference, ii. most science teachers had never been involved in scientific research, and iii. few scientists are acquainted with the history and philosophy of science. According to recent research which evaluated general physics textbooks (namely the unit on atomic structure), physics textbooks are still described in a formal and strict manner (Rodrigetz & Niaz, 2004). One of the authors (Niaz et al., 2010) in the study claims that the formal representation of scientific knowledge is dominant in most textbooks because most textbook authors hold a fundamental premise, namely, an empiricist epistemology. In other words, many authors believe science is done as an accumulation of experimental data and thus emphasize techniques, both experimental and theoretical, at the expense of ideas (heuristic 253
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principles, presuppositions, hypotheses, and guiding assumptions). However, the history of science shows that it is precisely these ideas that guide scientists in understanding and interpreting the data, standing in contrast to a strictly empiricist view. 4. HISTORY OF SCIENCE: A WAY TO RESOLVE THE DILEMMA
How does a dilemma arise? As we indicated earlier, there are many components in the teaching of physics; students, teachers, science, educational environment, and so on. And there are always possible dilemmas (or conflicts) that are generated between them. For instance, conflicts between student-centered versus teachercentered approach would be the case. In order to resolve a specific dilemma, we need to find a proper way, a vis media (a middle way) which attempts to integrate the dual components of the dilemma and thereby overcome some of the tensions. In other words, we should try to enhance the different benefits and compensate for the limitations of the two different components of the dilemma. The dilemma of this study arises, broadly speaking, from the conflict between content (physics)-centered and student (personal experience)-centered ideas, specifically between formal physics knowledge and personal experience. Each of these components of the dilemma has different strengths and weaknesses (in other words, benefits and costs). We have attempted to find a way of resolving the dilemma of teaching Newton’s First Law by appealing to the history of science. We will begin with a brief discussion of historical theories of force and motion. A fuller discussion is given in, for instance, Franklin (1978) and Stinner (1994). Aristotle (fourth century BC) divided all observed motion of inanimate objects into two categories: natural motion and violent motion. Natural motion was seen by him as celestial motion (which is uniformly circular and perpetual) or as terrestrial motion (which is rectilinear, up and down and finite). Natural motion as terrestrial motion occurs in the absence of forces, because bodies seek to reach their ‘natural place’, in which they will be in a state of rest. The natural motion of the heavy elements (earth and water) is to fall downwards, to be as close as possible to their natural place at the center of the universe. On the other hand, the natural motion of light elements (air and fire) is to rise, since their natural place is above the center of the universe. Aristotle claims that objects will come to rest when force is removed. However, the motion of a projectile was a really difficult problem for Aristotle; what force keeps the projectile in motion after it loses contact with the projector? Aristotle thought that the medium somehow provided the necessary force to push the projectile. This paradoxical state of affairs is connected with Aristotle believing that the medium not only sustains the motion, but also acts to resist it. In the sixth century AD, John Philoponus argued that is was not air which provides the negative power propelling a projectile, but an impressed force that eventually dies out. John Buridan later (in the fourteenth century AD) developed this impetus theory. He thought that an impressed force on a projectile was permanent unless acted on by a resistance or other forces. However, Buridan did not arrive at a statement of inertia. Hundreds of years later, Galileo showed that force is not necessary to keep a body in motion, but rather that objects will remain in motion at a constant velocity unless acted 254
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upon by an external force. For Galileo, natural motion was understood as the impeded circumnavigation of the Earth by a ship. In this situation, gravity did not resist the motion of the ship even though it acted on the ship. The young Isaac Newton, like students today, believed in the notion of impetus (Steinberg et al, 1990). However, Newton later transformed the notion of impetus into the concept of inertial mass and could then think of motion without appealing to forces. This became Newton’s First Law: natural motion is the motion, at constant velocity, of a body with no external forces acting on it. The history of motion can help us address the dilemma of teaching Newton’s First Law by compensating for the limitations of each component of the dilemma and by increasing the benefits of both the formal representation of knowledge and of personal experiences. The history of motion helps overcome the limitation of a formal knowledge-centered approach by enabling students to understand the intellectual struggles involved in scientific thinking and the development of theories of motion. This would lead students to recognize the tentative nature of science and to change their strictly logical and abstract image of science. Secondly, the history of motion can increase the motivation of students since historical contexts address the ‘why’ and ‘how’ theories of motion have developed in a way that sees scientists as living persons who are concerned with personal, sociological, philosophical, and religious issues. The history of motion can also help us strengthen the benefits of a formal knowledge-centered approach. As many researchers have mentioned (for instance, Cooper’s argument in Niaz et al., 2010), presenting physics in historic context makes it more understandable. In our view, the history of motion connects the formal knowledge of motion (Newton’s First Law) with the context of its development from Aristotle to Newton and illuminates the reasons and limitations of each person’s ideas of motion in their own historic time. Thus, including the history of motion can enhance the sense of Newton’s Law and its historical structure and meaning. The history of motion also helps us overcome the limitations of the personal experience-centered approach. Specifically, studying the history of motion would allow students to develop a richer understanding of scientific knowledge. For instance, historical discussions can connect the development of a student’s personal experience of free fall, projectile motion, circular motion, etc, and thinking with the development of scientific ideas. This study of motion would allow students to compare their difficulties in encountering today’s formulation of Newton’s laws with the difficulties of others in an earlier time. For instance, if students learn the history of motion, they might understand that for pre-Newtonian physics the conceptual development depends on commonsense perceptions based on personal kinesthetic memory. And students might understand that it is difficult to connect Newton’s Law to ordinary experience since the law is related to internalist notions such as thought experiments. This could encourage students to challenge their own constraints, inquire how scientists think of motion in their own time, and address their difficulties in learning the theories of motion. The history of motion also helps us strengthen the benefits of the personal experience-centered approach. For instance, the history of motion would make 255
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science more attractive and meaningful to students since history of motion shows the close relationship between science and student personal experiences and knowledge. The following students’ conceptions which are similar to the views of the past scientists could be used to stimulate active discussions by students in classrooms and would be a good starting point for a meaningful conceptual change of the ideas related to inertia (Song et al., 1997): i. Stars’circular motions and objects’ falling motion are natural motions which do not need external causes (Similar to Aristotle’s idea). ii. A stone on a moving ship has its own force thus it moves with the ship (Similar to Buridan’s idea). iii. A projectile motion is a combination of a uniform horizontal motion and vertical free-fall motion (Similar to Galileo’s idea). 5. CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATION
The purpose of this study was to investigate the dilemma of teaching Newton’s First Law as introduced by Wallace and Louden (2002). The dilemma came from the conflict between the formal representation of knowledge (Newton’s First Law) and personal experience. Since both of them are important in teaching and learning physics, we cannot choose one of them at the expense of the other. Rather, we need to address the dilemma generated by promoting their strengths and by complementing their weaknesses. We found a possible solution to addressing the inherent dilemma of teaching Newton’s First Law in the history of science: 1) History of science can help us overcome the limitations of a formal knowledgecentered approach. For instance, history of science can show that scientific theories are tentative since history includes the intellectual struggle involved in scientific thinking. History of science also shows scientists as living person who challenged problems, had difficulties, and (sometimes) failed. This can increase student interests and motivation to learn science. 2) History of science can enhance the strength of formal knowledge-centered approach. This approach enables students to see what scientists find and to learn effective ways to solve textbook-style problems by applying formal knowledge, which is rhetoric of conclusions. However, history of science makes science more understandable since science makes better sense in the context of its own time. 3) History of science can help us overcome the limitation of the personal experiencecentered approach. History of science allows us to compare the difficulties we encounter in today’s scientific theories with those of earlier times. This can help us understand and address our difficulties in learning science. 4) History of science can better relate science to students’ knowledge and experience since history shows the connection of the development of student thinking with the development of scientific ideas. Thus, history of science can enhance the strength of personal experience-centered approach. 256
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In the current PER (Physics Education Research), identifying and resolving student difficulty in learning physics have enhanced students’ scientific knowledge and understanding of physics (Ambrose, 2004; Loverude et al., 2003; Reif, 1986). On the other hand, in the history of physics, identifying and resolving difficulties (such as controversial problems) has aided the development of research by physicists (Cassidy et al., 2002; Kuhn, 1962; Niaz et al., 2002). Likewise, we believe, research on physics teachers’ difficulties (or dilemmas) in their teaching could help them enhance their physics instruction. In future research, we will need to better understand the structure of teachers’ dilemmas in teaching physics. We also need to develop history-based teaching strategies and to look for evidence of the effectiveness of this new approach in resolving teachers’ dilemmas in teaching physics. NOTES 1
Calvin College, MI, USA.
REFERENCES Aduriz-Bravo, A., & Izquierdo, M. (2003). An ‘expanded’ generative model for science teacher education in the philosophy of science. 28th annual conference of the ATEE, Malta. Ambrose, B. S. (2004). Investigating student understanding in intermediate mechanics: Identifying the need for a tutorial approach to instruction. American Journal of Physics, 72, 453–459. Cassidy, D., Holton, G., & Rutherford, J. (2002). Understanding physics. Springer-Verlag. Franklin, A. (1978). Inertia in the middle ages. Physics Teacher, 16, 201–208. Galili, I. (2008). History of physics as a tool for teaching. In V. Matilde, & S. Elenn (Eds.), The proceedings of ICPE 2008. The International Commission on Physics Education. Kenealy, P. (1989). Telling a coherent “story”: A role for the history and philosophy of science in a physical science course. In D. E. Herget (Ed.), HPSST proceedings of the first international conference (pp. 209–220). Kokkotas, P., Piliouras, P., Malamitsa, K., Kokkotas, V., Stamoulis, E., & Maurogiannakis, M. (2009). The pedagogical foundations of science teachers’ professional development. In P. Kokkotas & F. Bevilacqua (Eds.), Professional development of science teachers: Teaching science using case studies from the history of science (pp. 11–50). Kuhn, T. (1962). The structure of scientific revolution. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Loverude, M. E., Kautz, C. H., & Heron, P. R. (2003). Helping students develop an understanding of Archimedes’ principle. I. Research on students understanding. American Journal of Physics, 71, 1178–1187. Martin, B. E., & Brouwer, W. (1991). The sharing of personal science and the narrative element in science education. Science Education, 75, 707–722. Matthews, M. R. (1994). Science teaching: The role of history and philosophy of science. London: Routledge. Niaz, M. (1998). From Cathode rays to Alpha particles to quantum of action: A rational reconstruction of structure of the atom and its implications for chemistry textbooks. Science Education, 82, 527–552. Niaz, M., & Rodrigetz, M. A. (2002). Improving learning by discussing controversies in 20th century physics. Physics Education, 37, 59–63. Niaz, M., Klassen, S., McMillan, B., & Metz, D. (2010). Leon Cooper’s perspective on teaching science: An interview study. Science & Education, 19, 39–54. Reif, F. (1986). Scientific approaches to science education. Physics Today, 39, 48–54. Rodrigetz, M. A., & Niaz, M. (2004). A reconstruction of structure of the atom and its implication for general physics textbooks. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 11, 211–219. 257
LEE AND LEEGWATER Solomon, J. (1989). Teaching the history of science: Is nothing sacred?In M. Shortland, & A. Warwick (Eds.), Teaching the history of science (pp. 42–53). Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Song, J., Cho, S., & Chung, B. (1997). Exploring the parallelism between change in students’ conceptions and historical change in the concept of inertia. Research in Science Education, 27, 87–100. Steinberg, M., Brown, D. E., & Clement, J. (1990). Genius is not immune to persistent misconceptions: Conceptual difficulties impeding Issac Newton and contemporary physics students. International Journal of Science Education, 12, 265–273. Stinner, A. (1994). The story of force: From Aristotle to Einstein, Physics Education, 29, 77–86. Stinner, A. (2008). From intuitive physics to star trek: Large Context Problems (LCP) to enrich the teaching of physics. A monograph. University of Manitoba. Wallace, J., & Louden, W. (2002). Dilemmas of science teaching: Perspectives on problems of practice. Routledge Falmer.
Gyoungho Lee and Arie Leegwater1 Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea 1 Calvin College, MI, USA
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