Science & Education - Call for papers: New Histories of Science and Science Education
Guest Editors:
- Cristiano B. Moura (Simon Fraser University, Canada)
- Andreia Guerra (Centro Federal de Educação Tecnológica Celso Suckow da Fonseca, Brazil)
- Peter Heering (Europa-Universität Flensburg, Germany)
The role of the History of Science in Science Education is well-established and advocated by many scholars. Several decades of research in this interstitial field showed that historical accounts of science could form one basis on how to teach valuable lessons about how science was produced throughout history, giving insights into the nature of science and serving as a foundational platform for comprehending scientific practices (Allchin, 2011) as well as refining current scientific research where current thinking falls short (Chang, 2017).
Stemming from this field, scholars have emphasized the need to invert the priorities of science teaching, from a fact-based approach to a rich evaluation of epistemic and non-epistemic practices that are part of science (Erduran & Dagher, 2014). This need is even more crucial in the present time, given the challenges science has faced in the public debate, as argued by recent accounts (Osborne & Pimentel, 2023); and it is joined by recent calls for justice-oriented approaches in science education, reminding us that this rich analysis should be geared towards social justice as a goal and as a process (Yacoubian & Hansson, 2020).
In the past, the scholarship about the use of the History of Science for educational purposes was marked by studies that tried to set reasonable grounds for doing the “translation” from the original field of History of Science to science education. Among the topics that were investigated by researchers, one can mention concerns with pseudohistory and pseudoscience (Allchin, 2004), quasi-histories (Matthews, 1992), the building of parameters for a secure didactic transposition (Forato et. al., 2014), among others, both for formal and informal settings (e.g. Cavicchi & Heering 2022). Recognizing the complexity of the History of Science, these parameters and guidance proved invaluable for researchers and practitioners seeking optimized approaches to incorporating historical accounts into science education.
However, the History of Science is a dynamic and evolving field, having undergone significant transformations in recent years. In the rich landscape of historians of science we can now find new research streams such as those informed by global histories of science (Roberts, 2009; Raj, 2013), privileging new (global) narratives about scientific development, cultural histories of science (Pimentel, 2010; Lightman, 2016), blending approaches and lenses for seeing science as culture, environmental histories (Oreskes & Conway, 2011), among others. In this same vein, the surge of colonial histories (Bleichmar, 2017), gendered and racialized histories (e.g. Bulstrode, 2023; Schiebinger, 1991), which shed light on racism and sexism in the History of Science showcase how those oppressive patterns that plague our society are also present in science. These new trends in the historiography of science have been flourishing in renewed histories of science, and diverse special issues, books, and organized collections are part of the current research in this field.
The revitalization of the History of Science has prompted scholars in our field to explore how these new trends can be applied in science education. Some examples are the mingling between Global History and decolonial perspectives for science education (Gandolfi, 2021), an approach to science using the lenses of Cultural History for a refined understanding of scientific practice (Moura & Guerra, 2016) and for promoting politicized perspectives of science education (Moura et. al., 2023), the renewed attention on the material culture of science through the closer examination of the history of scientific instruments (Heering, 2023), etc. Some potential connections between the two fields are still underexplored in international literature, particularly those around gendered and racialized histories of science in science education, being gender, race and cultural perspectives of science education one of the topics that have experienced a peak in recent years (cf. Odden et. al., 2021). Those are some examples of the potentials of new histories of science as resources and theoretical bases for science education, both in non-formal and formal settings (in diverse educational levels) that are still very incipiently explored in international literature and that we bring as an invitation for our community to delve into more deeply for this special issue.
For this, we invite science education scholars (and also historians of science concerned by those themes) to reflect on the following questions and topics (or correlated themes linked to the aspects we covered on the call):
- Given the development of the History of Science as a field, which emerging roles, themes and tendencies can be identified in the interface between science education and the History of Science to promote social justice?
- How does the revision of topics in the History of Science hold potential for renewing the teaching and learning of canonical topics in science education?
- How can the teaching around gender, race and class in science education be informed by colonial, racialized and gendered histories of science to promote justice-centred science education
- How do nonformal science education approaches (e.g. in science museums, science centers, but also YouTube channels etc.) change due to the development in History of Science, and how does the audience response to these changes?
We invite theoretical pieces, studies of exemplary historical cases that showcase the aforementioned renovations in the field (with the exploration of consequences for science education), empirical studies, and other types of scholarship that may serve to explore the abovementioned topics in informal and formal science education at the various educational levels.
Submission procedure
Instructions for the preparation and submission of manuscripts can be accessed at the following website:
Timeline
Deadline for submission of papers: October 14th, 2024.
References
Allchin, D. (2004). Pseudohistory and pseudoscience. Science & Education, 13, 179-195.
Allchin, D. (2011). Evaluating knowledge of the nature of (whole) science. Science Education, 95(3), 518-542.
Bleichmar, D. (2017). Visual voyages. Images of Latin American nature from Columbus to Darwin. Yale University Press.
Bulstrode, J. (2023). Black metallurgists and the making of the industrial revolution. History and Technology, 1-41.
Cavicchi, E., & Heering, P. (2021). Historical Scientific Instruments in Contemporary Education (Vol. 9). Brill.
Chang, H. (2017). Who cares about the history of science?. Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science, 71(1), 91-107.
Erduran, S., Dagher, Z. R., (2014). Reconceptualizing nature of science for science education. Springer Netherlands.
Forato, T. C. M., de Andrade Martins, R., & Pietrocola, M. (2012). History and nature of science in high school: Building up parameters to guide educational materials and strategies. Science & Education, 21, 657-682.
Gandolfi, H. E. (2021). “It's a lot of people in different places working on many ideas”: Possibilities from global history of science to Learning about nature of science. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 58(4), 551-588.
Heering, P. (2023). Transformations: The material representation of historical experiments in science teaching. The British Journal for the History of Science, 56(3), 351-368. doi:10.1017/S0007087423000274
Lightman, B. (Ed.). (2016). A Companion to the History of Science. John Wiley & Sons.
Matthews, M. R. (1992). History, philosophy, and science teaching: The present rapprochement. Science & Education, 1, 11-47.
Moura, C. B., & Guerra, A. (2016). Cultural History of Science: A Possible Path for Discussing Scientific Practices in Science Teaching?. Revista Brasileira de Pesquisa em Educação Em Ciências, 16(3), 749–771.
Moura, C. B., Alsop, S., Camel, T., & Guerra, A. (2023). Science education in a world in crisis: contributions from the South to a defense of a cultural–historical approach in science teaching. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 18, 669-693.
Odden, T. O. B., Marin, A., & Rudolph, J. L. (2021). How has Science Education changed over the last 100 years? An analysis using natural language processing. Science Education, 105(4), 653-680.
Oreskes, N., & Conway, E. M. (2011). Merchants of doubt: How a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming. Bloomsbury Publishing USA.
Osborne, J., & Pimentel, D. (2023). Science education in an age of misinformation. Science Education, 107(3), 553-571.
Pimentel, J. (2010). ¿ Qué es la historia cultural de la ciencia?. Arbor, 186(743), 417-424.
Raj, K. (2013). Beyond postcolonialism… and postpositivism: circulation and the global history of science. Isis, 104(2), 337-347.
Roberts, L. (2009). Situating science in global history: Local exchanges and networks of circulation. Itinerario, 33(1), 9-30.
Schiebinger, L. (1991). The mind has no sex?: Women in the origins of modern science. Harvard University Press.
Allchin, D. (2011). Evaluating knowledge of the nature of (whole) science. Science Education, 95(3), 518-542.
Yacoubian, H. A. & Hansson, L., (2020). Nature of science for social justice. Springer International Publishing.