Arthur Stinner

The renewal of case studies in science education

Our objective in this paper is to clarify the contextual approach in scienceeducation and to suggest appropriate uses of history in the science classroomfrom early years through post secondary education. We present a descriptionof the variety of approaches by which teachers and educators may include thehistory of science in science instruction. This is followed by five sections inwhich historical approaches appropriate for early years, middle years, senioryears, college, and university level learning are discussed.

The story of force: from Aristotle to Einstein

This article summarizes for the physics educator the conceptual development of the notion of force from Aristotle to Einstein, suggesting appropriate analogies, limiting case analyses, thought experiments and imagistic representations that can be used in high school physics.

Conceptual Change, History, and Science Stories.

Science teachers wishing to implement educational research findings in their classrooms find themselves at a loss to choose between instructional prescriptions stemming from Piagets theory of cognitive development and those stemming from alternative conceptual frameworks (ACF) theory. Piagetian theory attributes student comprehension difficulty in science to undeveloped cognitive structures and prescribes experiences aimed at causing disequilibration which in turn leads to accommodation and assimilation. ACF theorists argue that conceptualizations derived from everyday experience often impede science learning and that learners must be led to confront their misconceptions and reconstruct their knowledge. We claim that contextual teaching using large context problems or “science stories” addresses both the ACF and the Piagetian points of view. We first discuss contextual teaching using large context problems, then provide guidelines for large context problems and the writing of science stories. Finally, we outline a teaching program involving the design of historically based science contexts and stories for use in science classrooms.

Philosophy, thought experiments and large context problems in the secondary school physics course

In this paper it is argued that scientific thinking in physics involves the progressive clarification of the relationship between mathematics and physics, as well as the clarification of scientific induction and deduction. Furthermore, the framing of theories and the working out of their consequences involve the exercise of the imagination. One locus of scientific imagination is the thought experiment, primarily understood as a mental device that helps explicate concepts and principles, and unravel paradoxes. A sound curriculum in physics, however, must also be based on broad principles of education. These principles are first stated and then it is argued that in conjunction with what we have said about scientific thinking we should teach physics in terms of contexts of inquiry. These contexts relate to questions, method, problems, experiments, history, and the large context problem itself. Here we find the clarification of induction and deduction, as well as the proper placing of the thought experiment. ...

The Pendulum: Its Place in Science, Culture and Pedagogy

The study and utilisation of pendulum motion has had immense scientific, cultural, horological, philosophical, and educational impact. The International Pendulum Project (IPP) is a collaborative research effort examining this impact, and demonstrating how historical studies of pendulum motion can assist teachers to improve science education by developing enriched curricular material, and by showing connections between pendulum studies and other parts of the school programme especially mathematics, social studies and music. The Project involves about forty researchers in sixteen countries plus a large number of participating school teachers.1 The pendulum is a universal topic in university mechanics courses, high school science subjects, and elementary school programmes, thus an enriched approach to its study can result in deepened science literacy across the whole educational spectrum. Such literacy will be manifest in a better appreciation of the part played by science in the development of society and culture.

Lord Kelvin and the age-of-the-earth debate: a dramatization

This is a dramatization of a fictitious debate about the age of the earth that takes place in the Royal Institution, London, England, in the year 1872. The debate is among Sir William Thomson (later Kelvin), T.H. Huxley (Darwins ‘Bulldog’), Sir Charles Lyell, and Hermann von Helmholtz. In 1862 Thomson published his celebrated and widely studied ‘The Secular Cooling of the Earth’ that raised the post-Darwinian debate of the age of the earth above the level of popular controversy. He entered the debate with all the arrogance of a newly established ‘science of the century’, namely the recently drafted laws of thermodynamics. The debate is partly based on a lively exchange of comments and arguments that occurred between T.H. Huxley and William Thomson, starting in 1868, when Thomson addressed the Glasgow Geological Society. This long public discussion also involved the ideas and the work of geologist Charles Lyell and those of the celebrated German physicist Hermann von Helmholtz. The confrontation is between the unyielding physicists and the insecure biologists and geologists who required a much longer time for the age of the earth than the physicists were prepared to give them. However, the debate ends on a conciliatory note, suggesting that perhaps Sir Williams ‘storehouse of creation’ may contain a hereto undiscovered source of energy that is more bountiful than gravitational energy.

Providing a Contextual Base and a Theoretical Structure to Guide the Teaching of Science from Early Years to Senior Years.

Abstractthis paper addresses the need for and the problem of organizing a science curriculum around contextual settings and science stories that serve to involve and motivate students to develop a scientific understanding of the world (with emphasis on physical science). A program of activities placed around contextual settings, science stories and contemporary issues of interest is recommended in an attempt to move toward a slow and secure abolition of the gulf between scientific knowledge and ‘common sense’ beliefs. A conceptual development is described to guide the connection between theory and evidence on a level appropriate for children, from early years to senior years. For senior years it is also important to connect the activity of teaching to a sound theoretical structure. The theoretical structure must illuminate the status of theory in science, establish what counts as evidence, clarify the relationship between experiment and explanation, and make connections to the history of science. This paper concludes with a proposed program of activities in terms of a sequence of theoretical and empirical activities that involve contextual settings, science stories, large context problems, thematic teaching, and popular science literature teaching.

Providing a contextual base and a theoretical structure to guide the teaching of high school physics

The teaching of high school physics should not only be grounded in motivating contextual activities but also connected to a philosophically and historically valid theoretical structure, namely the contexts of inquiry, that guides the organization and the presentation of concepts.

Linking ‘The Book of Nature’ and ‘The Book of Science’: Using Circular Motion as an Exemplar beyond the Textbook

Bacon exhorted the natural philosophers of his day to read and interpret the ‘book of nature’ by clever and cunning experimentation. The increasing scientific activity after Bacon and Galileo, however, quickly produced a second book. This was a book of interpretations of nature, namely the ‘the book of science’. Newton went beyond Bacon and Galileo and developedan ongoing dialogue between these two books, a repeated give and takebetween mathematical construct and physical reality. Unfortunately, thephysics textbook, the ‘book of science’ the students read, does not acquaintthem with this style of reasoning. As an example of high-grade scientificthinking this paper discusses Newtons long struggle with the concepts ofinertia and especially of ‘centrifugal force’. In his quest to understand thedynamics of circular motion Newton clearly progressed through four levelsof conceptualizations, leading to progressively less severe discrepancies, inhis ascent to a full understanding of centripetal acceleration. While it is notpossible or desirable to expect teachers or students to recapitulate high-gradescientific thinking, partial retelling of the intellectual struggle that was involved in establishing important scientific concepts must be seen as important. This kind of pedagogy, however, requires that physics teachers have a good understanding of the history of scientific ideas as well as the findings of cognitive science.

Physics and the Dambusters

The story of an engineer seeing an idea come to fruition against great odds. High-grade scientific research is combined with high adventure. This provides a context that generates challenging problems for physics students.