For nearly a decade we have taught the history and philosophy of science as part of courses aimed at the professional development of physics teachers. The focus of the history of science instruction is on the stages in the development of the concepts and theories of physics. For this instruction, we designed activities to help the teachers…

At the Deutsches Museum in München, we established in the department of education during more than 35 years a series of historical experiments and constructed apparatus for pedagogic purposes. We use these reproductions mainly for continuing teacher education within our department. At the exhibitions of the Deutsches Museum there exist many…

This historical study identifies catalysts for transformative learning in the lives of three scientist-environmentalists important to the 20th-century environmental movement: Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, and David Suzuki. Following a brief review of theoretical perspectives on transformative learning, the article argues that transformative…

Historical excurse was suggested as a beneficial form of using the history and philosophy of science in the modules of learning materials developed within the History and Philosophy in Science Teaching project. The paper briefly describes the theoretical framework of the produced modules, addressing ontological and epistemological aspects of…

The School of Education and the Department of Physics at Boston University offer a sequence of 10 two-credit professional development courses through the Improving the Teaching of Physics (ITOP) project. The ITOP courses combine physics content, readings from the physics education research (PER) literature, and the conceptual history of physics…

With the rise of the so-called military-entertainment complex, critical scholars note with alarm the integration of the political economies of entertainment companies and the military, in particular its potential influence on millions of young people who consume its concomitant films, toys and especially video games. Seen from a broad perspective,…

The philosophy of biology today is one of the most exciting areas of philosophy. It looks critically across the life sciences, teasing out conceptual issues and difficulties bringing to bear the tools of philosophical analysis to achieve clarification and understanding. This essay surveys work in all of the major directions of research:…

Nanotechnology is viewed by those in favor of its development in two different ways, and the divide is not recent. This article describes the origins of the differing visions of nanotechnology and examines their broader impacts. The typical history of the field tells nothing about these differing visions, which perhaps misleads. At least two…

To celebrate the work of the Association for Science Education (ASE), the Science Masters' Association (SMA) and the Association of Women Science Teachers (AWST) in Yorkshire, the Region Committee invited Edgar Jenkins to write a celebratory history, entitled "75 years and More in Yorkshire". The booklet, locating that work in its wider…

In its policy rationale for evidence-based practice in psychology (EBPP), the APA Presidential Task Force on Evidence-Based Practice (see record 2006-05893-001) claims to have constituted itself with "scientists and practitioners from a wide range of perspectives and traditions, reflecting the diverse perspectives within the field" (p. 273). We…

This article deals with a brief history of Fibonacci's life and career. It includes Fibonacci's major mathematical discoveries to establish that he was undoubtedly one of the most brilliant mathematicians of the Medieval Period. Special attention is given to the Fibonacci numbers, the golden number and the Lucas numbers and their fundamental…

There is an emerging trend of democratizing science and schooling within science education that can be characterized as citizen science. We explore the roots of this movement and some current projects to underscore the meaning of citizen science in science and schooling. We show that citizen science, as it is currently conceptualized, does not go…

The basic premise of this paper is the fact that science has become a major industry: the knowledge industry. The paper throws some light on the reasons for the transformation of science from a limited, constrained and marginal craft into a major industry. It, then, presents a productivist industrial model of knowledge production, which shows its…

An examination of the professional lives of women science teachers presents an opportunity to consider ways in which women became "knowledge purveyors" and to reflect on the extent to which they challenged contemporary boundaries about what science women should know. An analysis of the life of a woman science teacher who was also a…

This essay describes how in the 1890s the Committee of Ten arrived at their recommendations about the organization of the high school biological sciences and seeks to correct the frequently held, but erroneous view that the Committee of Ten was the initiator of the Biology-Chemistry-Physics order of teaching sciences prevalent in high schools…