Using history of mathematics for studying concepts, methods, problems and other internal features of the discipline may give rise to a certain tension between descriptive adequacy and educational demands. Other than historians, educators are concerned with mathematics as a "normatively defined" discipline. Teaching cannot but be based on a…

Scientists' science differs remarkably from school science. In order to be taught to students, science is recontextualized from scientific research communities to science classrooms. This paper examines scientific discourse in scientific research communities, and discusses its transformation from an internally-persuasive and authoritative…

Christina Hoff Sommers and Sally Satel, a philosopher and a psychiatrist, now both policy analysts at the American Enterprise Institute, write in their recent book "One Nation Under Therapy: How the Helping Culture Is Eroding Self-Reliance" that empirically unsupported psychological theories ultimately descended from the cultural upheavals of the…

One of the two most extensive instrument collections in the Netherlands during the second half of the eighteenth century--rivaling the much better known collection at the University of Leiden--belonged to an orphanage in The Hague that was specially established to mold hand-picked orphans into productive citizens. (The other was housed at the…

Science education controversies typically prove more intractable than those in scientific research because they involve a wider range of considerations (e.g., epistemic, social, ethical, political, and religious). How can educators acknowledge central issues in a controversy (such as evolution)? How can such problems be addressed in a way that is…

In view of the complex problems of this age, the question of the socio-ethical dimension of science acquires particular importance. We approach this matter from a philosophical and sociological standpoint, looking at such focal concerns as the motivation, purposes and methods of scientific activity, the ambivalence of scientific research and the…

This paper examines the relation between situated cognition theory in science education, and feminist standpoint theory in philosophy of science. It shows that situated cognition is an idea borrowed from a long since discredited philosophy of science. It argues that feminist standpoint theory ought not be indulged as it is a failed challenge to…

There has been a move in recent years towards the greater inclusion of social and ethical issues within science courses. This paper examines a new context-based course for 16-18 year-olds (Salters-Nuffield Advanced Biology) who are studying biology in England and Wales. The course is taught through contexts and has an emphasis on social issues and…

Debates concerning how the issue of human life's origins should be handled within the confines of American public schools still continue. In order to mitigate the impact that evolution has on students, some school boards and state legislatures have recommended that stickers voicing a disclaimer about evolution be placed in biology textbooks. Even…

The work presented here represents a preliminary effort undertaken to address the role of teachers in supporting students' learning and decision-making about socioscientific issues (SSI) by characterizing preservice elementary teachers' critique and adaptation of SSI-based science curriculum materials and identifying factors that serve to mediate…