This paper reviews the current position of the history of education within the existing historiography of science and technology, and argues for the relocation of education from the periphery of the history of science and technology to its centre. It claims that it is essential to study science education in its entirety and complexity if we want…

In the nineteenth century, a new method for teaching anatomy shifted the professor's position from the middle of the lecture amphitheatre to one side of the room. In this spot, the wall was used to display a variety of visual "flat technologies" such as blackboards, oil paintings, wallcharts and light projections, among other visual…

Beginning 60 years ago, Thomas Kuhn has had a significant impact across the academy and on culture more widely. And he had a great impact on science education research, theorising, and pedagogy. For the majority of educators, the second edition (1970) of his "Structure of Scientific Revolutions" (Kuhn, 1970a) articulated the very nature…

In a highly technological society, teachers need to help students grow as technoskeptical citizens who can think deeply about technologies to consider their collateral, unintended, and disproportionate effects on society. This article presents a technoskeptical Inquiry Design Model (IDM) lesson where upper elementary students critically inquire…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to study the popular educational broadcasting of Julius Sumner Miller and its intersections with contemporary science policy and education. Design/methodology/approach: The paper draws on archival research including resources so far unused by historians of science or of broadcasting and audio-visual resources…

This article offers a retrospective synopsis of 70 years of development of a humanistic approach to science education. Instruction using the history of science, for example, provides a rich context for students to learn not only canonical science content on a need-to-know basis, but also content from the other domains of humanistic science…

This project report describes the process of a team of undergraduate researchers (Chemistry and Nursing majors), who analyzed 20th-century medical kits housed at The Columbus Museum (Columbus, GA, USA). Curators and museum personnel were unfamiliar with the contents and needed assistance in identifying the various chemical contents. Items were…

This article considers Australian receptions of C. P. Snow's "The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution" (1959), and of the controversy over the literary critic F. R. Leavis's combative 1962 response to it. Taking a lead from conceptual insights in global histories of science and the history of knowledge, the paper considers the…

"Makerspaces, Innovation and Science Education: How, Why, and What For?" is an attempt to interrogate questions about the history, philosophy, and sociology of science and schooling that have long troubled science educators. In crafting the book, the author, Michael Tan, uses the microcosm of makerspaces to move back and forth to…

The Physics Teacher has published over the years many inspiring papers with an historical slant and we agree with Thomas B. Greenslade, who recently wrote that teaching physics is about "integrating physics with human culture.… if we are going to leave a lasting impact on our students, we should do more than teach them pure physics."…

Although formulating a broadly accepted definition of scientific literacy may be challenging, it is widely recognized that Nature of Science (NOS) is an essential component of it. There are different ways to define NOS. In some cases, NOS can be conceptualized through a number of general NOS aspects like for instance science's empirical basis or…

This paper presents an analysis of three teachers' "ordinary" class sessions integrating historical elements of science in their teaching: one a teacher of physics and chemistry and two teachers of biology and geology. It explores what prompts these teachers to integrate the history of science into their lessons, the functions they…

Joseph Priestley, discoverer of oxygen, lived in Nantwich, Cheshire, UK, from 1758 to 1761. In 2019, an exhibition featuring his life and achievements, and also celebrating the International Year of the Periodic Table, was developed by the Nantwich Museum. The historical research of Priestley's life, development of the exhibition, and rationale…

In this study, teaching materials related to the history of science (HOS) related to the Boyle-Hobbes debate were developed through the analytical lens of framing theory. Further, this study developed the teaching materials for learning the social-institutional aspects of the reconceptualized family resemblance approach (FRA) to the nature of…

Should we, and how do we, develop in our students a sense of period -- or a series of senses of period -- in a thematic study spanning a thousand years? This was the problem faced by Matthew Fearns-Davies in preparing for the GCSE 'Health and the People' paper. He shows in this article the ways in which he considered the problem of chronological…