The term "science practice" has drawn increasing attention in the current science education literature. In this study, the methodology of content analysis was adopted to examine the presentation of science practice in 20 historical cases compiled in a popular science book. Three aspects and eight categories of science practice constitute…

Herbaria, collections of preserved plant specimens, have existed for 500 years as repositories of information about plants. Many of these collections are now being digitized, making them available to a much broader audience including students and teachers. Specimens can be used in a variety of different contexts in teaching biology, including from…

Written as a letter to Galileo, an education graduate student narrates from course experiences that deepened her understandings of Galileo and natural and intellectual properties underlying his works. Having taken the Galileo-themed course with Elizabeth Cavicchi at MIT's Edgerton Center in three prior terms, on taking it a fourth time, this…

We describe an educational activity that can be completed with mobile media devices in order to understand the working principle of a pair of tuning forks, from the Historical Collection of Physics Instruments of the University of Palermo, and how they were used to explain acoustic interference and beats with the Lissajous optical method. This…

Many physics learners take the specific mathematical representations they are using as part of their learning and doing physics for granted. The paper addresses this problem by highlighting two goals. The first is to show how a historical investigation from history of science can be transformed into a concrete lesson plan in physics, in a physics…

We propose explicit and implicit approaches for the teaching of acid-base chemistry based on research into the history and nature of science (NoS). To support these instructional proposals, we identify four rationales for students to understand acid-base processes: daily life, socio-scientific, curriculum, and history of science. The extensive…

The magic flask, which is a kind of black box activity, builds an environment for science teachers to discuss nature of science in a formal or/and informal learning environment in the context of the history of science through an explicit-reflective approach. In the activity, the nature of science (NOS) aspects are explicitly addressed and…

The purpose of this study is to develop a history of science activity which can be used to improve middle school students' nature of science views. The activity was designed and implemented based on an explicit-reflective approach within the context of the circulatory system. The activity was designed for grade 6 students and implemented during…

This article presents a qualitative study, descriptive-interpretive in profile, of the effectiveness in learning about the nature of science (NOS) of an activity relating to the historical controversy between Pasteur and Liebig on fermentation. The activity was implemented during a course for pre-service secondary science teachers (PSSTs)…

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…

As society becomes more technological, the need for scientific literacy grows . Part of scientific literacy is understanding the nature of science, which can be revealed, in part, by learning the historical context of current science concepts. History of science can be taught using scientific inquiry, scientific argumentation, and authentic…

Seeking a historical-philosophical approach to science teaching, narrative texts have been used as pedagogical tools to improve the learning experience of students. A review of the literature of different types of narrative texts and their different rates of effectiveness in science education is presented. This study was developed using the…

Hasok Chang ("Sci Educ" 20:317-341, 2011) shows how the recovery of past experimental knowledge, the physical replication of historical experiments, and the extension of recovered knowledge can increase scientific understanding. These activities can also play an important role in both science and history and philosophy of science…

This paper describes a series of activities in which students investigate and use the Ptolemaic, Copernican, and Tychonic models of planetary motion. The activities guide students through using open source software to discover important observational facts, learn the necessary vocabulary, understand the fundamental properties of different…

In this article, Renee Clary and James Wandersee describe the beginnings of "Classification," which lies at the very heart of science and depends upon pattern recognition. Clary and Wandersee approach patterns by first telling the story of the "Linnaean classification system," introduced by Carl Linnacus (1707-1778), who is…