Potash, an essential raw material of the 18th century, used to be produced from the ashes of plants. Known since antiquity, it was in 1807 that Humphry Davy put an end to the decades-long controversy about its nature as a compound. The technology behind potash production was implemented in Brazil by the Portuguese naturalist Frei Velloso. The…

David Galenson's bifurcation of creative types is well-founded across several strata of the traditional fine arts. According to Galenson, experimental innovators outwardly express their creativity at a later age after long periods of development. I reason that many of the students in undergraduate classrooms are experimental innovators, since…

The phenomenon of industrial melanism (IM) became widely acknowledged as a well-documented example of natural selection largely as a result of H.B.D. Kettlewell's pioneering research on the subject in the early 1950s. It was quickly picked up by American biology textbooks starting in the early 1960s and became ubiquitous throughout the 1970s,…

This paper examines the feasibility of using historical case studies to contextualise the learning of the nature of science and technology in a biology lesson. Through exploring the historical development of vaccine technology, students were expected to understand the complexity of the relationships between technology and science beyond the…

This historical review traces the origins of the Kimball free-cloud model of the chemical bond, otherwise known as the charge-cloud or tangent-sphere model, and the central role it played in attempts to reform the introductory chemical curriculum at both the high school and college levels in the 1960s. It also critically evaluates the limitations…

This paper is about new contents that can be introduced into science education. It is a description of an experience aimed at introducing a complex approach into the final grade of a Brazilian elementary school. The aim is to show the transformation of the conception of space and time from the Middle Ages with the physics of Aristotle to the 20th…

The research objective of this study was to compare the relative effectiveness of history of science (HOS) integrated instruction and curriculum-oriented instruction on sixth grade students' understanding of nature of science (NOS). Accordingly, two classes were assigned to experimental group and other two were assigned to comparison group…

During the past few decades, a wide consensus has been reached in the community of science educators that it is almost unimaginable to conduct a quality science education without including the history and philosophy of science in some form in the science curriculum, and this is especially the case for physics education (Matthews 1994). However, in…

A number of authors have recognized the importance of understanding the nature of science (NOS) for scientific literacy. Different instructional strategies such as decontextualized, hands-on inquiry, and history of science (HOS) activities have been proposed for teaching NOS. This article seeks to understand the contribution of HOS in enhancing…

This paper scrutinizes the contribution of Romulo de Carvalho to the development of the Portuguese science curriculum, arguing that it was critically informed by his lifetime inclination to the humanities. It focuses on a particular historical event: the 1948 chemistry programme for the secondary school "Liceus". The paper briefly…

It is certainly widely appreciated that there is much to be gained in the fertile crosstalk between science and history--whether bringing a historical perspective into the science classroom (Wieder, 2006) or a scientific perspective to the study of history (McElvaine, 2002; Smail, 2008). Perhaps the major impetus for using history in teaching…

For quite some time, many EU and Italian Ministry of Education official documents have warmly suggested the introduction of the history and the philosophy of science in the teaching of science disciplines at school. Accordingly, there is a shared agreement between pedagogists and science historians about the efficacy of this approach towards an…

This is an editorial report on the outcomes of an international conference sponsored by a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) (REESE-1205273) to the School of Education at Boston University and the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University for a conference titled: "How Can the History and Philosophy of…

The growing diversity of Ontario's population is increasing pressure on the education system to ensure that all students receive equal opportunities to excel academically and develop personally. Students are more likely to succeed if their own racial, ethnic, and cultural identity is reflected in the classroom. This observation applies no less to…

In this article, the author discusses why the history of science should be included in the science curriculum in schools. He also presents some opportunities that can come out of using historical contexts, and findings from a study assessing the place of history of science in readily available textbooks.