In addition to meeting National Science Education Standards (NSES) related to the history and nature of science (NOS), reading or hearing about real scientists helps students connect with science emotionally. The authors have even noticed increased student interest in science concepts during history of science discussions. Toward these efforts,…

Many have argued that the inclusion of the history of science in science teaching might promote an understanding of the nature of science as well as the attitudes toward science. However, its inclusion in science teaching may not have the desired effect due to the limited coverage it receives in textbooks and the limited time available for…

The theory of s, p, d and f dealing with the line spectra of the alkali metals during the period 1881 based on analogies with the harmonic ratios of sound is described. Friedrich Hund followed Bohr's practice of labelling the various shells and subshells by replacing the secondary quantum number with the series notations (s, p, d, and f), which…

In this paper, I explore the need for particular types of interdisciplinarity, which I refer to as technical heteroglossia, in the face of neoliberal political and economic disenfranchisement. I examine the case of a group of medics (EMTs, nurses, and lay medical practitioners) known as street medics and their efforts to provide a working set of…

In this article, the educative value of scientific biographies will be explored, especially for non-science major college students. During the "Scientist's life and thought" course, 66 college students read nine scientific biographies including five biologists, covering the canonical scientific achievements in Western scientific history.…

In this "Primary Science" interview, science educators Alan Peacock and Mick Dunne reflect on their own experiences of what science was like in England before a National Curriculum was introduced. Among the topics covered are: earliest memories of science in school, teaching science before 1988 (pre-science curriculum for primary…

In 2012, the United Nations General Assembly declared 2014 the International Year of Crystallography. Throughout the year 2014 and beyond, all the crystallographic associations and societies active all over the world are organizing events to attract the wider public toward crystallography and the numerous topics to which it is deeply interlinked.…

This article provides for a concise history of nonlinearity from the context of the changing assumptions in science throughout the turn of the twentieth century. Concerned with the development of an ethics of technology in higher education, it establishes a background for ongoing research on quantitative methods in the social sciences. The history…

Susan E. Carey, winner of the 2009 Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions, is cited for groundbreaking studies of the nature of concepts and conceptual change. Her research deepens understanding of the development of concepts, and of the belief systems in which they are embedded, over human childhood, over the history of science, and…

Two students, meeting together with a teacher, redid historical experiments. Unlike conventional instruction where science topics and practices often fragment, they experienced interrelatedness among phenomena, participants' actions, and history. This study narrates actions that fostered an interrelated view. One action involved opening up…

Kuhn (1970) considered textbooks to be good "pedagogical vehicles" for the perpetuation of "normal science". Collins (2000) has pointed out a fundamental contradiction with respect to what science could achieve (create new knowledge) and how we teach science (authoritarian). Despite the reform efforts, students still have naive views about the…

As a discipline, chemistry enjoys a unique position. While many academic areas prepared "cooperative examinations" in the 1930s, only chemistry maintained the activity within what has become the ACS Examinations Institute. As a result, the long-term existence of community-built, norm-referenced, standardized exams provides a historical…

The movement towards the use of the history of science and problem-based approaches in teaching serves as the impetus for this paper. This treatise aims to present and examine episodes in the lives of prominent scientists that can be used as resources by teachers in relation to enhancing students' interest in learning, fostering skills about…

Evolution was a difficult topic to tackle when writing books for the young in the wake of the controversies over Darwin's "Origin of Species." Authors who wrote about evolution for the young experimented with different ways of making the complex concepts of evolutionary theory accessible and less controversial. Many authors depicted presented…

When the "Journal of Biological Education" was first published in 1967, biology was still very much the Cinderella of the three school sciences in many countries. Most selective secondary school biology courses readily betrayed their origins as an unconvincing coalition of botany and zoology. In the non-selective secondary modern…