8th International Conference for the History of Science in Science Education

1. Learning science and the nature of science through historical narratives
Agustín Adúriz-Bravo
Grupo de Epistemología, Historia y Didáctica de las Ciencias Naturales (GEHyD), Centro de Formación e Investigación en Enseñanza de las Ciencias (CeFIEC), Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales (FCEyN), Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA). CeFIEC, Planta Baja, Pabellón 2, Ciudad Universitaria. Avenida Intendente Güiraldes 2160, (C1428EGA) Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina.

In this presentation, I will discuss the use of the history of science –taking narrative both as a vehicle and as a cognitive-linguistic mode for historical content– in teaching science and the nature of science. I am interested in the design, application and evaluation of short stories around what I call ‘histories of science’, in order to discuss with prospective and in-service science teachers for all the educational levels some powerful strategies of current didactics of science (i.e., science education as a discipline). Historical narratives infused in case-studies allow the implementation of various ‘epitomic’ constructivist approaches such as: problem-solving, cognitive-linguistic abilities (in particular, argumentation), models and analogies, and reflection on the nature of science.


2. Evaluating Knowledge of the Nature of (Whole) Science
Douglas Allchin
University of Minnesota, USA

In an era of accountability in education, how indeed do we assess student understanding of nature of science (NOS)?  I profile an alternative to VNOS and similar assessment instruments that are based on itemized declarative lists of NOS elements.  Instead, our aim is to assess skills in analytical and critical thinking, fundamental to scientific literacy.  One prototype probes how a student analyzes complex (multi-dimensional) case studies.  This form of assessment invites NOS instruction based on case studies designed as samples of 'whole science'.


3. History of Science as a tool for teaching scientific methodology: Experiences from school-teaching and teacher-training.
Michael Barth
Studiendirektor Gymnasium Sarstedt and Studienseminar Gymnasien Hildesheim

In Germany, curricula have considerably changed during the last decade, noticeable for school-teaching, much less for university-teaching. As for schools, this is an outcome of PISA also, aiming to shift focus from scientific contents to scientific methods (though this is a woodcut-like description anyway). Curricula in Germany are not German wide ones, but (because of the federal political system) responsibilities of the „Länder“ (similar to „counties“). Nevertheless, there is agreement, that scientific contents („inhaltsbezogene Kompetenzen“) need to be backed thoroughly by teaching scientific methodology in a much wider range as before. This different kind of aims, called „prozessbezogene Kompetenzen“ in Germany, to be found in all actual scientific German curricula, cannot be easily translated properly: Not only scientific methodology is included, but communication-capability, assessment of scientific topics in general, awareness of science of science etc. etc., all in all maybe best, but not sufficiently characterized emblematic as „Scientific Literacy“. During almost the last 25 years I used history of science to teach just this „Prozessbezogene Kompetenzen“ (though clearly the name was not been invented then), finding this approach extremely helpful for my then quite advanced aims. My paper will show and discuss examples and experiences from my teaching under this focus, published an unpublished ones.
During almost the last 20 years, I tried to convince students, future teachers, teacher-trainees, teachers on the job via lectures, talks, seminars, workshops, vocational training to use history of science, but with only quite limited outcome, at least in comparison with my own desires. My paper will propose an analysis of this almost-failure, identifying obstacles and providing a basis for discussion, probably linked to national curricula and teaching-styles.


4. Arrhenius and Armstrong: How active opponents in the history of chemistry became major contributors to modern electrolyte chemistry
Kevin de Berg
Avolande College, Australia

Abstract: In the late 19th and early 20th centuries Svante Arrhenius and Henry Armstrong understood the dissolution process of salts in water quite differently. Arrhenius saw the dissolution process as one whereby the salt partially dissociated into its ions and Armstrong saw the dissolution process as one whereby the salt associated itself with water. History is somewhat kinder to Arrhenius than it is to Armstrong in that Arrhenius won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1903 for his electrolytic dissociation theory whereas Armstrong was considered somewhat of a ‘hot air balloon’ who made it his business to oppose every new thought in chemistry. In the 1920’s Arrhenius’ view of partial dissociation was replaced by a view of total dissociation for strong electrolytes with activity and osmotic coefficients being used to account for non-ideal solution behaviour. However, recent research has shown that strong 1:1 electrolytes are best understood by using Arrhenius’ original idea of partial dissociation rather than total dissociation and Armstrong’s idea of hydration. This strange confluence of factors has important implications for chemical epistemology and its role in chemistry education.


5. History and Philosophy of Biology and Learning: The experience on Epistemology of Biology Research Group
Ana Maria de Andrade Caldeira
Faculty of Science, State University of Sao Paulo

The aim of current report is to depict the researches which have been develop in History and Philosophy and its introduction in the teaching develop by the research group in history and philosophy. It is Know that the literature concerning the introduction of such studies in teaching field is full of quotations related to Historical and Philosophical potentialities, towards to foster a better understanding about the nature of science.
Despite of those necessities, that area has been absent of curriculum and there also have been difficulties to access didactical books of Biology History. Aware of such necessities, in 2004 it has been inserted two disciplines in the curriculum of graduation in Science Biology from UNESP- Bauru. History and Philosophy of Biology and Training Teachers in History and Philosophy of Biology both started in 2008.
Those initiatives triggered off demands which have enable the establishment of a research and study group among the graduating and pos-graduating students who have been interested in that theme. In this way, it has been started the activities of the research group for Epistemology of Biology whose aim is to promote research about the epistemology aspects from Biological knowledge and also its introduction in teaching of Biology. Its members have acted both as researches and subject of research as well.
Thus, from discussions generated by group, the graduating students have elaborated and have develop research project while the pos- graduation and professors have not only advised the group discussions but also they have assessed how the scientific concepts have occurred as well their formation as graduating students researcher.


6. Becoming Galileo in the Classroom
Elizabeth Cavicchi
Edgerton Center, MIT, Cambridge MA 02139

Galileo’s contributions to science are so familiar as to be taken for granted and stated as fact, which obscures the highly creative and original exploratory process by which he discovered them.  The wonder Galileo experienced comes alive for undergraduates I teach, who find themselves becoming Galileo by means of their own exploratory acts.  This paper narrates classroom journeys as students watch the moon, experiment with motion and respond to Galileo’s story.  The experiences discussed here derive from several instances of a laboratory course that I taught at one public and one private institution. Some students had studied science previously; many had not. I teach using critical exploration, the research pedagogy developed by Eleanor Duckworth, having historical origins in the clinical interviewing of Jean Piaget and Bärbel Inhelder and the Elementary Science Study of the 1960s.  During critical explorations, students explore materials, following and developing their own questions responsively with each other and the teacher.  By posing provocative experiences and questions, the teacher supports students’ investigations while researching the paths of their emergent understandings.  Through critical explorations in the context of Galileo, the students learned to observe carefully, trust their observations, and notice things they had never noticed before. Students’ curiosity to ‘see’ pendulum motion evoked both untimed and timed experiments, involving many improvisations to their apparatus.  Delight arose on viewing the moon with unaided eyes – and through two lenses which students held in their hands to produce a telescopic effect.  Pondering together science, faith and morality brought about respect for complex tensions faced by Galileo and his Jesuit peers.  Personal investment in these experiences moved class participants to question assumptions each had never critically evaluated.  Becoming Galileo in today’s classroom, we found the ordinary world no less intriguing and unsettling to explore, as for the protagonists in Galileo’s historic Dialogue. 


7. Heuristic diagrams as a tool in history  of science teaching
José A. Chamizo
Facultad de Química, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México 04510 D.F.

The Vee heuristic developed years ago by Gowin (Novak, 1984) is an attempt to help students (or teachers, or researchers) to understand their research within a constructivist framework (Doran, 2002). This instrument has been widely used for understanding knowledge and facilitate answer’s argumentation  however the left side became difficult because it is not clear for all the users (and also the experts) the relationship among theories, models, laws and philosophies (Giere, 1999). Here a modification was introduced following Toulmin’s philosophical approach (Chamizo, 2007). The English philosopher S. Toulmin (1972) defines a concept through the historical-social interaction: In order to do proper justice to the ‘complexity’ of scientific concepts, we must distinguish three aspects, in the use of those concepts: namely (i) the language, (ii) the representation techniques, and (iii) the application procedures of science. The first two aspects or elements cover the ‘symbolic’ aspects of scientific explanation –i.e. the scientific activity that we call ‘explaining’ –while the third covers the recognition of situations to which those symbolic activities are appropriate.
Toulmin´s analysis is concerning the growth or evolution of concepts and their collective use by disciplines and indirectly the growth of scientific knowledge. For him the continuity of science rests in the problems by which successive generations of scientist (from any specific discipline) were faced… and problems like the Vee heuristic considers, starts with questions. In the heuristic diagram, the left side originally related with philosophies, theories, models, laws or regularities agrees with Toulmin’s concepts (application procedures, language and  models as representation techniques). The syllabuses in our university consider History and Philosophy of Chemistry as an specific subject, at graduate and master degree level. In those courses I used this tool recovering  a selected number of early Nobel lectures in Chemistry. The result:  “Learning chemistry and about chemistry through history”.
References
Chamizo J.A. e Izquierdo M. (2008) “Avaliacao das Competencias de Pensamento Científico” Quimica nova na escola, 27, 4-9.
Doran R., Chan F., Tamir P. and Lenhardt C.  (2002), Science Educators’s Guide to Laboratory Assessment, NSTA Press, Arlington.
Giere R.N. (1999) Science without laws, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press.
Novak J.D. and Gowin D.R. (1984), Learning how to learn, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Toulmin S. (1972), Human Understanding, Princeton, Princeton University Press.


8. The history of science and its contribution to the new education of sciences: What has to change in the formation of the teachers?
Mario Quintanilla Gatica
Pontifical Catholic University of Chile

It is necessary and essential that the educational practices of scientific education make possible to the students to understand the doubtless historical character of science, that is to say, the idea that the knowledge is alive, that the science is dynamic and change progressively; that the concepts, scientific models and theories finish being replaced by others, and that the ideological marks that foundations the knowledge at every time also undergo a process of natural conceptual or paradigmatic change, systematic, continuous and irreversible, that can be understood in the light of certain theoretical principles and be characterized with specific methodological criteria. In order to give a rational answer, reasonable and coherent in this sense, the hypothesis that sustenance, is that the historical origin considers, controversial and controversial of the main theories of science, is to the process of creation and development of the main concepts and scientific methodologies, like fruit of a collective work and a human construction, in which there are intrigues, tension and distensions; and the complexity of the relations is analyzed therefore science - technology - society - communication (STSC) throughout human history, with the implications of transformation of the social processes and coexistence that it has generated for the scientific community generally and for the community of the chemicals in particular. In this conference I will raise previously on the base of the anticipated epistemological directives, a discussion around what history of science to teach, why to teach history of chemistry and how to do it. In the same way I will advance a methodological proposal of how incorporating the history of chemistry in the early formation of educational and scientific, sharing some experiences derived from my group of research: Two specific doctoral theses in this scope and which they in good condition tie the history of chemistry with the promotion of competitions of scientific thought and with the epistemological conceptual change of chemistry teachers.


9. Pictures of an exhibition
Peter Heering
Carl-von-Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, Germany

In October 2009, a temporal exhibition entitled “Ex oriente lux? Wege zur neuzeitlichen Wissenschaft“ (Ex oriente lux? Paths to modern science) opened in a local museum in Oldenburg. This exhibition focused on the production and communication of scientific and medical knowledge from the Mesopotamian an Babylonian period until the European Enlightenment. On show were on 850 m² some 350 exhibits, mainly originals from more than 80 institutions.
A major idea of the exhibition was to make visible the importance of the Islamic culture which took over achievements from ancient cultures and developed them further. At the same time the Islamic culture formed a basis for the development of science and medicine in central Europe in the Renaissance, yet, contrary to the traditional Western historiography, the role of the Islamic cultures was not limited to preserving the results of ancient philosophers. On the contrary, researchers developed new knowledge as well as new ways of producing knowledge, both formed part of the basis for the development in Europe.
In my presentation, I am going to discuss the concept of this exhibition and its realization. In the second part of my contribution, some result from an evaluation of visitors are going to be presented.


10. Portrayal of the history of the photoelectric effect in laboratory instructions
Stephen Klassen; Mansoor Niaz; Don Metz; Barbara McMillan; Sarah Dietrich
University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Canada

Little work appears in the literature on the pedagogical aspects of the photoelectric effect as used in the undergraduate student laboratory. The current study analyses 38 laboratory instructions for the photoelectric effect based on history and philosophy of science criteria that we developed for evaluating introductory physics textbook presentations of the photoelectric effect. The results show that laboratory instructions do not pay sufficient attention to the relevant background for the photoelectric effect, with none of the instructions achieving a score of excellent, only 5% as satisfactory, and 7% as mentioning the various aspects contained in our criteria. These results for laboratory instructions are significantly less favorable than those achieved by physics textbooks in our previous study. We recommend that a systematic approach be developed in physics education research to address various criteria for writing effective laboratory instructions.


11. Story telling as a strategy for understanding concepts of electricity and electromagnetism
Panagiotis Kokkotas
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece

Research has shown that incorporation of History of Science into science instruction is effective in leading students to a better understanding of the science concepts and the nature of science as well. Another important factor, as has been pointed out by numerous educators, is that the desirability of the appropriate use of the historical approach should be taken for granted. The humanizing and clarifying influence of History of Science brings the science to life and enables the student to construct relationships that would have been impossible in the traditional decontextualized manner in which science has been taught. Furthermore, teachers know that telling a story in science classrooms (at any level) is a powerful tool for engaging students; which means that telling a coherent story may be the best way for learning, remembering and re-telling of ideas of the science.


12. A Descriptive Typology of the Use of History of Science in Science Instruction: What Research Says about What Works
William F. McComas
College of Education and Health Professions, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Arkansas, PEAH 127 Fayetteville, AR   72701

For more than fifty years, scholars both within and outside the science education community have advocated the use of the history of science to provide a variety of positive outcomes related to the teaching of science.  This presentation contains both new insights into the use of the history of science coupled with a meta-analytic review of the literature on effectiveness. The typological considerations provide commentary on the approaches to the use of history of science that have been attempted and imply new methods for the integration of science history and science instruction.  The reports of effectiveness shed light on which methods have demonstrated some success and which new ones might prove useful in the future. 


13. The Snowflake Men: Learning about Snow and the History of Snow Crystal Classification
Barbara A. McMillan
University of Manitoba

In Manitoba, Canada, a part of the world with temperatures below the freezing point and a terrain that is often snow-covered for six months, the learning outcomes for science generally ignore a study of snow. Children in the first four years of formal schooling learn that snow is a form of cold weather precipitation and one example of a solid state of water in the environment. In the middle years, 11 to 14 year old students learn to relate cloud formation to precipitation and the global water cycle. They also learn about weather forecasting, the factors that influence weather conditions, and the probability of spring flooding based upon measurements of snow pack and soil conditions. In high school, Grade 10 students study weather dynamics, evidence of climate change, and the formation and dynamics of severe weather phenomena. Blizzards are listed as one example of a severe weather phenomenon that a teacher could address. Fortunately for teachers and those with an interest in teaching science with an awareness of its history, there are six individuals who developed a fascination with the formation and morphology of snow crystals whose published studies could help students become equally awestruck and knowledgeable. This paper describes the development, implementation, and assessment of a resource that familiarizes students with the snow crystal research conducted by Rene Descartes, William Scoresby, Wilson Bentley, Ukichiro Nakaya, Edward Lachapelle, and Kenneth Libbrecht.


14. History of science and in-service teacher training: The use of Experiments and Scientific Instruments
Álvaro García Martínez
Grupo de Investigación em Educación en Ciencias Experimentales, GREECE, Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Calda, Colombia

Nowadays, the History of Sciences has been approaching to the scholar context; there are many researches that are trying to improve the teaching of sciences based on these. However, its application involves an adequate training of teachers but in-service teachers in our context show a weak training related to the teaching of their subject because of they are not really cognizant about the profession they are practicing. So, we have remarked that to offer theory courses on science education is not a successful matter because teachers are not aware that they are learning a helpful knowledge. Moreover, the courses are commonly developed in universities or specialized centers but so far from their daily context. We have developed some processes based on historic cases of the natural sciences, where teachers become in learners and ask themselves about the formation of their discipline, trying to build scholar scientific activities through the applications of experiments and scientific instruments which play a main role on the science construction. The pneumatic trough, the calorimeter of ice, the balance and some experiments practiced during the eighteen century as the Magnesia Alba of Joseph Black have been used in order to create a work environment in community of professionals; so that  teachers try to understand each one of the experiments and instruments with the purpose to build useful activities that later will be carried out to their classrooms  to teach concepts like  chemical change and specific heat and practicing a rigorous qualitative research on education.  As a result of these works, communities of professional development for in-service higher teachers have been constituted to broach historic problems from the scientific experiments and instruments in order to create scholar scientific activities that allow getting a better learning of their students.


15. History, philosophy, teaching and teacher training: mind the gaps
André Ferrer P. Martins
Departamento de Educação, UFRN, Brazil

The History and Philosophy of Science clearly achieved a role of prominence in the field of Science Teaching. However, it is also a consensus that there are difficulties in the use of historical and philosophical elements in teaching and teacher training, issues involving both the production of didactic material, as related to methodological aspects. This work tackles this theme and it is divided into two parts. Firstly, based on an empirical research conducted with teachers and future physics teachers, we discuss the nature of the actual difficulties faced during the use of History and Philosophy of Science for didactic purposes. Second, we argue that one possible way to overcome such problems is to work with historical "episodes" that provide relevant discussions about the nature of science. We report the dynamics of a course addressed to high school teachers of public schools at Natal (Rio Grande do Norte - Brazil) that discussed two episodes in the history of mechanics. We favored an approach in which the philosophy of science was used for the purpose of "illuminate" the historical debate and allow a discussion around the theme of "nature of science." Our results reveal a complex scenario of problems to work with the History and Philosophy of Science with teachers in training, and that possible changes in concepts of the subjects about the nature of scientific development are more likely from an analysis of explicit epistemological implications in historical "episodes".


16. Lost knowledge: sundials, the duration of days and nights, the spherical Earth and geocentric astronomy
Roberto de Andrade Martins
Group of History and Theory of Science, State University of Campinas, Brazil

From Antiquity to the Renaissance, astronomers as well as the general public were acquainted with some relevant knowledge that is not part of the usual scientific education, nowadays. One specific instance is knowledge that was associated with the geocentric world view, including: the apparent motion of the Sun during the year, the varying duration of days and nights in different seasons and in different geographical places, its relation to the spherical form of the Earth, the building and use of sundials. As geocentric astronomy was replaced by heliocentric astronomy and mechanical clocks became ordinary devices, some of this information was stripped off textbooks, being kept only by specialists. There was, however, a significant loss of astronomical and geographical knowledge in this transition. Indeed, the study of the duration of days and nights and sundials provided a close contact of students with some direct and observable consequences of the form of the Earth and the relative motion of the Sun and the Earth. In current teaching concerning the motion of the Earth around the Sun and the spherical form of the Earth are seldom related to any directly observable consequences. Bringing back this content to science teaching can have several relevant educational consequences. We can show how advanced was everyday science in Antiquity and in the Middle Ages, thereby helping students to overcome the common idea that current knowledge is always better than the old one; it is possible to explain to the students how useful was the geocentric worldview, although we do not accept it anymore as a correct theory; we can also demonstrate how to deal with very complex quantitative issues using a very simple, geometrical approach, that can be easily learned and that can be used in predicting the duration of days and nights and in the construction of sundials.


17. Science and Worldviews in the Classroom: Joseph Priestley and Photosynthesis
Michael R. Matthews
School of Education, University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052, Australia

This paper elaborates on the life and publications of Joseph Priestley, the eighteenth-century polymath.  The paper outlines his particular place in the European Enlightenment; it stresses the importance of philosophy and worldview in his scientific work on pneumatic chemistry, the composition of air, and his discovery of the process of photosynthesis (or the ‘restoration of air’ as it was called at the time); finally the paper indicates ways in which Priestley’s work on photosynthesis can be utilised in the school classroom to advance the understanding of scientific subject matter, to promote an understanding of the nature of scientific procedure and methodology, and finally to evaluate some basic tenets of the European Enlightenment that Priestley so passionately advocated. 


18. A Story Interrupted: Integrating History and Philosophy of Science in Everyday Instruction
Don Metz
University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Twenty years ago Ian Winchester (1989) argued that “An education which fails to show the creativity necessary to frame scientific concepts is surely an inadequate education and almost certainly a misleading one”.  Many historians, philosophers of science, and educators have advocated incorporating the history and philosophy of science within the larger framework of science teaching to infuse such creativity.  If this is the case then attention needs to be focussed on implementation strategies for classroom teachers.  One such strategy suggested is the use of historical science stories (Metz et. al, 2007).  However, historical stories alone may not be the answer.  The students in Tobias’ study (1990) suggest stories from the history of science need be more than a form of relief from the standard lecture and they looked for materials that they could creatively engage them with the story.  Matthews (1994) also reminds us that the history of science can suggest questions and experiments that promote appropriate conceptual change in students.“Knowledge of the slow and difficult path traversed in the historical development of particular sciences can assist teachers planning the organization of a program, the choice of experiments and activities, and their responses to classroom questions and puzzles”.Consequently, in this paper, I will present the interrupted story as a useful implementation strategy for teachers interested in using historical narratives in combination with hands-on, minds-on learning.  In such a strategy the story is used to direct actions of the student and invites prediction and inference, innovation, experimental design, and data analysis.  Original student ideas and explorations are compared and contrasted with original historical descriptions of apparatus and procedure.  At the same time, well placed questions direct students towards nature of science outcomes.  Contrary to the typical textbook approach, students continually generate their own ideas, design and write experimental procedure as they alternate between the narratives and their investigations.  As they interact with the narrative throughout the investigation students repeatedly address nature of science questions that arise naturally from the narrative. 


19. Using a history of biology’ episode in education: Lazzaro Spallanzani and his experimental studies with living beings
Maria Elice Brzezinski Prestes
Departamento de Genética e Biologia Evolutiva do Instituto de Biociências da USP

Among the benefits of introducing History of Science in science teaching is the promotion of scientific method. In the case of biology teaching, it provides better understanding of modes of observation and experimental practices. One strategy to help high school students to understand experimental method procedures is working with its historical construction. In the Eighteenth Century, scholars were motivated to trace the experimental method around what they called “art of observation”. In this paper, we will present, as a case study, an investigation about the reproduction of amphibians executed by the Italian naturalist Lazzaro Spallanzani (1729-1799).  It will be described one of his famous experiments, in which he prevent the fertilization, dressing the male frog with a small taffeta short, in order to find favorable evidences to the necessity of true contact between eggs and the seminal liquid. The case will be based on practical suggestion of how to use it in classroom, following some steps of Douglas Allchin’ teaching history and nature of science “formula”. It will begin with the selection of the scientific concepts to be worked with (“external fertilization” and “fecundation”, stressing the role of male and female gametes). Then it will be offered information about the problem Spallanzani was trying to solve with his experimental investigation (giving cultural and scientific context, scientific bibliographical sources, biographical information). Afterwards the historical information will be placed as a problem for students develop their own thinking skills. The activity will be object of metacognitive analisys in order to shed light on the nature of science aspects related to this case study.  At the end will be proposed a formative evaluation strategy.

20. School, workshop and laboratory: the ideal of the Industrial School of Barcelona (1904)
Antoni Roca-Rosell
Polytechnic University of Catalonia

In 1900, engineering education was an important subject of discussion over the world. In France, the system of “grandes écoles” was in crisis. In Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and the Low Countries there were successful experiences. The German Technische Hochschullen (Berlin, Karlsruhe, etc.), promoted by the landers and the imperial state, became models for engineering schools in the world. In the USA, some institutes and colleges, such as the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, had renewed engineering studies, introducing practical training combined with theoretical courses. The context of discussion about the adequacy of the syllabus to train engineers was the shift in power in the world, mainly after the Franco-Prussian war and the emergence of Imperial Germany and the United States of America. This situation was reflected in Spain after the war in Cuba and the Philippines (1898), in which Spain lost its remaining colonies in America and Asia. In 1904, a new industrial school was founded in Barcelona. The new orientation of industry created a demand for engineers, which was satisfied by foreign engineers coming to work in Barcelona. In Spain, the educational system did not provide graduates to meet the technical requirements of modern industry. In Barcelona, a group of organizations promoted the Industrial School to train engineers at all the levels needed in industry. The commission in charge of the project, after a review of the models in other countries, concluded that the education of engineers should combine the theoretical classes with the workshop and the laboratory. The theoretical classes should include a high content of mathematics, physics and chemistry adapted to the needs of the construction of artefacts, the new communications, and the testing of materials. The centre should offer workshop and laboratory facilities to provide a closer knowledge of industry. The realization of the initial project encountered numerous difficulties and was finally unsuccessful, but the experience marked a turning point in engineering education in Catalonia and Spain.
References:
*Roca Rosell, Antoni; Lusa-Monforte, Guillermo; Barca-Salom, Francesc; Puig-Pla, Carles (2006) «Industrial Engineering in Spain in the First Half of the Twentieth Century: From Renewal to Crisis », History of Technology, vol. 27, 147-161.
*Roca Rosell, Antoni (ed.) (2008) L’Escola Industrial de Barcelona. Cent anys d’ensenyament tècnic i d’arquitectura, Diputació de Barcelona, Ajuntament de Barcelona, Consorci de l’Escola Industrial de Barcelona, Barcelona.


21. Whither the VNOS?
David W. Rudge; Eric M. Howe
Biological Sciences, Western Michigan University; Department of Education, Assumption College

For over two decades science educators have drawn attention to the need for a reliable instrument to assess student understandings of a variety of issues associated with the nature of science (e.g. Lederman & O’Malley 1990). The Views on the Nature of Science questionnaire (VNOS) (c.f. Lederman, Abd-El-Khalick, Bell & Schwartz 2002) and its numerous refinements (VNOS-B, C, D and E) have been particularly prominent among researchers on the teaching and learning of issues associated with the nature of science. They have also been the object of considerable theoretical criticism (e.g. Chen 2006; Southerland et. al. 2005). The following essay discusses practical problems associated with the use and interpretation of the VNOS in the context of three empirical studies conducted at a large Midwestern university. It concludes the VNOS is in principle incapable of assessing student views about issues associated with the nature of science because it treats these issues as declarative facts students should know about science, rather than a set of skills students should be able to use as they reflect on particular examples of the process of science, past and present.


22. The Periodic Table: Its Story and Its Significance
Eric R. Scerri
Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA

First of all I will try to remind the audience of the centrality of the periodic system in science education.  Secondly I will try to convey some of the richness of the history and philosophy concerned in with the evolution of the periodic system. I will trace the origin of the term ‘element’ from its early beginnings among the ancient Greek philosophers up to modern times.  The Greeks considered the elements in two quite different ways.  First the four elements earth, fire, water and air were regarded as the familiar substances we all know.  In addition, these four elements were regarded as abstract bearers of properties but devoid of properties as such.  The more abstract ‘elements’ have played a surprisingly important role in the history of the periodic system, as I will be arguing. The talk will leap historically about 3000 years to Lavoisier, who in the course of founding modern chemistry more or less eradicated the abstract sense of the concept of an element.  Later work by a number of others like Dobereiner included the discovery of triads of elements, which offered the first hint at a numerical regularity underlying the properties of the elements.  Prout’s hypothesis was another fruitful concept, although it was eventually refuted. I will survey the six co-discoverers of the periodic system, culminating in the most successful of these systems by Mendeleev.  I will claim that the success of his predictions is frequently exaggerated.  As many have argued, the accommodation of already known data may be equally, if not more, important in the acceptance of a scientific development. The talk will move onto the several discoveries made in physics at the turn of the twentieth century including X-rays, radioactivity and isotopes, all of which had a strong bearing on the periodic system.  The impact of physics continued in the work of Bohr, Sommerfeld, Stoner and Pauli who collectively built-up the four quantum number description of electrons in the atom.  I will probe the extent to which ab initio calculations can provide a ‘reduction’ of the periodic system.  The educational consequences of these developments will be examined, especially the question of whether chemistry should be presented from an essentially chemical point of view or starting from quantum mechanics.   



23. History of physics in college teaching: the development of the “vector potential” concept in electromagnetic theory
Cibelle Celestino Silva 
Institute of Physics of São Carlos, University of São Paulo, Brazil

Currently the majority of textbooks on classical electromagnetic theory consider the vector potential as an artifice for the calculation of the fields   and   and do not attribute a clear physical meaning to it. However, the vector potential used to have a clear physical meaning and played a central role for Faraday, Thomson Maxwell and other physicists. In this talk I analyze how the meanings attributed to the vector potential changed throughout the nineteenth along years. In order to answer to this question, we developed a historical study analyzing the different interpretations for of the vector potential starting with the works of Faraday on electromagnetic induction, where he introduced the concept of electrotonic state. We analyzed the contributions of William Thomson that strongly inspired Maxwell to suggest different interpretations for the concept in papers published along the next two decades until the publication of the Treatise on Electricity and Magnestism in 1873. In the end of the nineteenth century Maxwell’s interpretations for the vector potential began to be questioned by several physicists. One of the issues involved in this questioning was the reality of the physical quantities. Physicists as Heaviside, Hertz and others defended that electric and magnetic fields, not the potentials, were quantities endowed with physical reality. Considering this approach they developed a mathematical formalism closer to the currently accepted where the fields play a major role, not the potentials. Nevertheless, this process was not linear and uncritically accepted. Throughout the twentieth century papers and books were published defending a physical interpretation for the vector potential considering a classical context for the electromagnetic theory. Indeed, the theory is usually taught without references to its historical development, which makes its teaching in college physics disciplines challenging for students due to several reasons, among them the descontextualized character of the discipline. The historical case study presented in this paper shows that models and analogies played an essential role in the development of the electromagnetic theory. Furthermore, students can learn that new physical theories and their equations do not emerge completely ready from brilliant minds. The electromagnetic field equations are not derived by induction from the experimental data and electrical considerations alone. On the contrary, they were constructed by the use of a wide range of heuristic procedures, among those are analogies.