Day 3 Historiography

Holton's article explains the reasons historians of science and science teachers should work together, and attempts to give ways this can be brought about. He mainly does three things; give examples of such cooperation, lays out five specific courses of action by which this may be accomplished, enumerate and describe the ideaologies of potential partners in this pursuit. The author is kind enough to point out the enormous time and paperwork commitments that often hamper our desire to be better and more effective science teachers, even specifically mentioning the pre-college level. Holton outlines his five mechanisms as actually writing curricula that incorporate history of science, its inclusion in new national and state educational benchmarks and standards, placing articles in professional journals, attending meetings, and finding "barrier-crossers" who are willing to carry the flag for the incorporation of more history of science. He goes on to give specific examples of all five, and I especially appreciated the notion that a well-rounded, educated, productive citizen of the world, regardless of their area of expertise, should have a general understanding of important scientific achievements throughout history and their societal and cultural effects. I especially liked Rabi's question to any student posing a research problem as "will it bring you nearer to God?". I for one have never felt that religion and science are mutually exclusive, and as the Bible says, to paraphrase, "when we know everything we become as unto God himself". It's hard to say if the human species will be around long enough to ever know everything, but of course our goal as scientists and teachers is to try to keep learning about and explaining the universe around us, and that in and of itself means keeping the context in which previous learning has taken place, and by that I mean appreciating the history of science. I would say this has been my favorite reading so far, as I learned a lot about attempts to broaden curricula in the past, and ongoing ways to include more history of science in my science classes.

Rutherford's article made one overriding point that stuck with me, and that is that no matter how many large-scale attempts are made at the national and state levels to improve science education, it ultimately comes down to the individual teachers in the classroom and their desire and willingness to truly teach science as a process and include significant and relevant historical elements. My experience in 17 years of teaching from third grade through high school is that there are too many coaches masquerading as science teachers and even "true" teachers who just go through the motions to pick up a paycheck and/or get out to the athletic practice fields in the afternoons. It's easy to just have the students read or take notes, answer the questions at the end of the chapters, and give them a test on it. Labs, other than looking at a few microscope slides or dissecting a frog, are virtually non-existent in many cases, not to mention original research projects and outside readings, including historical ones. I used to submit my senior AP/IB/Honors Biology students to what we called "interrogations", or group oral quizzes, based on notes taken from select readings in Scientific American. These articles are wonderful because they usually include the relevant science leading up to the current school of thought on that topic. I had many students report back later that this format did more to prepare them for university and broadened their thinking more than anything else they did in high school. Going back to science teachers, and Rutherford's article, all the initiatives he discusses such as the Project Physics and Project 2061 are great in theory, but again the problem is often implementation at the classroom level. I know many teachers view in-service or staff development as goof-off days with no students, and presentations are often forgotten by both teachers and administrators as soon as they walk out the door. There is often little in the way of following through on what is presented. This was an informative article, and it exposed me to some curricula materials and programs that I could and should investigate further and utilize in my classroom. It also reminded me that today we have a tremendous resource in the internet that makes much of this support available at our fingertips, for both the student and teacher. The point the author makes about the success of such programs only being able to be evaluated over many years is valid, but I am reminded of what Kuhn said that overall we are apparently doing a good job in science and science education, but of course we should always strive to do better.

Bibliographic Note:

Gerald Holton, "What Historians of Science and Science Educators Can Do For Each Other", Science & Education, 2003, 12: 603-616

F. James Rutherford, "Fostering the History of Science in American Science Education", Science & Education, 2001, 10: 569-580