Rethinking the Role and Status of Observation in Science Education
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6059787 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Derek Hodson (a University of Manchester, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1996 |
| Volume | 28 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 37-57 |
| Publication date | 1996-10-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | European Education (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1056-4934 • E-ISSN: 1944-7086 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.2753/eue1056-4934280337 |
| OpenAlex | W2059569364 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 17 |
The publication of the first English translation of Karl Popper's The Logic of Scientific Discovery in 1959 marked the end of a long period of stability in the philosophy of science and the beginning of a period of rapid development and change, marked by the work of Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend, Laudan, Putnam, and others. The late 1950s also marked the end of a long period of stability in the school science curriculum and the onset of the rapid curriculum developments of the 1960s and 1970s (the Nuffield and Schools Council courses in the U.K., PSSC Physics, Harvard Project Physics, BSCS, CBA, CHEM Study and others in the United States, and ASEP in Australia). Unfortunately, developments in the philosophy of science did not inform and guide developments in the science curriculum. Despite the growing number of books and articles dealing with the curricular implications of issues in the philosophy of science, science teachers and science curriculum developers remain surprisingly ill-informed about fundamental thinking concerning the nature of science and its methodology. As the ASE reports, "most science teachers, who are themselves products of a science education that places a high premium on scientific knowledge and pays lip service to the history and philosophy of science, share with many practicing scientists a scant understanding of the nature of scientific knowledge itself."1 Elkana2 goes so far as to claim that science teachers' understanding trails developments in the philosophy of science by some twenty to thirty years. The view that scientists are also ignorant of the nature of science was expressed some years ago by Medawar: Ask a scientist what he conceives the scientific method to be, and he will adopt an expression that is at once solemn and shiftyeyed: solemn, because he feels he ought to declare an opinion; shiftyeyed, because he is considering how to conceal the fact that he has no opinion to declare. If taunted he would probably mumble something about Induction
Curriculum · Engineering ethics · Epistemology · History of science · Nature of Science · Pedagogy · Philosophy education · Philosophy of computer science · Philosophy of science · Science education · Science, technology, society and environment education · Social science · Social science education · Sociology · Sociology of scientific knowledge · Engineering · History and Philosophy of Science · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science · Science and Climate Studies · Science Education and Pedagogy
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,06 |
| Citation span | 2009 - 2009 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |