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Make–Keep–Use: Bringing Historical Instruments into the Classroom

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Abstract

This paper describes a new approach towards the implementation of history of physics in physics education. Reconstructed historical instruments are given to secondary school students. These students are requested to analyze these devices with the aim of collecting sufficient information in order to build their own working version of this device. Whilst the initial instruments were built according to source information, the students can modify materials, dimensions etc. in order to come up with a device that is their individual representation of the initial device. In working on their own version of the instrument, the students shall be enabled to understand that instruments were built on purpose by skilled craftsmen. Thus, they are enabled to understand that science is not merely done by geniuses, but also skilled workers are crucial to scientific practices. Moreover, through this approach the institution has its own version of the instrument that can be used in future science teaching. In this paper, the approach and its conceptual background will be described; its realization and first experiences will be discussed.

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Notes

  1. Even though Wagenschein is referred to frequently in the educational literature, very few of his papers were translated into English. Exceptions are Wagenschein (1961), Wagenschein (1977), see http://natureinstitute.org/txt/mw/save_phenomena_full.htm (last access May 9th, 2014), and Wagenschein (2000). For a discussion of his approach see e.g. Machold (1992), Østergaard et al. (2008). Apart from the mentioned works, his most influential publications are probably Wagenschein (1968) and Wagenschein (1971).

  2. Evidently, the students cannot make the lens themselves, either they can contact an optician to see whether she or he is able to make them an adequate lens, or to get a lens and adapt the instrument to this part.

  3. Apart from these instruments, a water prism and a crown of cups were options for the building activity, for the options of building the latter in an educational context see http://hidistet.wetpaint.com/page/Voltas+Tassenkrone, last access Feb. 15th, 2013.

  4. The video can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IDQZzQgvSA (last access, Feb. 15th, 2013). Due to copyright the students omitted the sound when publishing the video.

  5. For a more detailed discussion of the evaluation see Asmussen & Heering (2014), the evaluation of the students can be found in Schubert (2011), the one of the teachers in Asmussen (2011).

  6. In this item, the students used a grading corresponding to the one in the German school system. Here, 1 corresponds to outstanding, 2 to good, 3 to 4 to satisfactory, 5 to not completely satisfactory and 6 to unsatisfactory.

  7. To avoid misunderstandings: By machinery I refer to devices such an electrical drill, a fret saw, or an electrical screw driver. Simplified, it can be said that we used only machinery and tools that are common in a home improvement store.

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Acknowledgments

‘Projekt Galilei’ has been developed in collaboration with Friedhelm Sauer. Martin Engel participated in the realization of the pilot study; the website and its structure were developed by Martin Panusch. The pilot study had been funded by the NORDMETALL-Stiftung. Central aspects of this paper were presented at the IX International Conference for the History of Science in Science Education and were published in Heering et al. (2013). The author would like to express his gratitude to two anonymous referees whose comments helped to clarify the paper.

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  1. Institute of Mathematic, Scientific and Technical Literacy, Section of Physics, Its Didactics and Its History, Europa-Universität Flensburg, Auf dem Campus 1, 24943, Flensburg, Germany

    Peter Heering

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Heering, P. Make–Keep–Use: Bringing Historical Instruments into the Classroom. Interchange 46, 5–18 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10780-015-9228-8

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