Abstract
This paper presents an analysis of three teachers’ “ordinary” class sessions integrating historical elements of science in their teaching: one a teacher of physics and chemistry and two teachers of biology and geology. It explores what prompts these teachers to integrate the history of science into their lessons, the functions they attribute to such history, the degree to which historical and scientific elements are interwoven into the tasks proposed to the students, and the types of knowledge these tasks aim to develop among students. To categorize a typology of the different knowledge areas targeted in science classes, we designed a framework of historical epistemology in order to parameterize a common scenario using the lexical analysis tool Tropes, which was then implemented to analyze the teachers’ discourse during their class sessions. To study their ordinary practices, we adopted a double didactic and ergonomic framework approach. The analyses present the contrasting practices employed by three teachers in integrating historical aspects and identify logics of action specific to each teacher. For one of the teachers, the logic of action was shaped by the institutional framework, addressing the prescribed epistemological focus. For the other two teachers, the logic of action was induced by both the current socio-cultural issues and their own social commitment. The purpose of this study was to test general tools for analyzing teaching practices. Our methodology of knowledge categorization appears robust for the purpose of analyzing ordinary practices in integrating the history of science in science classroom sessions.
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National Audiovisual Institute.
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Appendices
Appendix 1. Common scenario — levels 1, 2, and 3
Legend:
Square = semantic group.
Accolades = words or group of words in the verbatim (verb—adjective—noun—group of words).
Legend:
Square = semantic group.
Accolades = words or group of words in the verbatim (verb—adjective—noun—group of words).
Appendix 2 Example of a complete descriptive table of episodes — radioactivity session
Episode | Duration | Nature of the work required | Proposed materials and the nature thereof (historical, epistemological, socio-cultural, current scientific) | Knowledge and skills to be mobilized by the students | Categorization of targeted knowledge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 4 min | Session (historical work on radioactivity) and working method presentation by the teacher | Know the terms radioactive nuclei and decay | H S | |
2 | 11 min | Documents presentation by the teacher (points on which the students must pay attention) | INA films on Marie Curie, Lise Meitner and Irène Joliot-Curie (primary historical and socio-cultural sources)—CEA animation on the scientific approach of Becquerel and Marie and Pierre Curie respectively at the time of the discovery of uranium rays and radioactivity (secondary historical-current scientific-epistemological source) | Know the terms: radium, radiation, radioactive | É H S SC |
3 | 3 min | Differentiate between natural and artificial radioactivity | Know the terms natural or artificial radioactivity | S | |
4 | 5 min | Use an animation to find out the Becquerel activity of everyday objects | CEA animation to simulate activity measurements of "natural" objects (current scientific document) | Know the unit of activity measurement: the becquerel | S |
5 | 5 min | Create a timeline | Information on Becquerel, Marie Curie, Ernest Rutherford, and Irène Joliot—Curie (historical secondary source) and CEA animation of episode 2 (historical-current scientific-epistemological secondary source) | Know the terms: nucleus—natural or artificial radioactivity, gamma rays, uranium, radium, polonium Sort information | É H S |
6 | 1 min 30 s | Make the link for a country between the research on radioactivity development and the nuclear power development | Knowing the different researchers nationality | H SC | |
7 | 3 min | Women place in research or nuclear energy place in the world | INA films on Marie Curie, Lise Meitner and Irène Joliot-Curie (historical and socio-cultural primary sources) Written documents from CEA and CNRS on nuclear power plants in the world (Socio-cultural documents) | H SC | |
8 | 3 min | Individual work time to complete the timeline and begin looking at the documents in Parts 2 and 3 | INA films on Marie Curie, Lise Meitner and Irène Joliot-Curie (historical and socio-cultural primary sources) or Written documents from CEA and CNRS on nuclear power plants in the world (socio-cultural documents) | Extracting information | H or SC (students’ choice) |
9 | 3 min | Analyze the role assigned to Marie-Curie in the video | INA films on Marie Curie, (primary historical and socio-cultural sources) | Knowing the men and women distribution in the Nobel Prizes | H SC |
10 | 5 min | Reminder of the course on the types of radioactive emissions | Course reminders (current scientific document produced by the teacher) | To know the atomic constitution and its modes of decay | S |
11 | 15 min | Individual work: solve an exercise on radiochronology | Text of an exercise (current scientific document) | Balancing an equation Exploiting an exponential | S |
Appendix 3. Comparison of the categorization resulting from the discourse analysis and the task analysis — radioactivity session
Appendix 4. Historical sources used during episode 3 — “continental drift” session (In italics, what was written down and associated with the iconographies by teacher C.)
Eduard Suess (1883) (1) (2)
Continental bridges imagined by paleontologists before Wegener (After A. Hallam) (3)
-
(1).
Medallion of E. Suess (1831–1914) geologist and Austrian paleontologist of great fame. Professor at the Museum of Natural History and then at the University of Vienna, he was a member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences of Vienna in 1867, of which he was president from 1898 to 1911; he was also elected to the Academy of Sciences of Paris in 1889.
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(2).
Front cover of his major work Das Antlitz der Erde, published between 1883 and 1909, translated into French between 1897 and 19018. The Face of the Earth is a great tectonic synthesis on the geological history of the orogenies of the globe.
-
(3).
Source: Anthony Hallam (1977–79) Fossiles témoins de la dérive des continents. Pour la Science -La dérive des continents -La tectonique des plaques. Paris: Belin. p. 205.
E. Suess defends the theory of the contraction of the globe, based on the principle of the cooling of the Earth, which would be at the origin of the reliefs of the Earth’s crust. Taking into account tectonic and paleontological arguments, including one of his discoveries the seed ferns called Glossopteris, he argues that the continents of Africa, Australia, South America, Madagascar, and India were related in the past. His explanatory model proposes that these continents were connected at one time by continental bridges, forming a supercontinent in the southern hemisphere, which he calls “Gondwana,” in reference to a region of India. Another consequence of the contraction of the globe, these bridges would have collapsed and this collapse would be the origin of a paleo-ocean that he calls the “Tethys.”
Appendix 5. Historical source used in Episode 3 — “vaccination” session caricature “Cowpock or the wonderful effect of the new inoculation” (Gillray, 1802)
Gillray, J. 1802, The cow-pock or the wonderful effects of the new inoculation! — Hand-colored etching with aquatint. The Publications of ye Anti-Vaccine Society.
(Translation: cow pox, a play on the word smallpox) or the wonderful effects of the new inoculation.
In England, vaccination against smallpox became mandatory for children. This English caricature presenting a “burlesque scene where one sees small cows growing on the heads and arms of the vaccinated” is representative of the anti-vaccine current of the beginning of the eighteenth century in Europe. Vaume in France at the same time used the term “envachiner” (Salvadori & Vignaud, 2019).
Appendix 6. Historical source used in Episode 9 “Cancer Treatment: A tribute to Marie Curie”s discovery of radium”
Video available at: https://enseignants.lumni.fr/fiche-media/00000001625/le-traitement-du-cancer-hommage-a-marie-curie-pour-sa-decouverte-du-radium.html
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Canac, S., Crepin-Obert, P. & Roux-Goupille, C. Cross-Referenced Perspectives on Three Science Teachers’ Practices Incorporating the History of Science in their Classrooms. Sci & Educ (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-024-00501-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-024-00501-7