Abstract
Although governments, educators, and others have made significant efforts to promote education that would help students to develop more realistic conceptions of the nature of science, there continue to be difficulties in that regard. Fields of professional science often are represented in school science as isolated from fields of technology and from societies. Such a view may assist scientists in relatively freely pursuing topics of interest to them, using methods common to their communities, and sharing their findings and conclusions with colleagues. In this view, it would be left to engineers, politicians, and others to determine appropriate uses of products of the sciences. In practice, fields of science seemed to have—to a great extent—held close interactions with fields of technology and with societies. An aspect of such relationships that has had very little attention in school science is the nature of associations between fields of business and science. In this article, analyses of the nature of business—science relationships is explored, with reference to problem-setting, problem-solving, and peer persuasion aspects of knowledge-building and dissemination in the sciences. In association with these analyses are bl]References to Robert Merton’s institutional imperatives for the sciences. The article finishes with some general recommendations for science education.
Résumé
Bien que les gouvernements, les enseignants et d’autres encore aient fait des efforts significatifs dans le but de promouvoir un enseignement capable d’aider les étudiants à élaborer des conceptions plus réalistes de la nature des sciences, il reste encore des difficultés à affronter. L’école représente souvent les différents domaines scientifiques professionnels comme détachés aussi bien des domaines technologiques que des sociétés. Une telle vision des choses est susceptible d’aider les scientifiques à se pencher plus ou moins librement sur les sujets qui les intéressent personnellement, au moyen deméthodes couramment utilisées dans leur communauté, pour ensuite diffuser les résultats et conclusions de leurs recherches à leurs collègues. Selon cette perspective, on laisserait aux ingénieurs, aux politiciens et à d’autres le soin de décider quelles sont les applications appropriées qu’on peut faire du produit du travail scientifique. Dans la pratique, il semble que les disciplines scientifiques aient des liens plutôt serrés avec les domaines technologiques et les sociétés. Or, s’il est un aspect qu’on a peu traité en enseignement des sciences, c’est bien la nature des liens qui existent entre les domaines liés à l’entreprise et les sciences. Dans cet article, nous tentons donc d’analyser la nature des liens qui unissent les milieux d’entreprise et les sciences lorsqu’il s’agit de construction et de diffusion des connaissances scientifiques, en particulier en matière de définition des problèmes, de résolution de problèmes et de persuasion des pairs. En relation avec ces analyses, nous faisons référence aux impératifs institutionnels de Robert Merton. L’article se termine par des recommandations générales susceptibles d’être appliquées à l’enseignement des sciences.
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Bencze, J.L. Private Profit, Science, and Science Education: Critical Problems and Possibilities for Action. Can J Sci Math Techn 8, 297–312 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1080/14926150802506290
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14926150802506290