Abstract
This article is the first of two that will examine the claims of contemporary sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) and the bearing of these claims upon the rationale and practice of science teaching. It is maintained that if the claims of SSK are true then there are serious, and educationally and culturally deleterious, implications which follow. The two articles will argue that, fortunately, the claims of SSK for the external causation of scientific belief are baseless. And thus science teachers should resist admonitions to accept the findings of the sociology of science.
‘I look forward to the day when the last proponent of the ‘strong program’ in the sociology of science is strangled in the entrails of the last expert in the theory of metaphor’
Alasdair MacIntyre, 1988
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Slezak, P. Sociology of scientific knowledge and scientific education: Part I. Sci Educ 3, 265–294 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00540157
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00540157