Knowledge at the crossroads? Physics and history in the changing world of schools and universities by L. Yates, P. Woelert, V. Millar and K. O’Connor

Abstract

Yates, L., Woelert, P., Millar, V., O'Connor, K. (2017). Knowledge at the Crossroads? Physics and History in the Changing World of Schools and Universities. Singapore: Springer This book is concerned with forms of knowledge in relation to the role of the disciplines and school subjects and their positioning in institutions during the 21st century. Drawing from four years of empirical research that addressed aspects of knowledge building in higher education and schooling, the lens for this inquiry is through the two long established disciplinary fields of history and physics. Whilst seemingly strange bedfellows, history and physics share some rich commonalities as socially constructed disciplinary traditions with established conventions of inquiry. Each field has particular concepts, methodologies and claims to ‘powerful’, or socially significant, foundational knowledge for the education of young people. Concomitantly, the respective disciplinary protocols of inquiry in history and physics enable each field to shift and change over time as new forms of knowledge develop and are accommodated within their frameworks for knowing. In their investigation of knowledge-building in these disciplines in changing times, the authors draw from wide-ranging literature to inform their empirical research with staff in universities and schools with specialist knowledge in history and physics. Essentially, the concern is to investigate ‘what is changing in the contexts and forms of knowledge of the past, and to revisit through this lens, the debates about foundations and what matters today’ (Yates et al. 2017, p. 4).