Science education as an exercise in foreign affairs

Abstract

In Kuhnian terms, science education has been a process of inducting students into the reigning paradigms of science. In 1985, Duschl noted that science education had not kept pace with developments in the history and philosophy of science. The claim of certainty for scientific knowledge which science educators grounded in positivist philosophy was rendered untenable years ago and it turns out that social and cultural factors surrounding discovery may be at least as important as the justification of knowledge. Capitalizing on these new developments, Duschl, Hamilton, and Grandy (1990) wrote a compelling argument for the need to have a joint research effort in science education involving the philosophy and history of science along with cognitive psychology. However, the issue of discovery compels the research community go one step further. If the science education community has been guilty of neglecting historical and philosophical issues in science, let it not now be guilty of ignoring sociological issues in science. A collaborative view ought also to include the sociological study of cultural milieu in which scientific ideas arise. In other words, an external sociological perspective on science. The logic of discovery from a sociological point of view implies that conceptual change can also be viewed from a sociological perspective.