Science Pedagogy as a Category of Historical Analysis: Past, Present, and Future

Abstract

Historical studies of science pedagogy have flourished in recent years. This essay offers an assessment of the literature on science pedagogy from the 1930s to the present. It argues that rather than focusing on the work of Thomas Kuhn and Michel Foucault, historians of science pedagogy could with profit turn to the work of Ludwik Fleck. Fleck offers three categories of historical analysis – experience, sensation, and cognition – that are embedded in science pedagogy. He furthermore argues unequivocally for the central importance of considering the cultural context of science pedagogy. Fleck’s interpretation of the role of publishing in science is used in the final section of this essay to assess scientific publishing and textbook culture, topics that are the principal concern of the articles in this volume. Among the novelties of the articles in this volume on textbooks are (1) the connections they draw between textbooks and social structure; (2) the relationships they suggest between textbooks and the public sphere; and (3) their identification of the eighteenth century as the crucial transformative century in textbook production.