The Rationale for a Teaching Innovation About the Interrelationship Between Science and Technology

Abstract

This paper refers to the development of a teaching innovation for the nature of science (NOS), for students aged 11–15, which specifically focuses on the interrelationship between science and technology. The development of the teaching and learning materials relied on inputs from three sources: the history and philosophy of science and technology, existing knowledge concerning the teaching and learning about the NOS, empirical data on students’ initial ideas and difficulties about this topic. The first served to provide an account for the various forms of interaction between science and technology, which, in turn, guided the formulation of epistemologically coherent learning objectives. The second provided the pedagogical grounds on which to base the design of the activities. The third facilitated the design of activities that build on students’ productive initial ideas, while providing them with guidance to resolve the difficulties they tend to encounter. In this paper, we describe the rationale underlying the teaching and learning materials and we describe the activity sequence they embody.