Theoretical Aspects Of Science Research Articles

Expectativas, necesidades y oportunidades de los maestros en formación ante la enseñanza de las ciencias en la Educación Primaria.

Este trabajo presenta los resultados del análisis de varias encuestas realizadas en tres momentos clave de la formación de maestros en relación con la didáctica de las ciencias experimentales. Antes de iniciar las asignaturas, las expectativas formativas están fuertemente condicionadas por la visión de la especialidad elegida. Entre las necesidades reales destacan los contenidos teóricos de ciencias, aunque muchos estudiantes señalan sus preferencias hacia el aprendizaje de estrategias didácticas. Al finalizar las asignaturas, los maestros en formación señalan la importancia de muchos más aspectos de los previstos inicialmente, dejando al margen los aspectos teóricos de ciencias. Finalmente, tras el prácticum, muchos maestros en formación aseguran que todo lo anterior tiene poca aplicación en el aula y manifiestan las escasas oportunidades que tienen para poner en práctica lo aprendido en la universidad.

The SCIAnTICT project: Technology-enhanced teaching and learning of primary science

This project explored how ICTs in primary classrooms can enhance the teaching and learning of the practical and theoretical aspects of science. By building on teacher and Years 7/8 student prior knowledge and experiences with ICTs, the authors investigated how ICT use can structure activities that would offer enhanced opportunities for students to actively participate in science. The project generated examples of how ICTs can support ways of exploring and communicating science, and evaluating what has been learnt.

Theoretical aspects of science with radioactive nuclear beams

Physics of radioactive nuclear beams is one of the main frontiers of nuclear science today. Experimentally, thanks to technological developments, we are on the verge of invading the territory of extreme N/Z ratios in an unprecedented way. Theoretically, nuclear exotica represent a formidable challenge for the nuclear many-body theories and their power to predict nuclear properties in nuclear terra incognita. It is important to remember that the lesson learned by going to the limits of the nuclear binding is also important for normal nuclei from the neighborhood of the beta stability valley. And, of course, radioactive nuclei are crucial astrophysically; they pave the highway along which the nuclear material is transported up in the proton and neutron numbers during the complicated synthesis process in stars.

Hands‐On Aeronautics for Middle School Students

AbstractEngineering can be very appealing and intriguing to middle school students. Stressing the applications of science often elicits participation of students who have not shown interest in the more theoretical aspects of science. We propose a curriculum to help in teaching aerodynamics to middle school students beginning with physical experiments, then demonstrating the principles learned using a wind tunnel, and finishing with a design competition. The students who have experienced this curriculum have demonstrated enthusiastic response through learning the material and avidly participating in the final design competition.

A case that biomedicine is unduly negative to radical hypotheses and to theorizing—Evidence based on cardiology's reaction to the spasm of resistance vessel concept and on the nature of scientific research

This communication will attempt to make a case that biomedicine is unduly negative to radical hypotheses and to theorizing. Evidence will be based on a proposed undue negativity by cardiology to a radical hypothesis I first described two and a half decades ago—the spasm of resistance vessel (S-RV) concept of ischemic heart disease (IHD). The theory is regarded as an alternate paradigm and deals with basic pathogenetic mechanisms of IHD, the most significant disorder of Western civilization. The concept, if valid, might help in reducing the impact of this disorder, and I believe that the evidence for the theory and the importance of IHD support a more open minded attitude toward the idea. Cardiology's negativity is attributed to the nature of research; the most important factor is considered to be the Kuhnian negativity of scientific communities to hypotheses which are destructive of conventional wisdom, and a second factor is the special nature of biomedical research. Biomedicine is regarded as special because a low level of specific information about complex biomedical processes has fostered an essentially total study-based approach. Such an approach is assumed to have resulted in biomedicine's use of induction as ‘the’ method of scientific inquiry, and prompted negativity towards the hypothetico-deductive method used to develop and test the theory. Also, the study-based nature of biomedicine appears to have fostered an intuitive reliance on only newly performed studies to test hypotheses, which led to ignoring evidence for the concept derived from known information about IHD. Biomedicine is also regarded as special because its infrequent use of paradigm-change has resulted in unfamiliarity with this method, and because the practical method of training in biomedical research has worsened the general unfamiliarity of scientists with theoretical aspects of science. Because of these factors, the S-RV concept has not yet been properly evaluated—a quarter of a century after it was first created.

Prof. Eugenic Rignano

EUGENIC RIGNANO was born on May 31, 1870, at Livorno in Italy. His education was almost wholly physical and mathematical, and after graduating from the University of Pisa he obtained full engineering qualifications in 1893. Instead of practising this profession, however, he devoted himself to philosophical studies, being particularly interested in the borderline between philosophy and science, especially biology. In later life he was appointed professor of philosophy at the University of Pa via, although he had never officially taught that subject. In 1906, Rignano was able to bring into being a scheme he had long cherished, namely, the foundation of an international journal dealing with the theoretical aspects of science and its relations with other realms of human experience. Under the name of Scientia this journal continues to flourish, and Rignano edited it himself until his death on Feb. 9 last. Towards the end of his life he was the recipient of numerous honours; in 1920 he was the Michonis Lecturer at the College de France, in 1923 he was named corresponding member of the Institute of France, and in 1926 of the Academy of Madrid.