Does science education need the history of science?

This essay argues that science education can gain from close engagement with the history of science both in the training of prospective vocational scientists and in educating the broader public about the nature of science. First it shows how historicizing science in the classroom can improve the pedagogical experience of science students and might even help them turn into more effective professional practitioners of science. Then it examines how historians of science can support the scientific education of the general public at a time when debates over "intelligent design" are raising major questions over the kind of science that ought to be available to children in their school curricula. It concludes by considering further work that might be undertaken to show how history of science could be of more general educational interest and utility, well beyond the closed academic domains in which historians of science typically operate.     

A ‘rhetoric of disruption’ by way of attaining the not yet in the future: re‐membering the past by way of challenging our present educational practices

Our central argument is that if we are to understand who we are as educators in the present as well as who we hope to become in the future, then we must examine and critique how we have collectively represented who we have been. To present our conviction that understanding our history as adult educators is central to understanding our current educational practice, we develop three theses. First, we argue that the purpose of history is to help us understand how we have created our current educational practices from our historical experiences. Second, we draw upon Williams’ notion of a ‘selective tradition’ to show how our current practices are selectively, and often hegemonically, constructed from past practices. Finally, in hopes of moving us toward illuminating our future, we argue that the purpose of history is to help us analyze those selective cultural traditions that inform our current educational practices in order to expose prejudices and illusions. We thus propose the ‘doing’ of history as a counterhegemonic strategy of ‘remembering’ the past in order to critique the present so that as educators we can reveal our historically‐copntinuing limitations and open us to expanding possibilities of Hberatory practice.     

Chance and talent development

The role of chance in talent development appears in the gifted education literature and also in lay discussions of high ability. Nevertheless, chance as a factor in talent development is frequently misunderstood. This analysis scrutinizes some common beliefs and scholarly perspectives on the effects of chance in the development of high ability, and reveals some shortcomings of these conceptions. In addition various research initiatives are proposed that can redress the current lack of empirical evidence to support or refute particular actions and theories of chance. These initiatives should include the development of a taxonomy of chance events and of quantitative measures of the impact of chance on talent development processes. Overall, such work should generate more accurate conceptions of this fascinating causal factor.     

Undergraduate Studies: motives and expectations

ABSTRACT

Universities in England and Wales have played a substantial role in teacher education for nearly a hundred years. Throughout this period their involvement in teacher education has been seen as a threat to the universities’ claims to status and autonomy. As a result the universities have regarded teacher education with ambivalence, an ambivalence which can be traced from the report of the Cross Commission in 1888 to the setting up of the Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education in 1984.