Philosophy of science and school science teaching

International Journal of Science Education

ISSN: 0950-0693 (Print) 1464-5289 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tsed20

Philosophy of science and school science teaching Ewald Terhart To cite this article: Ewald Terhart (1988) Philosophy of science and school science teaching, International Journal of Science Education, 10:1, 11-16, DOI: 10.1080/0950069880100102 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0950069880100102

Published online: 24 Feb 2007.

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Date: 17 March 2016, At: 01:47

INT. J. SCI. EDUC., 1988, VOL. 10, NO. 1, 1 1 - 1 6

Philosophy of science and school science teaching

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Ewald Terhart, University of Osnabrück, FR Germany The relation between philosophy of science, scientific research methods and the methods of school science teaching is examined. This relation is described in the light of the traditional 'Standard Philosophy of Science': scientists as compiling truths, guided by philosophies of science, scientific research as cumulative and science teachers passing over these cumulated truths to the next generation. Implications of the 'New Philosophy of Science' for the school science teaching are elaborated. An historically informed concept of scientific development is regarded as a necessary condition for a practice of school science teaching leading to knowledge and understanding. Attending to the New Philosophy of Science in fact is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for reaching this aim. Beside all epistemological and historical quarrels, school science teaching is in its centre a process of education. Therefore, the sociological, psychological and pedagogical dimensions of scientific knowledge have also to be considered important conditions for developing educative science teaching in schools.

Even a brief look at the historical development of the discussion concerning theories of teaching and teaching methods shows that there has been a long chain of efforts to derive theories of teaching, teaching methods and/or teaching strategies from some kind of superior knowledge. These superior knowledge systems have tended to be normative (the Christian —or some other-moral codex), philosophical (existentialism, pragmatis'm, rationalism and other 'isms') or scientific. Teaching and especially teaching methods seemed to be worthy of study only 'in the light of this or that form of superior knowledge; studying the methods of teaching for their own sake seemed to be a somehow trivial pursuit, and performing a sound and smooth practice of teaching was often taken to be just a matter of good craftmanship. When considering the derivative approaches mentioned last viz., efforts to derive teaching methods from scientific knowledge, we immediately come up against a traditional schism in this area: This is the question of whether the methods and strategies of teaching should emerge from the psychology of learning or from the structure of the subject-matter, i.e. the structure of the. discipline(s) underlying the different areas of the school curriculum (cf., Terhart and Drerup 1981, Terhart 1983). The modern curriculum movement has tried to realize an integrative approach by harmonizing the psychological and the 'structure-of-the-discipline' approach to teaching, but these integrative efforts still indicate that in practice there exists a tension between the psychological and logical (structural) aspects of teaching a subject. A special version of deriving teaching methods from superior systems of knowledge is the one where the teaching process is not commanded by the psychological principles of learning or by the architecture of the central concepts of a discipline, but by the 'research process' by which is meant the

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sequence of research steps typical for a discipline. Since, in relation to science education, this temporal structure of the research process (in its ideal form) reflects the principles of the philosophy of science, we ought to be able to say that there is a derivative or somehow 'deductive' relation between (1) the philosophy of science, (2) research methodology and (3) the methods of teaching, (cf., Elkana 1970, Swift et al. 1982).


Part I I think that a statement concerning the existence of some relation between the philosophy of science, scientific method and the methods of science teaching is widely agreed with (cf., Hodson 1985), but the more interesting question is: What kind of relation does exist here? Even more interesting is, what kind of relation should be established? In the so-called 'standard philosophies of science' we find a clear regulation of this relation: 1. Philosophy of science is a somehow normative/prescriptive system of rules for the scientist, which are formulated on the basis of epistemological considerations and convictions concerning 'reality', 'truth', 'language', 'induction', 'deduction', 'intelligibility of the outer world', etc. Philosophy of science is the logical reconstruction of the factual processes of good science. Although most 'standard philosophies of science' do not include direct advice for the research processes or for reaching scientific results (context of discovery), they formulate criteria that a research result has to meet if it is to be accepted (context of justification). 2. The process of inquiry itself is seen as being governed by the principles of the philosophy of science. Intellectual heroes who are only interested in the search for truth, pile up the several pieces of truth being controlled only by the cognitive-epistemological and methodological standards of the scientific community. They 'read' the facts and formulate theories (inductive verificationists), or formulate bold conjectures and try to refute them (deductive falsificationists); this difference is of no importance here. As the progress of science is cumulative, the results have to be conserved and passed on to the future generations. 3. Science education plays an important part in this cumulative process of knowledge-building, because it initiates pupils into this concept of science and prepares some of them to take part in the process of inquiry later on. Theories and methods of teaching have to be formulated which help the science teacher to 'fill up' the pupils or students with scientific truths and the methods of winning them. This has to be done in a psychologically smooth way so that the naive or mystic world-views of the pupils are replaced by the scientific ones. An exemple is given by Shavelson( 974, p. 233) and is shown in figure 1. In the eyes of the followers of the 'standard philosophies of science', everything is alright: The philosophers act as epistemological policemen; the scientists are compiling scientific truths; and the science teachers pass these

PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE AND SCHOOL SCIENCE TEACHING

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Figure 1. Communication flow of subject-matter structure. (£'|may be thought of as a filter.) (adapted from Shavelson 1974). truths on to the next generation. If someone is indecent enough to put his finger on some historical and/or empirical facts which indicate that the assumptions concerning either the three processes or the relation between them are wrong (in the sense of not fitting reality), this can be interpreted as a fault of reality! This argument works as an immunization against contradictory facts. In using this argument consequently, the philosophy of science runs the risk of becoming a new and special sort of 'science fiction'; and, as a new myth, it has consequences also for the teaching of science, as MacDonald (1971, p. 305) has observed: Modes of inquiry are what mature scholars say they do as they reflect on what they have done. They are abstractions from behavior. There is, in other words, no necessary logic that says, because man can be said to discover knowledge in a given way, that ipso facto his instruction should be organized and presented for learning purposes in the same fashion.... The probability of providing reasonably valid instructional prescription from... modes of inquiry is not necessarily high, even if the possibility is an intriguing one.

Part II But the strategy of immunization against contradictory facts was, as we all know, not a success story. The 'standard philosophies of science' have been heavily attacked by the so-called 'New Philosophies of Science' (Kisiel and Johnson 1974) who imported results of the history and sociology of science into the cognitive field of philosophy of science; meanwhile we observe the decline and fall of the (former!) standard philosophies. The central basis of the 'new philosophies of science' is the historical and empirical fact that there is a wide gap between the logic of scientific research and its practice. This is not only proven by some autobiographical statements of famous researchers, but also by the empirical results of the sociology of science and by historiographic researches into the development and progress in several disciplines. Official textbooks for students and pupils often present a somehow static picture, because they try to realize a systematic overview.{ The reader gets the impression that there has not been any development at all. If textbooks are organized in a historiographic manner, they present the picture of a smooth and logically consequent and JThe role of text-books in science and science education is discussed by Siegel (1978) and Fennell and Liveritte (1979).


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cumulative development of a discipline: scientific progress has taken place in time, but not in history. This hyper-rationalistic presentation of science is not accepted by the new philosophies, and a contrasting model is developed. In particular, the rationality claim of science which finds its manifestation in the idea of the scientific method as the one and only guarantee for truth or credibility, is rejected. As a result, the modern myth of science as the 'department for everlasting truths' is destroyed. As the new philosophies of science were originally developed only in the area of the natural sciences, % it is natural that the discussion of their relevance for teaching and teaching methods should have started in the area of science teaching (cf., Elkana 1970, Jung 1978, Petersen-Falshoft 1979, Swift et al. 1982, Donelly 1979, Cawthron and Rowell 1978, Arimbola 1983, Wagner 1983). Here again the idea of the scientific method as the only guarantee for truth is the critical point: The concept of (scientific-ET) method is a very questionable one. Because what is conceived as method in science and in orthodox philosophy of science is an idealization, which does not fit the reality of the development of a science (Petersen-Falshoft 1979, p. 180). The logic of science is only a description of the axiomatically formulated, polished, ideal science; logic cannot account for science-in-the-making, for science-in-flux. In order to understand what science-in-flux looks like, we have to forgo the elegance and clearness of logical description . . . The new philosophy of science . . . must serve . . . as the philosophical foundation of the new approaches to science teaching (Elkana 1970, p. 24).

I agree with this view, but a central question is still left unanswered: for what purpose should the historical dimension of science be integrated in science education? In my opinion this integration is necessary because, in organizing science education in this way, the power of the 'successful' traditions in science is broken and the view is broadened so that the historical alternatives (which are suppressed by the successful traditions) and the actual ones are visible again. On the basis of an analysis of the normative-societal context of the historical development of science, a concept of science teaching emerges which integrates the historical dimension. It wins a critical capacity and as such forms a necessary part of liberal education (Rogers 1982). The central problem of a theory and practice of science teaching that is aware of the historic dimension of scientific development, is to find an integrative way between the systematic and the historical or the synchronic and the diachronic aspect. It is of no worth to teach everything about the historical, cultural and societal conditions of the development of physics, and forget about the systematic content of this discipline, and vice versa. This integration problem is also relevant to science teaching in the universities and in teacher education because, in the end, it is the teacher who has to realize these ideas. In the last part of my paper I want to place the mentioned philosophical developments in the wider context of educational considerations. % If social and/or educational scientists use concepts and categories of the 'new philosophies of science' for their disciplines they try to borrow some prestige from the 'hard' sciences.


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Part III


I stated at the beginning that the efforts to formulate theories of teaching and teaching methods in a derivative or 'deductive' way have a long history, and the approach to reorganize science teaching according to the new insights and doctrines of the 'new philosophies of science' is to some extent just another of these derivative efforts. I think, however, that science teaching can develop a demystifying and critical character only if we leave the context of even its newest philosophical backing and take into consideration that science teaching is teaching, that science education is in its centre a process of education. As Hodson (1985) comments: How to teach science is not a scientific question and neither science nor philosophy of science can give us infallible guidance on how to proceed. And Swift et al. (1982) write: Philosophy of Science is a necessary condition for theories of science teaching. It is not possible for science educationalists to ignore such philosophy ... Philosophy of science is not a sufficient condition for theories of science teaching. If questions raised by philosophy of science raise further questions about science education, then these too deserve to be explicated. An informed dialectic is called for (p. 15). It is naive to assume that a theory of education can be extracted directly from a philosophy of science. The two phenomena belong to different domains; albeit overlapping domains in some aspect (p. 39). This absence of emphasis on psychological and sociological components... limits the contribution that Popper's philosophy of science can make to a theory of education (p. 40).

The last sentence is not only correct in regard to Popper % but in regard of all approaches trying to extract educational and/or teaching theories from philosophies of science. The new philosophies of science are of more worth that the standard ones because, last but not least, they include psychological and especially historical arguments; nevertheless they still stick too much to the object of their critique-science. That is the dilemma of this 'negative' form of critique: It has to follow its victim, and to mask this dependency, the rhetoric of criticism has continuously to be increased. The work of Paul Feyerabend (1975) is the best example. The problem of the epistemological status of the knowledge passed over to the pupils and students is an important question, and here the impact of the new philosophies of science has indeed been very positive. But I think that this is only one aspect in a whole bundle. We also have to ask for the sociological status of school knowledge: What parts of the stock of knowledge a society has accumulated, actually enter the school curriculum? How strict is the demarcation toward officially excluded knowledge? How is the relation between the selected elements defined? How are they modelled and simplified to be understandable for the pupils? What concept of 'nature' is transmitted by science education? % Popper (1973) himself would not agree with this 'absence'-thesis: According to his 'principle of transference' we have to accept that 'what is true in logic is true in psychology'. This 'principle' is a rather cryptic element in the writings of Popper (cf. Sarkar 1978, Drerup 1982).

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Another important aspect is the psychological problem of structuring knowledge and how to pass this knowledge on in such a way that the pupils' or students' existing knowledge system is not just 'colonized', but that the pupils or students have the chance of changing it by themselves on the basis of differentiated and differentiating insights (knowledge and understanding). Last but not least: What kind of criteria can we use to decide whether the things going on in (science) classes really have 'educative' quality? In listing these aspects and problems of educative teaching in general and of educative science teaching in particular, I just want to show that the recourse to the 'new philosophies of science' is an important and necessary, though not a sufficient step towards a theory and practice of school science teaching as an integral part of liberal education. References I. O. 1983, The relevance of the 'new' philosophy of science for the science curriculum. School Science and Mathematics, Vol. 83, pp. 181-193. CAWTHRON, E. R. and ROWELL, J. A. 1978, Epistemology and Science Education. Studies in

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