Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 10, Issue 1, Foreword (Jun., 2009)
Michael R. MATTHEWS
 History, philosophy, and science teaching: The new engagement
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Some Topical Questions

Robert Ennis in 1979 listed six areas of concern to science teachers that would benefit by philosophical attention. These were: scientific method, criteria for critical thinking about empirical statements, the structure of scientific disciplines, explanation, value judgements by scientists, and the development and writing of tests for scientific knowledge and understanding (Ennis 1979). These are perennial questions that engage science teachers and to which HPS can contribute (see Michael Martin’s early classic Concepts of Science Education: A Philosophical Analysis (Martin 1972)). Thirty-five years later there is point in up-dating this list. The additional topics I would propose are: Feminism, Constructivism, Ethics, Worldviews, Idealization, and Nature of Science (NOS). In one form or another, these issues and their implications have surfaced in science education debate.

(1) Feminism has provided strong challenges to the assumptions of both science teaching and of the philosophy of science. It is notorious that women, especially in Western countries, do not continue with scientific study, except for the biological sciences. There are many socio-cultural-economic-educational reasons put forward and debated for this withdrawal of women from the sciences. These are important, but largely empirical matters.

However in the past three decades Feminist philosophy has contributed to the debate by claiming that scientific method and epistemology is deformed by masculine assumptions and priorities, and hence inimical to women. One science educator, echoing this feminist position, wrote that girls' reluctance to pursue science is the result of science ‘being commonly portrayed as a discipline promoting objective, rational and analytic behaviour’ (Bell 1988, p. 159). Nancy Brickhouse, a prominent science educator, wrote that: “ Scientific knowledge, like other forms of knowledge, is gendered. Science cannot produce cultural or gender-neutral knowledge…” (Brickhouse 2001).

These arguments may have some initial appeal, but they are fraught with problems. They are historical and philosophical claims that need to be defended, not just asserted; and further their defense is questionable. We are seldom told why objectivity, rationality and analytic thinking are bad. This is precisely the type of thinking that the Enlightenment championed, and one might have thought that such traits were desirable, and sorely needed in the social and political arena.

Furthermore, many women reject the claim that objectivity, rationality and analytic thinking are alien to them. Norette Koertge, a prominent philosopher of science and one of the first philosophers to write on science education (Koertge 1969), maintains against certain feminists that:

If it really could be shown that patriarchal thinking not only played a crucial role in the Scientific Revolution but is also necessary for carrying out scientific inquiry as we now know it, that would constitute the strongest argument for patriarchy that I can think of. (Koertge 1981, p.354)

Another woman, also a philosopher of science, has written that:

Viewed by a philosopher of science, there is nothing short of a puzzle as to why, at this date, any group of science educators would invoke so patently flawed a philosophical position as ‘epistemologies of feminism’, in the hope that women in science will then benefit from a revamped theory of learning that is modeled on or guided by its flawed theoretical notions. It is time that science educators are told, bluntly, the conclusion which philosophers of science have reached after two decades or so of careful, and even hopeful, consideration of feminist standpoint theory. The conclusion, in brief, is that feminist standpoint theory is indefensible. (Pinnick 2007, p.1056)

As much as need be said here is that feminist epistemology is widely accepted among science education researchers; and it is thought that its adoption will assist both in reforming science and bringing girls into science classrooms. But these claims rest on very debatable historical and philosophical positions. Hence more informed and sophisticated HPS knowledge is requisite for understanding in this field. (See contributions to the special issue of Science & Education on the subject (2008, vol.17, no.10)

(2) Constructivism is arguably the dominant epistemology among science educators. One recent commentary has identified the following schools or variants of constructivism: contextual, dialectical, empirical, information-processing, methodological, moderate, Piagetian, postepistemological, pragmatic, radical, realist, social and socio-historical; to which can be added, humanistic (Cheung & Taylor 1991).

There are a host of philosophical issues in constructivist theory that deserve elaboration: What account of the social dimension of knowledge is given?, What are the criteria for the adequacy of student conceptions: are they judged against norms of the scientific community, or against other student accounts, or against the individuals' prior conceptions?, Is there a confusion of successful pedagogical practice with epistemological claims? Driver in one publication recognises an essential tension in constructivist practice: that between getting students to construct and make meaningful their own accounts of something and getting them to participate in a scientific community that has its own theory and understandings (Driver & Oldham 1986). The former makes no epistemological judgement, it only refers to psychological mechanisms; the latter does make epistemological judgements. Teachers who are concerned with students entering and mastering this sphere of public knowledge will standardly need to indicate that explanations that students might devise and feel content with are in fact inadequate.

Many writers, myself included (Matthews 1993, 2000b), believe that there are serious philosophical flaws with constructivism: The first is its idealist ontology which is inconsistent with the practice of science; the second is its relativist epistemology, which is inconsistent with the growth of science. Constructivist teachers do a disservice to students, and to culture more broadly, by promoting such flawed philosophy in their classes. The prominent science education, John Staver, clearly stated the idealist position:

…For constructivists, observations, objects, events, data, laws, and theory do not exist independently of observers. The lawful and certain nature of natural phenomena are properties of us, those who describe, not of nature, that is described. (Staver 1998, p.503)

The flaws in this claim should be obvious: Observations clearly depend upon us, but not the objects observed, nor their structures.

Equally clearly, Grayson Wheatley states the relativist epistemology of constructivism as follows:

The theory of constructivism rests on two main principles. . . . Principle one states that knowledge is not passively received, but is actively built up by the cognizing subject. . . . Principle two states that the function of cognition is adaptive and serves the organisation of the experiential world, not the discovery of ontological reality. . . . Thus we do not find truth but construct viable explanations of our experiences. (Wheatley 1991, p. 10)

His principle one is not controversial; his principle two, relativism, is highly controversial among philosophers.

The relativist position leads eventually to the abandonment of Truth itself. This is recognized by two science educators who are not embarrassed to assert that researchers and teachers need to find ways how to:

deprivilege science in education and to free our children from the "regime of truth" that prevents them from learning to apply the current cornucopia of simultaneous but different forms of human knowledge ( Van Eijck & Roth W.-M.2007, p.944)

This is a truly remarkable claim for science educators to make, especially as one of them is a much rewarded, much cited and influential figure in the field.

Again, for current purposes one need not follow through these philosophical debates, it suffices to recognize that constructivism gives rise to them and that some knowledge of HPS is essential for intelligent and informed discussion of the matters. Much in education and in society hinges on getting the philosophy correct in these matters. The ontological idealism, relativism, and subjectivism of constructivism is particularly ill-suited to deal with the complex, trans-social problems facing the contemporary world. There is a need for the sustained application of reason and the rejection of self-interest in the attempt to deal with pressing environmental, political and social questions -- think of the political situation in Africa or the Balkans. Karl Popper recognised this socially corrosive aspect of constructivism, when he said:

The belief of a liberal -- the belief in the possibility of a rule of law, of equal justice, of fundamental rights, and a free society -- can easily survive the recognition that judges are not omniscient and may make mistakes about facts. . . . But the belief in the possibility of a rule of law, of justice, and of freedom, can hardly survive the acceptance of an epistemology which teaches that there are no objective facts; not merely in this particular case, but in any other case. (Popper 1963, p.5)

(3) Worldview issues naturally emerge from the subject matter of science: Einstein spoke of the scientist being a philosopher in workingman's clothes. Many have written on the inextricable connection between science and metaphysics (for example, DeWitt 2004). If science has developed as a dialogue with metaphysics (to say nothing of interjections from the political, economic and social realms), then to teach science as a soliloquy in which science just talks to itself and grows entirely by self-criticism is to impoverish the subject matter.

I have recently edited an anthology titled Science, Worldviews and Education (Matthews 2009a) in which scientists, philosophers, theologians, historians and educators take up fundamental questions such as:

  • What constitutes a worldview?
  • How do worldviews impinge upon and in turn be modified by ontological, epistemological, ethical and religious commitments?
  • What worldview commitments, if any, are presupposed in the practice of science?
  • What is the overlap between learning about the nature of science (NOS) and learning about worldviews associated with science?
  • What is the legitimate domain of the scientific method? Should scientific method be applied to historical questions, especially to historical questions concerning scriptures and sacred texts?
  • To what extent should learning about the scientific worldview be a part of science instruction?
  • Should science instruction inform student worldviews or leave them untouched?
  • What judgement do we make of science education programmes where the scientific view of the world is not affirmed or internalised, but only learnt for instrumental or examination purposes; where learning science is akin to an anthropological study?
  • What judgement do we make of proposals that students should become just ‘border crossers’ moving from their own culture with its particular worldviews to the science classroom in order to ‘pick up’ instrumental or technical knowledge and then back to their ‘native’ culture without being affected by the worldviews and outlooks of science? This is the anti-Enlightenment idea that science should leave culture untouched.

Science teachers have an interest and concern with all of these questions and, again, it is clear that their informed discussion requires familiarity with the history and philosophy of science.

(4) Idealization is the sine qua non of modern mathematical science, yet it is very little understood by teachers, it rarely occurs in textbook accounts of the scientific method, and is often ignored by philosophers who conduct discussion of induction, falsification, and the testing of theory completely oblivious to the fact that it is idealized laws and theories that are being discussed, and simple logic is inappropriate to their evaluation ( see Matthews 2000a, chap.10). Also much science education literature on concept acquisition proceeds in an Aristotelian manner, in which idealizations are treated as empirical generalisations. Clearly the acquisition of the concept of point mass, frictionless surface, inertial frame, elastic collision, rigid body, etc. does not occur in the Aristotelian manner, they do not arise from looking at bodies and inducing common features. Galilean/Newtonian idealization was a monumental conceptual achievement, arguably something that separates human thought from all animal cognition. This achievement must be imparted to students - they will not acquire the idealisations by looking at nature.

(5) Nature of Science (NOS). Many individuals and groups in science education have researched factors impinging on the teaching and learning of NOS: What is taught? How it is taught? What is learned? How it is best learnt? Etc. This research has done much, but suffers because of ‘soft focus’ and ambiguous writing at critical points where important philosophical issues are at play.

One important group of NOS researchers has been the ‘Lederman’ group that maintains that ‘no consensus presently exists among philosophers of science, historians of science, scientists, and science educators on a specific definition for NOS’ (Lederman 2004, p.303). Although recognising no across-the-board consensus on NOS, the group does claim that there is sufficient consensus on central matters for the purposes of NOS instruction in K-12 classes. The group has elaborated and defended seven elements of NOS that they believe fulfill the criteria of: (i) accessibility to school students, (ii) wide enough agreement among historians and philosophers, and (iii) being useful for citizens to know

The seven features of science, or NOS elements – the ‘Lederman Seven’, if one might so call the list clearly needs to be much more refined and developed in order to be useful. This is not just the obvious point that when seven matters of considerable philosophical subtlety, and with long traditions of debate behind them, are dealt with in a few pages, then they will need to be further elaborated, rather it is the more serious claim that at crucial points there is ambiguity that mitigates the list’s usefulness as curricular objectives, assessment criteria, and as goals of science teacher education courses.

For instance consider the first item on the list. In discussing the empirical nature of science, it is maintained that there is wide enough agreement on the ‘existence of an objective reality, for example, as compared to phenomenal realities’ (Lederman 2004, p.303). This is quite so, but the serious debate among philosophers is not the reality of the world, but the reality of explanatory entities proposed in scientific theories. This debate between realists on the one hand, and empiricists or instrumentalists on the other has gone on since Aristotle’s time.

Aristotle maintained that the crystalline spheres in which the planets were supposedly embedded were a real existing mechanism that kept planets in their regular circular orbits, his empiricist rivals held that the spheres were merely mental connivances to give order to experience, they had no ontological reality. The debate was famously replayed when Cardinal Bellarmine urged Galileo to adopt an instrumentalist view of Copernican heliocentric astronomy – that heliocentrism was useful for astronomical calculations, but it was not actually how the solar system was arranged.

It is possible to make similar claims about each item on the Lederman list. Thus the field of NOS research in science education is yet another example where more cooperation between science educators, historians and philosophers would considerably improve the usefulness and quality of published work.

In addition to the foregoing five elaborated topics, an up-dated list of fields where HPS can fruitfully contribute to current science education research, curriculum development and pedagogy would include: Ethics (consider the research on ‘teaching socio-ethical issues in science’ as found for instance in Science & Education 17 nos.(8-9), Rationality (consider the widespread Kuhn-inspired dismissal of the rationality of science and of theory-change in science), and Multiculturalism (consider the widespread adoption of the ‘multi-science’ thesis among science educators, and the epistemological and cultural problems associated with the thesis (see Matthews 1994, chap.9)).

Copyright (C) 2009 HKIEd APFSLT. Volume 10, Issue 1, Foreword (Jun., 2009). All Rights Reserved.