This paper attempts to show one of the ways history of chemistry can be teachable for chemistry teachers, it means something more than an undifferentiated mass of names and dates, establishing a temporal framework based on chemical entities that all students use. Represents a difficult equilibrium between over-simplification versus…

Rather than focussing on the relationship between science and literature, this article attempts to read scientific writing as literature. It explores a somewhat neglected element of the story of the emergence of geology in the late eighteenth century--James Hutton's unpublished accounts of the tours of Scotland that he undertook in the years…

This study describes the possible variations of thought experiments in terms of their nature, purpose, and reasoning resources adopted during the solution of conceptual physics problems. A phenomenographic research approach was adopted for this study. Three groups of participants with varying levels of physics knowledge--low, medium, and high…

This paper aims at showing the close ties between Renaissance literature and science as emerge from the use and the transformation, in a post-Copernican context, of the myth of Phaeton--according to Greek mythology: the boy who tried to conduct the chariot of the Sun and died in this attempt. G.B. Benedetti's analysis and criticism of…

A great amount of research has been carried out world-wide to promote history of science as a powerful science teaching tool. Because the ways of choosing and using historical elements depend on teachers' or researchers' educational purpose, any attempt to support a single model-to-use seems difficult and probably irrelevant. However,…

Previous research showed that primary school children held several misconceptions about genetics of concern for their future lives. Included were beliefs that genes and DNA are separate substances, with genes causing family resemblance and DNA identifying suspects at crime scenes. Responses to this work "blamed" the mass media for these…

Natural selection is one of the most famous metaphors in the history of science. Charles Darwin used the metaphor and the underlying analogy to frame his ideas about evolution and its main driving mechanism into a full-fledged theory. Because the metaphor turned out to be such a powerful epistemic tool, Darwin naturally assumed that he could also…

Although a growing number of research articles in recent years have treated the role of informal settings in science learning, the subject of the history of science in museums and its relationship to informal and non-formal education remains less well explored. The aim of this review is to assemble the studies of history of science in science…

To improve on the classic school trip to the museum and the traditional distinctions between formal and informal learning, every year we run a project where the schools (first the teachers and then the pupils) are actively involved right from the very first stages of planning. The various projects realised so far involve schools with children of…

Historians of science have recently become increasingly involved with collections and scientific instruments. This creates opportunities for a more significant role of history in museums of science, as well as more meaningful and contextualized exhibitions and educational programmes. However, complementing the mainstream focus on universal…

This work analyses the answers to a questionnaire from 8,285 in-service and pre-service teachers from 23 countries, elaborated by the Biohead-Citizen research project, to investigate teachers' conceptions related to the genetic determinism of human behaviour. A principal components analysis is used to assess the main trends in all the…

The Gravity-Powered Calculator is an exhibit of the Exploratorium in San Francisco. It is presented by its American creators as an amazing device that extracts the square roots of numbers, using only the force of gravity. But if you analyze his concept construction one can not help but recall the research of Galileo on falling bodies, the inclined…

This article will explore the intersection between "literature" and "science" in one key area, the botanical poem with scientific notes. It reveals significant aspects of the way knowledge was gendered in the Enlightenment, which is relevant to the present-day education of girls in science. It aims to illustrate how members of…

Many of the major figures in the history of science have produced literary works, but the relationship between their poetic texts and their scientific work is often underestimated. This paper illuminates the poetry of Erwin Schrödinger--one of the premier figures in twentieth-century science, and an accomplished poet in both English and his native…

Various science education researchers believe that science tuition should include some discussion about how science has developed over time. Therefore, deliberations about the nature of science should be integrated in the science curriculum. Many researchers argue that teaching the history of science is a good way to place the nature of science in…