“It's a lot of people in different places working on many ideas”: Possibilities from global history of science to Learning about nature of science

Abstract

This article describes a teaching experience at an year 8 classroom (students aged 12–13) in a state secondary school in London, UK that aimed at widening learning about nature of science (NOS) with the input from the field of Global History of Science (HOS), which looks at science as a product of material and cognitive exchanges, appropriations and collaborations. Teaching and learning plans (TLPs) informed by this historical framework were developed by the researcher and one science teacher to integrate NOS teaching into fours topics from the national science curriculum in England (Medicines, Magnetism, Evolution, and Earth's resources). These TLPs were taught by the participant teacher to his year 8 classroom (26 boys and girls of mixed‐abilities) throughout one school year, and the researcher investigated the impact of the global HOS framework on widening students' views about NOS. Data were collated with the help of students' NOS diaries, group mind maps, classroom observations, and an open‐ended NOS questionnaire applied at the start and end of the school year, complemented by participant students' grades in their end‐of‐year exam. Main findings point to the widening of participant students' views about NOS and, more specifically, about underexplored relevant social‐institutional aspects of scientific development, such as diversity and intercultural collaborations and exchanges, exploitation of natural resources, financial, ethical, and political aspects around scientific work. Students were also generally successful in re‐applying NOS ideas explored in one TLP to other TLPs and scientific contexts, hinting to the importance of employing overarching narratives (such those promoted by Global HOS), linking different scientific development, when planning the integration of NOS into the school science. Results also show that NOS was integrated into content teaching without negative effects in students' exam grades.

Decolonising the science curriculum in England: Bringing decolonial science and technology studies to secondary education

“…First, among the potentialities of the proposed 'decolonial' approach to science curricula there was its affordances to the integration of both the products (content) and the processes and attitudes involved in scientific/technological developments (NOS), a well-known challenge in school science (Reiss, 2018), where views of it as a dichotomy between content and NOS still persist, with the latter usually seen as an 'add-on'. The historical-epistemological stance adopted in this study-an intercultural model of HOS that looks at knowledge and process as inherently linked-coupled with storyline/integrated strategies seem to have allowed for their more natural connection, without competing for space in the official curriculum, while also resulting in the participant students' exam marks being above school A's average that year (Gandolfi, 2020b). Future studies could further explore how these strategies may translate to different school systems and science curricula, including to year groups taking part in high-stake examinations, such as the GCSEs and A-levels in England.…”

“…Some of these perspectives have already been further explored elsewhere: specific reflections about the nature of this researcher-teacher partnership-for instance, around its impact on the teacher's professional growth and curricular agency, and my position as a research subject-can be found in Gandolfi (2020a). In turn, its implications for students' learning and engagement with school science have been analysed in Gandolfi (2020b). Here I will focus on another, but interrelated, angle of educational practice-the curriculum-exploring what a decolonial approach based on the intercultural model of HOS can look like in the context of the secondary school science in England, addressing the following questions: 'how can science teachers decolonise mainstream science curricula such as the National Curriculum in England with inputs from the STS field?…”

“…There were, of course, some tensions faced throughout this experience, such as managing behaviour and time constraints that occasionally hindered Ian's and his students' more in-depth discussions of a specific task/example (Gandolfi, 2020a). Nevertheless, his self-perceived successful experience in engaging his students (and himself) with more critical takes on how scientific/technological developments happen at local and global levels (Gandolfi, 2020a(Gandolfi, , 2020b highlights that more than 'convincing' practitioners of the importance of 'decolonising the curriculum', we need to collaboratively work on different ways to: 1. understand the decolonisation of the curriculum as a practical (and not simply rhetorical) enterprise and 2. promote practitioners' agency in this process by placing them in a central position as (decolonial) curriculum-makers (Priestley & Biesta, 2013).…”

Looking back at “our science” and “our history”: an exploration of Korean preservice science teachers’ encounters with East Asian history of science

“…Yet the social, historical, and cultural contexts that surround East Asian science were felt more comfortable and meaningful to the PSTs. This resonates with Gandolfi's (2020b) argument that considering global history of science can promote learners' knowledge in social and cultural aspects of science. From a postcolonial view, experiences such as this can prompt critical reflection on the Eurocentric view of science created and perpetuated by the science curriculum and provide an opportunity to adapting science teaching to be culturally responsive (Medin and Bang 2014).…”

“…(Fan 2012, p. 251). Gandolfi's (2020b) study is an example of how global history of science can help to rethink the "science" in what we call the nature of science (NOS) and help to deepen NOS understanding. In one of the modules that she implemented with a secondary school teacher in England, they used a narrative that the compass was first invented in ancient China and then was spread to Europe through the Silk Road.…”