In praise of a historical storytelling approach in science education

Description

In the 1970s and 1980s, the use of history of science in science education was a controversial topic. In the three last decades attitudes have changed, but the best practice question has not been definitively answered: what type of historical knowledge should be incorporated in pedagogical contexts, and how? In this communication, I discuss features of historically-informed narratives that are suitable for teaching science from upper secondary education on, by explaining cases that I have been developing in my field of expertise, the history of biology. I argue that such narratives should focus on the evolution of fundamental concepts and theories in a given scientific discipline, not the life and work of one or few scientists; that a story’s historical content must be carefully selected and heavily contextualized in order to serve pedagogical needs; and that storytelling techniques should be actively used to motivate students. A central part of such historical storytelling approach is not to reduce science to the research of scientific “giants,” but rather to contextualize their proposals by showing how their work relied on the contributions of people who have been relegated to the category of “dwarfs,” or even forgotten.

Period	29 Jul 2021
Event title	26th International Congress of History of Science and Technology: Giants and Dwarfs in Science, Technology and Medicine
Event type	Conference
Conference number	26th
Location	Prague, Czech RepublicShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International