The family resemblance approach to nature of science is receiving increasing attention by science educators since its inception about a decade ago. Many scholars of science education have contributed and continue to contribute to it not only theoretically but also by applying it empirically to a wide range of areas such as curriculum and textbook…

In this article, we discuss the replication of a forgotten chemical instrument in the context of undergraduate chemistry education. Together with students, we have attempted to replicate an eighteenth century "eudiometrical" procedure. Eudiometry was the practice of measuring the "goodness" of the air by looking at the volume…

The objective of this work was the theoretical modeling of a construct based on teaching practice about the perception that pupils have of difficulties in problem solving (PS) in experimental sciences, specifically physics, to predict pupil performance in PS. The research was carried out with an incidental sample of second year of secondary…

There has been growing criticism over the aims, methods, and contents of practical work in school science, particularly concerning their tendency to oversimplify the scientific practice with focus on the hypothesis-testing function of experiments. In this article, we offer a reading of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's scientific writings--particularly…

Practicing scientists' views of science recently have become a topic of interest to nature of science researchers. Using an interview protocol developed by Carey and Smith that assumes respondents' views cohere into a single belief system, we asked 15 research chemists to discuss their views of theories and experimentation. Respondents expressed a…

The language of physics is mathematics, and physics ideas, laws and models describing phenomena are usually represented in mathematical form. Therefore, an understanding of how to navigate between phenomena and the models representing them in mathematical form is important for a physics teacher so that the teacher can make physics understandable…

Carl Erich Correns (1864-1933) is remembered in the annals of science as one of the three botanists who re-discovered Mendel's laws. He can also, however, be regarded as one of the founding figures of classical genetics in Germany. Between 1894 and 1899 he carried out the crossing experiments with corn and peas that led to the re-statement of…

Numerous empirical studies have provided evidence of the effectiveness of an explicit and reflective approach to the learning of issues associated with the nature of science (NOS) (c.f. Abd-El-Khalick and Lederman in "J Res Sci Teach" 37(10):1057-1095, 2000). This essay reports the results of a mixed-methods association study involving…

This historical narrative describes the foundation of education as established by J. A. Comenius (1592-1670). It explores the transfer of Comenius' tenets, utilized and modified through the years, up to their impact upon the ground-breaking experiments of G. Mendel (1822-1884), "the father of genetics". It explores the questions of…

Science textbooks and classes mostly emphasize what are considered by today's standards the "right" or "correct" interpretations of particular phenomena or processes. When "incorrect" ideas of the past are mentioned at all, it is simply to point out their errors, with little attention as to why the ideas were put…

Books I and III of Newton's "Principia" develop Newton's dynamical theory and show how it explains a number of celestial phenomena. Book II has received little attention from historians or educators because it does not play a major role in Newton's argument. However, it is in Book II that we see most clearly Newton both as a theoretician and an…

In this paper, we present a multi-dimensional study concerning Heisenberg's "gamma ray microscope", a thought experiment, which is intimately connected with the historical development of quantum mechanics (QM), and also with the most disputed interpretations of quantum theory. In this study: (a) we investigate how philosophers of science read and…

Teaching Newtonian physics involves the replacement of students' ideas about physical situations with precise concepts appropriate for mathematical applications. This paper focuses on the concepts of "matter" and "mass". We suggest that students, like some pre-Newtonian scientists we examine, use these terms in a way that conflicts with their…

Piaget's investigations into children's understanding of the laws governing the movement of a simple pendulum were first reported in 1955 as part of a report into how children's knowledge of the physical world changes during development. Chapter 4 of Inhelder & Piaget (1955/1958) entitled "The Oscillation of a Pendulum and the Operations of…

Ignoring the role of chance in science distorts the nature of the scientific process. Teachers can address this issue by means of several in-depth historical case studies, such as the discovery of electromagnetism by Oersted. Oersted was led to his lecture experiment by logic (two new hypotheses), but its success from the first trial was largely…