This article focuses on the impact of a professional play that we developed in order to introduce elementary learners of an urban school to the research of a scientist working at a local university. The play was written in a way that might increase student understandings of the nature of science, scientific inquiry, the identity of scientists, and…

In the course of the 18th century a new type of scientifically educated functional elites developed, who were trained to administer mines. The educational project that led to the formation of a corps of mining engineers was part of a programme of administrative and economic reforms that led to a new configuration of bonds between state, economy…

This essay contributes to a recent strain of research that questions clear-cut dichotomies between "scientists" and "artisans" in the early modern period. With a focus on the exploitation of agrarian resources, it argues for the appreciation of a more complex panorama of intersecting knowledge systems spanning from botany as…

What can physics students learn about science from those scientists who got the answers wrong? Your students probably have encountered little science history. What they have encountered probably has portrayed scientists as "The People with the Right Answers." But those who got the wrong answers can teach students that in science, answers are often…

This month, the "Journal of Web Librarianship" is exploring the idea of data curation and its uses in libraries. The word "data" is as universal now as the word "cloud" was last year, and it is no accident that libraries are exploring how best to support data curation services. Data curation involves library activities in just about every way,…

Even long before children are able to verbalize which careers may be interesting to them, they collect and store ideas about scientists. For these reasons, asking children to draw a scientist has become an accepted method to provide a glimpse into how children represent and identify with those in the science fields. Years later, these…

This article features the project, "Build Your Own Particle Smasher" and shares how to build a particle smasher project. A-level and AS-level students from Trinity Catholic School have built their own particle smashers, in collaboration with Nottingham Trent University, as part of The Royal Society's Partnership Grants Scheme. The…

Invasive alien species (IAS) cause major environmental and economic damage worldwide, and also threaten human food security and health. The impacts of IAS are expected to rise with continued globalization, land use modification, and climate change. Developing effective strategies to deal with IAS requires a collaborative, interdisciplinary…

Studies of the socialization of novices into scientific cultures typically emphasize official knowledge-making activities. However, scientific socialization is also accomplished informally through humor. As entextualized humor, formulaic jokes enable U.S. undergraduate students in science to claim scientist identities both through a displayed…

Community colleges increase college access, extending postsecondary educational opportunities to underserved students, yet, these students exhibit low rates of program completion and transfer to 4-year colleges. Sociological research on community colleges focuses on the tension between increasing educational opportunity and failing to improve…

Despite a growing consensus regarding the value of inquiry-based learning (IBL) for students' learning and engagement in the science classroom, the implementation of such practices continues to be a challenge. If science teachers are to use IBL to develop students' inquiry practices and encourage them to think and act as scientists, a better…

This article describes how selected nonfiction science books can be read as mystery stories featuring people confronting problems, gathering evidence, tossing aside preconceived ideas when necessary, and finding solutions.

The current work examines whether a brief exposure to a computer science role model who fits stereotypes of computer scientists has a lasting influence on women's interest in the field. One-hundred undergraduate women who were not computer science majors met a female or male peer role model who embodied computer science stereotypes in appearance…

The concept of innateness appears in systematic research within cognitive science, but it also appears in less systematic modes of thought that long predate the scientific study of the mind. The present studies therefore explore the relationship between the properly scientific uses of this concept and its role in ordinary folk understanding.…

In this paper, I describe the strong and reciprocal relations between the emergence of the specialized expert in the natural sciences and the establishment of science education, in early Modern Greece. Accordingly, I show how science and public education interacted within the Greek state from its inception in the early 1830, to the first decade of…