Case Studies from the History of Science in Science Education: a Field Research in Italy

Title: Case Studies from the History of Science in Science Education: a Field Research in Italy Authors: Liborio Dibattista, Francesca Morgese Affiliation: Interdipartment Centre of History of Science, University of Bari "Aldo Moro", Italy Topic: Case Studies in STEM Education Abstract According to definition of Arthur Stinner about case studies in science education: “case studies are historical contexts with one unifying idea designed according to the guidelines for writing a large context problem”. The main idea of the case-study must be an important idea for science, but also a significant idea for the world in which the students live in order to capture their attention and imagination, so it is necessary to propose a story, a scientific narrative, that can shed some light on this fundamental idea, through the dramatization of biographical episodes, either of famous debates or retracing the theme through the centuries and showing the various interpretations within the scientific conceptions of subsequent epochs or different geographical regions. Current views on the nature of learning have made in-depth reflections on storytelling as a learning tool in educational contexts and on the ways in which storytelling can be used to facilitate student learning and critical thinking skills. Many authors have suggested storytelling as a means of making sense of experience and have pointed out some strong links between reflection, learning and storytelling in education. Storytelling is gaining popularity in education as a result of the fact that it seems to be capable of making learning meaningful and achieving important learning outcomes, such as the ability to reflect, to generalise, and to evaluate. We agree that the true winning move, from a didactic point of view, is that the history of science enables us to tell stories. The infinite stories of scientists and of their controversies are an inexhaustible mine of narrative ideas that have an undeniable advantage: they help to keep the students’ attention. Starting from these assumptions, we designed a field study to test the feasibility of the case studies in the classroom to foster learning of science and NoS (Nature of Science). So, the goals of our study was the following: · to test a research model that would involve high school teachers and university professors in the planning and creation of teaching units which use case studies from the history of science and the epistemology of science to teach scientific disciplines; · to stress the importance of an inquiry based approach oriented towards issues regarding NoS (Nature of Science), thanks to the history of science; · to produce evidence that this approach is effective in achieving a higher level of interest in scientific subjects on the part of learners. The project, which we called “The History of Science goes to School”, ran into junior and senior high school classrooms in Puglia (Italy), at the beginning of the 2009-2010 school year. The project was the final stage of an awareness campaign that has been conducted by our research institute for several years with the secondary school science teachers in our region. The first step we undertook was to plan and implement a series of meetings in the schools in which we wanted to propose the study. Twenty-four teachers participated in the project (11 from junior high schools, 13 from senior high schools). At these meetings, we illustrated the particular modalities, case studies methodology, with which we would present the history of science in the classroom and the benefits that we hoped the learners and the teachers would enjoy. The next step was the preparation, by the teachers of the schools participating in the project, of the case studies that they intended to present to their classes, adopting the historical-philosophical method that we proposed. In this phase, the university researchers acted as tutors to the school teachers insofar as the teaching units were proposed by the teachers, but were developed with the help of the university researchers. The fifteen case studies built in the previous phase were carried out in the classroom in the first two months of the 2009-2010 school year. Each teacher evaluated the impact of this approach on the cognitive gains made by the students, as well as any change in their feelings about studying scientific disciplines. Finally, a satisfaction questionnaire was administered to the classes which then participated in a final workshop during which there was a presentation of student work and of the opinions of both students and teachers on the perceived significance of the project. The project ended in November 2011. The sample consisted in 418 students, 225 (54%) from junior high schools and 193 (46%) from senior high schools. The division by gender was: 198 male (47%) and 220 female (53%). The degree of participation and involvement recorded through this kind of presentation turned out to be very high. In general, the historical-philosophical approach has proven itself to be more appealing than a “dogmatic” lesson. This aspect needs to be highlighted since one of the critical points about students' perception of science concerns the way in which scientific disciplines are presented at school. The students have acquired a sense of awareness about the “life” of scientific theories: they come to light, they are modified, they mature and they die, over the course of history. The teachers and learners verified the acquisition of curricular notions and contents presented through this didactic proposal. Finally, it is important to underline the effectiveness of the collaboration between university and high schools: the high school teachers were extremely positive about the proposal by the university. The university researchers were able to have firsthand experience with the difficulty of translating into real teaching practice the proposals that scientific and pedagogical research produce. In this way, a collaborative space was created in which the innovative contents proposed by science historians were inserted into the good teaching practices of the teachers, with their pedagogical skills.