Constructivism in Science Education and a HPS&ST Roadmap

Abstract

This chapter describes my first encounters with constructivism in the science education community, the topic being elaborated by Ernst von Glasersfeld in a plenary lecture at a NARST meeting. I identified it as updated Bishop Berkeley’s radical empiricism. Apart from philosophical criticism, the deficiency of construc- tivism as a teaching method is documented. My two-year period (1992–1993) as foundation professor of science education at University of Auckland is elaborated, including a significant national debate with New Zealand’s powerful constructivist lobby. The origins and contents of the 1994 Routledge Science Teaching: The Contri- bution ofHistory and Philosophy ofScience are given; and its functioning as some- what of a ‘roadmap’ for the discipline, being translated into five languages and reis- sued 20 years later in a revised and updated edition. My pendulum studies (a book and papers), and the large International Pendulum Project and subsequent anthology, are outlined. These demonstrate that HPS can enliven and transform even the most routine topics in science programmes.