Science education in the historical study of the sciences

Abstract

Historians of science have treated the history of primary, secondary, tertiary, and popular science education, although overall the collective scholarship on these issues remains sparse in comparison to other topics in the history of science. Guided at first by the conceptual frameworks of Thomas Kuhn and Michel Foucault, this literature has moved beyond them to embrace a broader methodological pluralism. This essay examines areas where the scholarship on the history of science education is most developed: the history of tertiary science education and of pedagogical practices in professional settings. Here historians of science have focused mainly on scientific textbooks; science pedagogy, or how science is taught and learned; pedagogical practices in generational reproduction; and finally the political, social, and economic dimensions of science education. The essay concludes by considering how an emerging area of general historical scholarship, the history of the senses, offers an opportunity to add a new dimension to the history of science education.