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Informal Science Education in the Footsteps of Galileo's Dialogue

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Informal Science Education in the Footsteps of Galileo's Dialogue Advances in Historical Studies, 2019, 8, 175-191 https://www.scirp.org/journal/ahs ISSN Online: 2327-0446 ISSN Print: 2327-0438 Informal Science Education in the Footsteps of Galileo’s Dialogue Constantina Stefanidou1, Maria Panagopoulou2 1Department of Education, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece 2Department of Physics, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece How to cite this paper: Stefanidou, C., & Abstract Panagopoulou, M. (2019). Informal Science Education in the Footsteps of Galileo’s In this paper, the inclusion of History and Philosophy of Science in non-formal Dialogue. Advances in Historical Studies, 8, and informal science education is proposed in order to provide students with 175-191. the opportunity to grasp some aspects of Nature of Science with which they https://doi.org/10.4236/ahs.2019.85013 are not familiarized in the context of formal education. The cultural aspects Received: July 15, 2019 of science, which is an important component of scientific literacy, are pre- Accepted: November 3, 2019 sented in an informal education context: in this case, a Science Festival. An Published: November 6, 2019 interactively narrative inspired by Galileo’s Dialogue is used in order to en- gage junior high school students with History of Science and to enhance their Copyright © 2019 by author(s) and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. conceptual understanding of cultural aspects of science. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International Keywords License (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Galileo, Science Festival, Informal Science Education Open Access 1. Introduction History and Philosophy of Science (HPS) in science teaching has a long history. The main arguments for its inclusion are that HPS fosters a deeper understand- ing of: 1) the subject matter, meaning that the History of Science (HOS) may re- veal the important context of the fragments of knowledge in question; 2) how learning in science education relates to the growth of scientific knowledge; and 3) the Nature of Science (NOS), in terms of methodological, philosophical and cultural aspects of science (Matthews, 2015; Stefanidou & Skordoulis, 2014; Ste- fanidou & Skordoulis, 2017). The goal of science education globally today is scientific literacy. Along with other ideas about science, scientific literacy implies that students should have a concrete idea of “how science works”. Learning “how science works” means teaching and learning scientific practices, some of them which will result in er- DOI: 10.4236/ahs.2019.85013 Nov. 6, 2019 175 Advances in Historical Studies C. Stefanidou, M. Panagopoulou roneous results. In other words, “how science works” is strongly related to “how science does not work”. HPS provides us with numerous historical cases which illustrate that science is fallible, contingent and provisional. Studying certain historical episodes fosters the students’ understanding not only of the suggested scientific practices, but also of what can go wrong in science (Allchin, 2012). Scientific controversies are a way of introducing students to real-life scientific situations and allowing them to take the initiative in believing some things to be true and others erroneous. The HOS has been recommended by many educators as a way of motivating students to learn subjects regarded as difficult, changing the public perception of scientists, encouraging informed participation in decisions about the uses to which technology is put, and conveying an appreciation of science as an element of culture. These issues have arisen in the context of growing concern about the quality and effectiveness of education (Brush, 1989). Furthermore, it is widely believed that individual learning histories in science tend to mirror the historical development of scientific concepts (Hodson, 2008). It is thus logical to argue that knowledge of the historical development of a scientific discipline can help teachers as much as students, since they can anticipate, understand and deal with any conceptual difficulties and misconceptions, their students might have more easily (Sequeira & Leite, 1991; Hodson, 2008). The historical approach is both intriguing and comforting: it helps students to discover that eminent scien- tists of the past held views similar to their own, even if these views were later shown to be incorrect (Hodson, 2008). HOS also forces students to engage with the origins of our knowledge, the reasons it may be accepted or rejected, and the impact of certain scientific theories and ideas on the culture in which it arose (Cassidy et al., 2002). In the extensive literature review undertaken by Seroglou & Koumaras (2001), research papers related to HPS in science education conducted between 1893 and 2000 are categorized. Three main dimensions emerged: the cognitive, the metacognitive and the emotional; two further categories relate to, respectively, curricula development and teacher education. The research revealed that since 1965, there has been a gradual shift in the focus of research interest from the cognitive to the metacognitive. Such a shift parallels the discussion on the teaching of the NOS and the relationship between science and society. Chasapi (2018) in her thesis recorded and categorized published research pa- pers from 2000-2017 relating to the role of HPS in science education. The study confirmed previous results regarding the dominant role which HPS plays in teaching the cultural and methodological aspects of science, and shed light on other aspects of the relationship between HPS and science education, such as the fact that most published research stems from secondary education, with primary and higher education less active in the field. This raises the issue of science teacher education on HPS topics, which is integral to the integration of HPS into science classes. Another finding of Chasapi’s (2018) research is the fact that the DOI: 10.4236/ahs.2019.85013 176 Advances in Historical Studies C. Stefanidou, M. Panagopoulou overwhelming majority of proposals focus on formal science education, at both the level of practice and of curriculum design. Very few of the proposals relate to the role of HPS in informal and non-formal science education, meaning science as it is presented in museums, theatres, films, science festivals and popular science books. Filippoupoliti & Koliopoulos, too, mention that the study of the role of the HOS in informal and non-formal science education is heterogeneous and fragmentary and find a need for new research questions to be raised and new lines of research constructed to investigate the subject in a more systematic way. This suggests a need to conduct research into the integration of HPS into activities outside the organized educational system; for instance, we are aware of the value of museums visits, in terms both of knowledge content and of moti- vating and fostering positive attitudes towards the natural sciences (Filippoupo- liti & Koliopoulos, 2014). Regarding the research field in Greece, Skordoulis & Stefanidou (2011) in their paper “Epistemological Aspects of the Historiography of Science in Greece”, present the context in which History and Philosophy of Science and Science Teaching (HPST) developed in Greek academia. It is a firm belief for scholars in the Department of Primary Education of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens that only a process of systematic teacher education and training on both undergraduate and postgraduate level in history, epistemology and didactics of science linked with research work on the conditions that have shaped the educational environment from the 19th century onwards and in constant dialogue with the international community holding similar views can create fertile ground for the success of the HPST Program. The present study is developed within this framework and its purpose is, after almost twenty years of research activity to formal education, to expand the role of history and philosophy of science in informal and non-formal science educa- tion. To this end, our aim here is to draw attention to the role that HPS could play in informal and non-formal education, and particularly in the context of the Athens Science Festival, which is an important and established event in Greece. This study has the characteristics of a case study and aims at broadening the role of HPS in informal and non-formal science education. In this context, an inter- active dialogue was designed and presented which follows the steps of Galileo Galilei and his book Dialogue Concerning the two chief world systems (Dialo- gue). In Section 2, informal and non-formal educations are presented with a focus on their possible contribution to formal science education and general scientific literacy. In Section 3, we briefly present the Science Festival as an emerging in- stitution, while in Section 4, the role of HPS in informal and non-formal educa- tion (primarily in science museums and science centers) is presented. Section 5 is devoted to Galileo Galilei and the Dialogue, for the writing of which he found himself before the Inquisition. In Section 6, the educational program is pre- sented and discussed. Section 7 presents the implications for further research. DOI: 10.4236/ahs.2019.85013 177 Advances in Historical Studies C. Stefanidou, M. Panagopoulou 2. Formal, Non-Formal and Informal Science Learning: Towards a Synthesis Out-of-school learning can be divided into two categories: non-formal
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