UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN FACULTY OF SCIENCE Ida Marie Monberg Hindsholm Teaching H. C. Ørsted's Scientific Work in Danish High School Physics Masterʹs thesis Department of Science Education 19 July 2018 Master's thesis Teaching H. C. Ørsted’s Scientific Work in Danish High School Physics Submitted 19 July 2018 Author Ida Marie Monberg Hindsholm, B.Sc. E-mail [email protected] Departments Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen Department of Science Education, University of Copenhagen Main supervisor Ricardo Avelar Sotomaior Karam, Associate Professor, Department of Science Education, University of Copenhagen Co-supervisor Steen Harle Hansen, Associate Professor, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen 1 Contents 1 Introduction . 1 2 The Material: H. C. Ørsted's Work . 3 2.1 The Life of Hans Christian Ørsted . 3 2.2 Ørsted’s Metaphysical Framework: The Dynamical Sys- tem............................. 6 2.3 Ritter and the failure in Paris . 9 2.4 Ørsted’s work with acoustic and electric figures . 12 2.5 The discovery of electromagnetism . 16 2.6 What I Use for the Teaching Sequence . 19 3 Didactic Theory . 20 3.1 Constructivist teaching . 20 3.2 Inquiry Teaching . 22 3.3 HIPST . 24 4 The Purpose and Design of the Teaching Sequence . 27 4.1 Factual details and lesson plan . 28 5 Analysis of Transcripts and Writings . 40 5.1 Method of Analysis . 40 5.2 Practical Problems . 41 5.3 Reading Original Ørsted's Texts . 42 5.4 Inquiry and Experiments . 43 5.5 "Role play" - Thinking like Ørsted . 48 5.6 The Reflection Corner . 51 5.7 Evaluation: The Learning Objectives . 53 5.8 Advice for designing a sequence on HPS . 58 6 Discussion: Is Teaching HPS a Relevant Option in Danish High School Physics? . 60 6.1 My own Results . 61 6.2 The Inclusion of HPS in High School Physics . 63 7 Conclusion . 66 2 Appendices 73 A Writing Exercise 74 B Text about Ørsted's Dynamic System 75 C Experimental Guide: Voltaic Battery 77 D Ørsted’s Aesthetic 80 E Experimental Guide: Electricity and the Magnetic Needle 81 F Transcription of the Lessons 83 G Answers to Writing Exercises 111 3 Abstract There is an apparent paradox in the way the history and philosophy of science (HPS) is viewed in science teaching: On one hand it is supported by research as a central approach to teaching methodology and nature of science (NoS), but on the other hand there is very little actual implementation of HPS in science teaching on all levels. This master project is a case study in developing and teaching an HPS sequence to a Danish high school physics class, in order to find the central obstacles and advantages that this approach has. The aim of the sequence is to shift focus in physics teaching from facts and finished models to science as a process, and thereby to teach the students a more nuanced view on how scientific knowledge is created. The theoretical basis is a constructivist view on learning and an inquiry based approach to experiments. The project is inspired by the results and strategies of a large European research project on HPS (HIPST) and uses concrete strategies from this project, where emphasis is laid on experimental work, reconstruction of historical apparatus, and interpreting data in rela- tion to a specific philosophical framework. I have chosen the case of H. C. Ørsted’s scientific work as content, focusing on his experimental work and metaphysical ideas about electricity. H. C. Ørsted was guided by romanti- cism and Naturphilosophie in all of his scientific research, and through his career he experienced failures and mistakes before his great success in dis- covering electromagnetism, which makes him very suitable for the aim of my sequence. I have undertaken a qualitative analysis of transcripts of the lessons and of open writing exercises given to the students before and after the sequence. Based on the results from this I conclude that the overall idea of using HPS to teach about the NoS aspects is fully applicable and that the strategies presented by HIPST were mostly effective for the students' learning and reflection about science. A point to be improved in future use of the sequence was that it did not stress the importance of mathematical descriptions in science. In the end, I discuss how HPS can play a bigger role in Danish high school teaching in general. The main suggestion is that the curriculum could support this more fully by presenting ideas for concrete implementation of HPS. 1 Introduction In Denmark as well as in most European countries, history and philosophy of science (HPS) is not a field that takes up a lot of space in high school cur- ricula and textbooks. According to larger studies in this area (see H¨ottecke and Silva 2011 [1]) there are several reasons for this, many of which relate to tradition and subject culture: Many science teachers have never been edu- cated in HPS, and they tend to view it as a peripheral part of their subject that should not take time from the modern factual explanations of specific scientific phenomena. There are, however, according to research in didactics important things to be gained from implementing a historic and philosophic view in science teaching. Many researchers in science education have argued (see for instance [2{4]) that HPS is a fruitful approach to teaching and learning about the aspects of science that are not hard facts and mathematical models, but related to processes and methodology. And recently the European project HIPST (History and Philosophy in Science Teaching) has aimed at providing research based tools and teaching material in the field of HPS through several case studies in 8 different countries. The project presented in this thesis is a case study inspired by HIPST. I have developed and tested a teaching sequence about the scientific work of Hans Christian Ørsted to a b-level physics class in high school, in order to examine the central obstacles and advantages that this approach has in physics teaching. The sequence is centred around the question: How is scien- tific knowledge created?. The students have reflected on this general question through repetition and interpretation of H. C. Ørsted’s most important ex- periments, with the objective of giving them a more nuanced understanding of the scientific process and methodology - especially in physics. The hope is that the students after the sequence will view physics not as the collection of facts and finished models that they are often presented to in class, but also as a process. A process of mistakes and blind-alleys which is constantly interacting with society and culture. Based on the results from HIPST I propose the idea that a historic case study is an effective way to study these aspects of physics which are all related to what is often called "the nature of science" (NoS). From a constructivist perspective, scientists and students are in similar situations: They want to discover a certain knowledge which is often related to a specific problem. But traditional content focused teaching (in the worst case) tends to give the final answer to the problem before the students have had a chance of discovering anything. Instead they are left to do "cookbook" experiments where they follow a given procedure to obtain a knowledge they had already 1 been told beforehand. This way they learn nothing about how the scientific process actually works, and the school subject becomes very different to the research subject. As opposed to this approach, the historic case study shows the process of scientific discovery and even lets the students participate in it as they follow in the tracks of a working scientist. The choice of H.C. Ørsted as case has several reasons. Firstly, he is an example of a scientist who was devoted to a very specific philosophical viewpoint (romanticism) which guided him in all of his research and was perhaps the cause of both his biggest mistakes and his main achievement of discovering electromagnetism. This makes him suitable for studying the relationship between science and culture as well as the important roles of mistakes in physics. Secondly he is one of the most famous Danes worldwide but at the same time he is rather underexposed in Danish culture and most people know nothing about him apart from his discovery of electromagnetism. Thirdly, his experiments are not technically challenging and do not demand rare equipment which make them easy to repeat with the students. Apart from this he was simply a fascinating character who viewed science and the physical world in a way which seems extremely strange today, but did turn out to be very productive anyway. In my design of the teaching sequence I intend to incorporate these central aspects of Ørsted’s work in student centred activities such as group discus- sions, experimenting and reading of Ørsted’s original publications. My basic viewpoint in this design is constructivism as an approach to describe and understand the learning process. More specifically this means that I have used different inquiry-strategies in my design and focused on activities that allow the students to generate their own knowledge through interaction with didactical milieu. In this thesis I start out by presenting Ørsted’s philosophy and work in section 2 since it is the foundation of the material and probably not very well known by most physics teachers. In section 3 I describe constructivism and the inquiry approach to learning, followed by an introduction to the more concrete strategies proposed by the HIPST project. In section 4 I provide a detailed overview of the purpose and design of the sequence lesson by lesson, including the didactic considerations.