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Teaching the Nature of Science from a Philosophical Perspective Yvonne Lampert 1 # Springer Nature B.V. 2020

Abstract

This paper draws attention to basic philosophical perspectives which are of theoretical and methodological interest for science education, general education and curriculum research. It focuses on potential contributions philosophy class can offer if philosophy education opens up for science and for a collaboration of teachers in the context of postcompulsory education. A central educational goal is to connect basic philosophical skills with any curricular intellectual practice. This implies the possibility of crossing disciplinary boundaries. Hence, the present paper questions the disciplinary rigidity of education and aims at bridging the artificial gap between teaching philosophy and teaching science in order to enrich the individual school subjects involved. Towards this end, this article sketches out a conceptual framework for the issue of interdisciplinarity with regard to philosophy and science in upper secondary school. This framework takes into account aspects of the nature of science (NOS), history and philosophy of science (HPS) and the critical thinking approach which have significant implications for teaching. It aims to facilitate a basic understanding of the significant positive impact philosophy could have on improving scientific literacy as well as decision-making in general. I set forth methods of cross-curricular teaching which can promote innovation in education as interdisciplinarity already does in research since there is growing appreciation of collaboration and partnership between philosophy and science.

1 Introduction Science always had a profound impact on the course of development of philosophical thought, and this influence had been reciprocal. The divorce between philosophy and science has been mainly a trend in the nineteenth century and holds on in teaching at university and school. Apart from ethical issues, science in school has been studied without much attention to

* Yvonne Lampert [email protected]

1

Ministry of Schools and Vocational Education, Department of Education, Hamburg, Germany

Y. Lampert

philosophical questions to which science gives rise. On the other hand, philosophy class is rarely concerned with questions about how science works. However, research relating the impact of history and philosophy of science to pedagogical issues and science classroom has had a long tradition in the English-speaking world (cf., e.g., Matthews 2014a, 2014c, 2018, ix and Höttecke and Silva 2011, 293f.). The core idea is to improve students’ understanding of the nature of science (NOS). It pertains to the epistemology, history and sociology of science. The International History, Philosophy and Science Teaching Group (IHPST) aims at making HPS “a more routine and expected part of science and mathematics teaching, teacher education and graduate research programmes” (Matthews 2014c, 7). Matthews stresses the idea that “to educate someone in any discipline re