History and the relationship between scientific and pedagogical knowledge: anatomy lectures then and now

Abstract

In recent years, school science has been the target of increasing critique for two reasons. On the one hand, it is said to enforce ‘epic’ images of science that celebrate the heroes and heroic deeds that established the scientific canon and its methods and thereby falsifies the history and nature of science. On the other hand, the sciences are presented as objective, making factual statements independent of location and time—a claim that runs counter to the current mainstream canon of scientific knowledge as socially and individually constructed. In this article, we suggest that contexts leading to new scientific knowledge make science objective and subjective simultaneously. Our approach, which focuses on the performative dimensions of (school) science, works to overcome the distinctions between knowledge and knowing and the associated distinction between theory and practice. We show the significance of the performative dimension through a comparison of anatomy lectures and texts from the 17^th century and in present-day biology classrooms. We underscore the need to retain and investigate the historical connections between the founding of (scientific) knowledge and its present-day form taught in schools.

Keywords:

• objectivity
• subjectivity
• performativity
• science history

Acknowledgements

Grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada supported the collection of the data. We are grateful to our research assistants at the time, Lilian Pozzer-Ardenghi and Diego Ardenghi, for their help in establishing the database.

Notes

1. An import from the German language, the prefix ur- stands for ‘original’, ‘earliest’, or ‘primitive’.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Wolff-Michael Roth

Wolff-Michael Roth is Lansdowne Professor of applied cognitive science at the University of Victoria, MacLaurin Building, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC V8W 3N4, Canada;

Norm Friesen

Norm Friesen is Canada Research Chair in E-Learning Practices at Thompson Rivers University, 900 McGill Rd. Kamloops, British Columbia Canada V2C 5N3;