Constantine Skordoulis
Hellenic Open University, School of Science and Technology, Tutor in History of Science, Epistemology and Didactical Methodology
Constantine Skordoulis is Professor of Physics & Epistemology of Science and Director of the Science Education Laboratory at the Department of Education, University of Athens, Greece. He has studied Physics at the University of Kent at Canterbury, UK and has worked as a Visiting Scholar at the Universities of Oxford (UK), Jena (Germany) and Groningen (The Netherlands).
He is :
(i) Secretary of the Teaching Commission of the Division of History of Science and Technology of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science
(ii) Member of the Council of the European Society for History of Science, and also
(iii) Effective Member of the International Academy of History of Science
He is co-Editor of “Almagest / International Journal for the History of Scientific Ideas” (Brepols) and “Kritiki: Journal of Critical Science & Education” (Nissos Pbl) and member of the Editorial Board of the journals: “International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences” (CG Publishers), "Journal of Critical Education Policy Studies", "Advances in Historical Research", "Green Theory and Praxis". He has published extensively on issues of “History of Science” and “Environmental Science Education” with a critical perspective.
Address: National & Kapodistrian University of Athens
School of Education
13A Navarinou St.,
Athens 10680
Greece
He is :
(i) Secretary of the Teaching Commission of the Division of History of Science and Technology of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science
(ii) Member of the Council of the European Society for History of Science, and also
(iii) Effective Member of the International Academy of History of Science
He is co-Editor of “Almagest / International Journal for the History of Scientific Ideas” (Brepols) and “Kritiki: Journal of Critical Science & Education” (Nissos Pbl) and member of the Editorial Board of the journals: “International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences” (CG Publishers), "Journal of Critical Education Policy Studies", "Advances in Historical Research", "Green Theory and Praxis". He has published extensively on issues of “History of Science” and “Environmental Science Education” with a critical perspective.
Address: National & Kapodistrian University of Athens
School of Education
13A Navarinou St.,
Athens 10680
Greece
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Papers by Constantine Skordoulis
during the Ottoman domination, focusing on the secondary schools and the scholars who introduced the experimental methodology in the late eighteenth century. In our analysis, the role of the scholar–teacher and his textbook are central
to the adaptation and appropriation of the new scientific culture based on experiments and the experimental method. Furthermore, our analysis of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Greek physics textbooks focuses on what we term ‘iconic experiments’ (experiments performed by famous European scientists), since they constitute one of the main channels through which European experimental tradition was transferred to the Greek speaking regions. Throughout this paper, the teaching of the new science of ‘Newtonianism’ is associated with
the ideas of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, and is considered to have paved the way for the liberation of the Greek population from the Ottoman Empire."
The learning subject, upon interacting with the User’s Interface of NetLogo, can easily study properties of the simulated natural systems, as well as observe the latter’s response, when altering their parameters. In this research, NetLogo was used under the perspective that the learning subject (student or prospective teacher) interacts with the model in a deeper way, obtaining the “role” of an “agent”.
This is not achieved by obliging the learner to program (write NetLogo code) but by interviewing them, together with “applying” the choices that he/she makes on the model. The scheme was carried out, as part of a broader research, with interviews, and web-page-like interface menu selections, in a sample of 17 University students in Athens (prospective Primary School teachers) and the results were judged as encouraging. At a further stage, the computers were set as a network, where all the agents performed together. In this way the learners could watch onscreen the overall outcome of their choices and actions on the modeled ecosystem. This seems to open a new – small – area of research in NetLogo educational applications.
Eighteen pre-service teachers of primary education took part in the investigation. In order to collect the data, experimental interviews, a so called “teaching experiment”, were used. The analysis of the data shows that it is possible to guide teachers-students to the idea of the limited predictability of deterministic chaotic systems. Conceptions about the connection of determinism and predictability as well as of chance and non-predictability cause some difficulties.
a) the period of “antiglobalization” mobilizations signified by the activities of the World and European Social Forums which started with the movement of the Euromarches against unemployment in 1997, culminated with the huge demonstrations in Genoa in 2001 and lasted through a series of summits and conferences till 2008 and
b) the period of “antiausterity” mobilizations, the struggle against the dictatorship of the bankers and the international corporations which started with the “Occupy Movement”, was inspired by the Arab Spring (the mobilizations in Tahrir Squre etc) and continued with the mobilizations against the troika (IMF, EU, ECB) in the European South.
Derek Hodson (1999, 2004, 2010) has stressed the necessity for a renewed Science Education beyond the STS paradigm, oriented towards sociopolitical action and Angela Calabrese-Barton has underlined the value of a democratic Science Education promoting social justice (Barton, 2003; Barton and Upadhyay, 2010; Basu and Barton, 2010).
In this paper, Critical Science Education is presented as an alternative pedagogical approach which favours the participation of ethnic, racial and religious minorities in the scientific endeavour while at the same time promotes a stance against racism, discrimination and generally every form of oppression. It is furthermore interdisciplinary and transformative, in the sense that it pursuits not only the empowerment of the student but the radical transformation of the social relations as well.
Critical Science Education aligns with the STS and STSE (Science-Technology-Society-Environment) traditions but goes further into incorporating the experiences of the radical teacher’s movement and the pioneering attempts for radical science pedagogy (Skordoulis, 2009). For Critical Science Education the role of the teacher is crucial, considering the latter as a “transformative intellectual” and a public, critical thinker rather than just a transmitter of scientific knowledge.
Finally, this paper discusses the various approaches to Critical Science Education, focusing on their theoretical background as well as on their foundational and core attributes. It also provides an overview of some of the global endeavours inside and outside classroom which aim towards the infusion of criticality in Science Education.
the economic crisis on the professional lives of in- service primary school teachers, in the Attiki prefecture, during the current economic and political crisis. We chose to focus on the
prefecture of Attiki as it is considered one of the places in
Greece that is most affected by the economic crisis. This survey
does not intend to simply record the problems that teachers
are facing in practice. The main object of this work is to capture
the teacher’s own views and perceptions on their working conditions, as reflected in the period of economic crisis that we are experiencing in Greece. Our main concern was to shed light on the way that teachers experience their daily life at the schools where they serve and how this affects or does not affect their professional and by extension their personal life, as well as their daily work in the classroom.
“Anthi tou Kakou” (Flowers of Evil).
A school may possess historical scientific instruments and yet be unaware of their historical significance and educational potential. Such was the case for the Maraslean Teaching Center in Athens, where late nineteenth-century laboratory instruments, crafted by top European makers, lay neglected for seventy years or more. Recently, that collection attracted the notice of the authors and through their collaboration with high school staff and university faculty, these instruments became the focus of an educational project. High school students and teacher-training students explored and collaborated in teams. With an authentic instrument presented as an unknown object, each team thoroughly described it; researched its history and function, sometimes contributing definitively to its identification; conceived experimental uses for it; and evaluated its condition. High school students proposed –and then carried out- reversible repairs. Teacher-training students created informal moments of teaching with the students. Working with actual physical instruments, these students built their own knowledge collectively. They experienced investigation first-hand, uncovered the history embedded in the instruments and participated directly in the continuation of that history.
a) Identify, collect, digitize and classify all surviving manuscript and printed primary sources relevant to alchemy in Greek language during the periods of Byzantium and of the Ottoman Empire.
b) Collect and classify the secondary bibliography.
c) Create prosopographical entries for every identifiable author.
d) Evaluate the modifications or transformations which Byzantine alchemical tradition has undergone, and to ascertain its relations with Hellenistic, Arabic, or Latin alchemy.
e) Determine what twists in the development of alchemy have taken place after its introduction in the cultural context of Greek-speaking communities of the Ottoman Empire, from the 15th to the 18th century and the passage to “Chymistry”.
Additional objectives:
a) The enrichment of the history of Byzantium, drawing lines of connection between the historiography of Byzantine alchemy and that of the natural sciences in South-Eastern Europe.
b) The production of a historical material that is both profitable in terms of educational applications and suitable for activities tending to promote public awareness of the different temporalities that having been merged in the history of science and render the written monuments of this history tokens of a common cultural legacy.
The interdisciplinary team is constituted by historians, historians of science, philologists, palaeographers, chemists and didacticians.
The project is supported by the International Academy of History of Science and funded by the 7th European Community Framework Program.
την επιστημονική καθοδήγηση των συγγραφέων, αφού μελέτησαν την ιστορία του Μαρασλείου Διδασκαλείου, του Εργαστηρίου Φυσικών Επιστημών και κάποια συγκεκριμένα όργανα από τη συλλογή των ιστορικών επιστημονικών οργάνων, σχεδίασαν και υλοποίησαν εκπαιδευτικό υλικό για την ανάδειξη της ιστορίας αυτής σε μαθητές και πολίτες. Τα πρώτα ευρήματα της έρευνας δείχνουν ότι οι φοιτήτριες θεωρούν την ιστορία του ιδρύματός τους μέρος και της δικής τους ιστορίας και επισημαίνουν ότι τόσο οι ίδιες όσο και οι φοιτητές των επόμενων ετών έχουν αυξημένο ρόλο στην ανάδειξη της ιστορίας του Μαρασλείου και συγκεκριμένα της συλλογής των ιστορικών επιστημονικών οργάνων.
Το παραχθέν υλικό προβλήθηκε σε μαθητές και ενήλικο κοινό στο πλαίσιο του Athens Science Festival 2021 και κυκλοφορεί ελεύθερα στο διαδίκτυο.
The students watch both the experiments in front of them; they have some level of interaction with what is happening and are interviewed, in semi-structured research interviews about: (i) what they predict that will happen, (ii) what they see happening and (iii) what they learned about it (meta-knowledge).
The first experiment is executed both in its original form with water waves with la-ser-light, but also in the alternative form with laser light. The second experiment is executed through computer simulations (https://phet.colorado.edu and others) and animations.
Prior to the interviews with the N=6 students, N'= 2 were interviewed on a pilot ba-sis, in order to improve the interviews. Also the N=6 students were given a pre-test and a post-test questionnaire, so as to measure what they learned from this teaching and experimental sequence.
The results concerning the educational outcomes – given the limitations of the sample – are encouraging.
Η παρούσα εργασία παρουσιάζει την εξέλιξη της οργανοθήκης του ΕΦΣΚ, τη χρήση της στις δημόσιες διαλέξεις και την αλληλεπίδραση αυτής της δραστηριότητας με τα εκπαιδευτικά ιδρύματα της Κωνσταντινούπολης, στο πρώτο μισό της «ζωής» του Συλλόγου (1862-1890).
Στην κατά τα άλλα πλούσια βιβλιογραφία σε σχέση με τον ελληνικό μεσοπόλεμο, δεν έχει μελετηθεί εκτενώς η αντιμετώπιση της Επιστήμης από το σοσιαλιστικό-κομμουνιστικό κίνημα της εποχής. Ένα τέτοιο εγχείρημα παρουσιάζει ενδιαφέρον, δεδομένου του χαμηλού μέσου μορφωτικού επιπέδου της εργατικής τάξης στην Ελλάδα, στην οποία απευθύνονταν οι σοσιαλιστικές ιδέες, καθώς η συντριπτική πλειοψηφία των παιδιών εργατικής καταγωγής δεν ολοκλήρωνε την τυπική εκπαίδευση. Εκ τούτου, έχει ιδιαίτερη σημασία η οπτική με την οποία επιχειρήθηκε να εκλαϊκευθεί η επιστήμη ώστε να συμβάλλει στην ανύψωση του μορφωτικού επιπέδου της εργατικής τάξης εκτός του επίσημου εκπαιδευτικού συστήματος.
Η επιστημονικότητα διαχρονικά αποτέλεσε συγκροτητικό στοιχείο του μαρξισμού. Οι Marx, Engels και Lenin διατυπώνουν θεμελιώδεις θέσεις για την Φύση της Επιστήμης και της επιστημονικής γνώσης. Η παρουσία της Σοβιετικής αντιπροσωπείας στο 2ο Συνέδριο Ιστορίας των Επιστημών το 1931 στο Λονδίνο αποτελεί σημαντικό στοιχείο για τη θέση και την αντιμετώπιση της επιστήμης στην νεαρή Σοβιετική Ένωση.
Σε αυτό το πλαίσιο εντάσσεται και η ανάγκη διερεύνησης της στάσης των οργανώσεων της σοσιαλιστικής και κομμουνιστικής αριστεράς και των εντύπων τους καθώς και της σχετικής συζήτησης που αναπτύσσεται στην Ελλάδα. Αποδελτιώθηκαν οι εφημερίδες Ριζοσπάστης και Πάλη των Τάξεων και μια πληθώρα περιοδικών όπως η Κομμουνιστική Επιθεώρηση, Σοσιαλιστική Επιθεώρηση, Νέος Λενινιστής, Σπάρτακος, Νέα Επιθεώρηση, Πρωτοπόροι, Νέοι Πρωτοπόροι, Φίλοι της ΕΣΣΔ, καθώς και τα περιοδικά Αναγέννηση και Νέος Δρόμος που εκδίδονταν από το Δημήτρη Γληνό την περίοδο διάσπασης του Εκπαιδευτικού Ομίλου (1926-1929).
Η θεματολογία τους παρουσιάζει εξαιρετικό ενδιαφέρον. Τα ζητήματα που θίγονται ποικίλουν. Έμφαση δινόταν στη σχέση της Επιστήμης με τη μαρξιστική φιλοσοφία, στη Δαρβινική θεωρία και στον κοινωνικό χαρακτήρα της Επιστήμης. Τα επιτεύγματα της Σοβιετικής Ένωσης παρουσιάζονταν ως πρότυπο για την ανάπτυξη των Επιστημών. Σημαντικό ποσοστό των άρθρων αποτελούσε μεταφράσεις σοβιετικών ή άλλων κειμένων. Αλλά το πιο σημαντικό εύρημα της έρευνάς μας είναι τα αρκετά πρωτότυπα άρθρα από Έλληνες μαρξιστές με αξιόλογο περιεχόμενο δημοσιεύτηκαν, αποτελώντας αναπόσπαστο κομμάτι της εμφάνισης και ανάπτυξης της σοσιαλιστικής σκέψης στην Ελλάδα.
At every teaching phase, Physics had been part of the school curriculum and it was (supposedly) taught with experimental methods to a large extent. However, most of the teaching centers didn’t have the required equipment. Only the Athens Teaching Centre had got a rich collection of more than 200 instruments dating from the early 1890’s. This instrument collection was enriched when teaching at the Athens Teaching Centre was upgraded from a three year course to a four year course. Then, the Athens Teaching Centre was renamed the Marasleios Pedagogical School. During the decade 1910-1920, this instrument collection became even larger than the instrument collection of the Physics Department of University of Athens of the same era.
Today, almost 140 years after the first instruments came in, the instruments of the collection are not in good condition. Long time disuse, ignorance and lack of interest on behalf of the staff have led to a drastic reduction in the number of instruments. There are about 75 instruments left and these are in poor condition.
The current proposal addresses two issues. The first issue is to present the current state of the instrument collection and to make special notes of the most interesting instruments. The second concerns the reasons that allowed this sound and enviable instrument collection to fall into its appalling current state and to describe the efforts of a mixed group of students of the 26th Athens Senior High School and Athens University postgraduate students to register and maintain the collection.
The main aim of the sequence is to provide students with the opportunity to reinforce their understanding regarding the nature of sound as a wave and specific sound properties by building the arrangement themselves, with limited guidance by the instructor (researcher). Students will examine the relationship between the pitch of the sound and the buzzer’s vibration and explore the different analogue signals produced by a circuit configuration, called a resistor ladder. Acknowledging that most technical skills and knowledge require the acquisition of the English language, the current paper suggests that a CLIL methodology will be applied in order to enhance students’ content and language acquisition at the same time.
interest on STEM education in international curriculums,
policy documents and research literature. The main
argument in the proposals for STEM education is that it is
expected to contribute to world economic development by
shaping a skillful workforce and producing the next
generation of scientifically literate professionals and
citizens.
In the landscape of this dominant theoretical discourse,
the epistemological nature of STEM education has been
relatively understudied. It is the pioneering work of (Chesky
& Wolfmeyer, 2015) that opened the way for the reappraisal
of the discussion on the epistemological nature of STEM
education fostering the appearance of other critical
treatises and proposals of challenging STEM practices
related to gender and racial equity, environmental and
ecocritical justice and critical scientific and technological
literacy.