Many educators today advocate the use of historical narratives as one of a number of possible contexts for teaching science. However, several pedagogical and epistemological issues arise when implementing narratives in the classroom. In this paper, we are interested in expanding our view of narrative, specific to integrating the history of science and science teaching, and we extend our argument beyond simple anecdotal references to recognise the benefits of the historical narrative in a variety of ways. At the same time, we address pedagogical concerns by broadening perceptions of the manner and contexts in which narratives can be developed so as to include imaginative and manipulative elements that provide interactive experiences for students that are more conducive to implementation by science teachers.Several practical examples are presented as illustrations of historical narratives with imaginative and manipulative elements that by design facilitate a more meaningful implementation in the science classroom.

ABSTRACT:The photoelectric effect is an important part of general physics textbooks. To study the presentation of this phenomenon, we have reconstructed six essential, history and philosophy of science (HPS)-related aspects of the events that culminated in Einstein proposing his hypothesis of lightquanta and the ensuing controversy within the scientiÞc community. These aspects are (1) Lenard's trigger hypothesis to explain the photoelectric

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This article is intended to model the ascent of the space shuttle for high school teachers and students. It provides a background for a sufficiently comprehensive description of the physics (kinematics and dynamics) of the March 16, 2009, Discovery launch. Our data are based on a comprehensive spreadsheet kindly sent to us by Bill Harwood, the “CBS News” space consultant. The spreadsheet provides detailed and authentic information about the prediction of the ascent of flight STS-119, the 36th flight of Discovery and the 125th shuttle flight to date. We have used the data for our calculations and the production of the graphs. A limited version of the ascent data is available on the “CBS News” STS-119 trajectory timeline.1

The authors of this paper portray the perspective of Professor Leon Cooper, a theoretical physicist, Nobel laureate, active researcher, and physics textbook author, on teaching science and on the nature of science (NOS). The views presented emerged from an interview prepared by the authors and responded to in writing by Professor Cooper. Based on the gathered data and the subsequent interpretation of it, the authors identified several educational implications and drew the following conclusions: (a) science should be taught within an historical perspective; (b) textbook authors generally have an empiricist epistemology which makes their presentation of science difficult to understand; (c) an historical perspective inevitably involves comparing, contrasting, and scrutinizing different historical accounts of the same events; (d) varying interpretations of observations do not undermine the objective nature of science; (e) new ideas in physics comprise an imposed vision of the world, and these ideas are then slowly accepted by the scientific community; (f) the current view in any science is almost always a mixture of data, hypotheses, theoretical ideas, and conjectures; (g) since experiments are difficult to perform and understand, scientists rely on their presuppositions to guide the integration of data, theory, and conjectures; (h) inconsistencies in the construction of theories can facilitate new M. Niaz (

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