Pedagogical practices carried out during an in-service teachers education project: approaching history and philosophy of science to physics teaching

We report here part of a research project developed by the Science Education Research Group, titled: "Teachers’ Pedagogical Practices and formative processes in Science and Mathematics Education" which main goal is the development of coordinated research that can generate a set of subsidies for a reflection on the processes of teacher training in Sciences and Mathematics Education. One of the objectives was to develop continuing education activities with Physics teachers, using the History and Philosophy of Science as conductors of the discussions and focus of teaching experiences carried out by them in the classroom. From data collected through a survey among local Science, Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Mathematics teachers in Bauru, a São Paulo State city, we developed a continuing education proposal titled “The History and Philosophy of Science in the Physics teachers’ pedagogical practice”, lasting 40 hours of lessons. We followed the performance of five teachers who participated in activities during the 2008 first semester and were teaching Physics at High School level. They designed proposals for short courses, taking into consideration aspects of History and Philosophy of Science and students’ alternative conceptions. Short courses were applied in real classrooms situations and accompanied by reflection meetings. This is a qualitative research, and treatment of data collected was based on content analysis, according to Bardin [1].

A Comparative Study of the Information-Seeking Behavior of Bachelor of Science and Master of Science Agricultural Extension and Education Students

This study compares information-seeking behavior of Bachelor of Science and Master of Science students in the fields of agricultural extension and education. The authors surveyed Iranian students in departments of agricultural extension and education at four universities in Tehran, Shiraz, Mollasani, and Kermanshah. This study focused on three aspects: (1) comparison of amounts of information-seeking behavior between Bachelor of Science and Master of Science agricultural extension and education students; (2) comparison of information-seeking behavior varieties in Bachelor of Science and Master of Science agricultural extension and education students; (3) Comparison of amounts of available information resources at four universities and its effectiveness on students' information-seeking behavior; and (4) comparison of research and educational outputs in Bachelor of Science and Master of Science students. Scale free technique, division by mean method, principal components analysis technique, Delphi method, t-test, correlation and regression tools were used for data analysis. This study revealed that Bachelor of Science students' information-seeking behavior is for improving educational output, but Master of Science students' information-seeking behavior is for promoting research output. Among varieties of Internet searching skills, library searching skills, and awareness of library information-seeking methods with students' information-seeking behavior, there are not significant differences between two groups of students.

No more than Conjectures: Popper and the Ethics of Scientific Enterprise

Karl Popper dealt with both problems Yurevich (Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 43(2), 2009, doi:10.1007/s12124-008-9082-7) deals: the crisis in Psychology and in the discourse about the nature of science. Although he failed to provide a complete response for both problems, his proposals can yet be fruitful to the reflection on these matters in the context of the present discussion. He offers some tentative answers to what could be considered a healthy epistemic activity, something Yurevich does not provide. More interestingly, some of the Popper proposals seem to fit, and in some extent correct, the quest for ""collaborative work"" proposed by Zittoun et al. (Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 43(2), 2009, doi:10.1007/s12124-008-9082-7) as a way of transforming crisis in development.

INVESTIGATING THE PRESENCE OF THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE IN UNIVERSITY GENERAL CHEMISTRY TEXTBOOKS

INVESTIGATING THE PRESENCE OF THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE IN UNIVERSITY GENERAL CHEMISTRY TEXTBOOKS. This paper aims at analyzing the history of science content of three general chemistry textbooks used in Brazilian universities: the translations of Kotz and Treichel's Chemistry & Chemical Reactivity, Atkins and Jones's Chemical Principles, and Garritz and Chamizo's Quimica. Results revealed different trends for the inclusion of history of science in chemistry teaching. Katz & Treichel and Atkins & Jones used history mainly as curiosity and ornament. Garritz & Chamizo adopted the historical approach as one of the organizing axis of their textbook. Nevertheless, the historical content of the three textbooks may be criticized from current historiographical standpoint.

The nature of the companion of PSR J1719-1438: a white dwarf or an exotic object?

We raise the possibility that the very dense, compact companion of PSR J1719-1438, which has a Jupiter-like mass, is an exotic quark object rather than a light helium or carbon white dwarf. The exotic hypothesis naturally explains some of the observed features, and provides quite strong predictions for this system, to be confirmed or refuted in feasible future studies.

The eagle and the starlings: Galileo's argument for the autonomy of science-how pertinent is it today?

After Galileo's argument for the autonomy of science is analysed and adapted to take into account later developments of scientific practices, we conclude that, in the final analysis, it is not compelling. Nevertheless, Galileo's argument still provides a useful point of reference, for aspects of it can be interpreted to anticipate central components of the often acclaimed ideal of science as value free, so that appraising it contributes to the larger purpose of exploring how well that ideal stands up today. Finally, we will argue that residue from Galileo's struggle with the Church remains with us, making it difficult to identify the conditions that would need to be put into place today for any robust sense of the autonomy of science to be defensible. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The nature of Ru-NO bonds in ruthenium tetraazamacrocycle nitrosyl complexes-a computational study

Ruthenium complexes including nitrosyl or nitrite complexes are particularly interesting because they can not only scavenge but also release nitric oxide in a controlled manner, regulating the NO-level in vivo. The judicious choice of ligands attached to the [RuNO] core has been shown to be a suitable strategy to modulate NO reactivity in these complexes. In order to understand the influence of different equatorial ligands on the electronic structure of the Ru-NO chemical bonding, and thus on the reactivity of the coordinated NO, we propose an investigation of the nature of the Ru-NO chemical bond by means of energy decomposition analysis (EDA), considering tetraamine and tetraazamacrocycles as equatorial ligands, prior to and after the reduction of the {RuNO}(6) moiety by one electron. This investigation provides a deep insight into the Ru-NO bonding situation, which is fundamental in designing new ruthenium nitrosyl complexes with potential biological applications.

History and Epistemology of Science in the Classroom: The Synthesis of Quinine as a Proposal

The history of the quinine synthesis can be used as a case study to emphasize that science is influenced by social and historical processes. The first efforts toward the synthesis of this substance, which until recently was the only treatment for malaria, were by Perkin in 1856 when, trying to obtain quinine,,. he synthesized mauveine. Since then, the quest for the total synthesis of quinine involved several characters in a web of controversies. A major step in this process was made in 1918 by Rabe and Kindler, who proposed the synthesis of quinine from quinotoxine. Twenty-six years later, after obtaining the total synthesis of quinotoxine, Woodward and Doering announced the total synthesis of quinine. However, the lack of experimental details about Rabe and Kindler's process, associated with Woodward and Doering's failure to reproduce it, raised a series of doubts about the synthesis. Stork and colleagues questioned the veracity of the experimental data and even the scientific reputation of the involved researchers. Doubts remained alive until 2008, when Williams and Smith reported, not without reservations, the reproducibility of Rabe and Kindler's protocol. The scientific knowledge as a social and historical development, its legitimating process, and the absence of neutrality in science constitute aspects that can be discussed from this case study, providing significant contributions to science education, in particular, to the initial or continued training of chemistry teachers.

The nature of extremely red galaxies in the local universe

We investigate the nature of extremely red galaxies (ERGs), objects whose colours are redder than those found in the red sequence present in colour–magnitude diagrams of galaxies. We selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7 a volume-limited sample of such galaxies in the redshift interval 0.010 < z < 0.030, brighter than Mr = −17.8 (magnitudes dereddened, corrected for the Milky Way extinction) and with (g − r) colours larger than those of galaxies in the red sequence. This sample contains 416 ERGs, which were classified visually. Our classification was cross-checked with other classifications available in the literature. We found from our visual classification that the majority of objects in our sample are edge-on spirals (73 per cent). Other spirals correspond to 13 per cent, whereas elliptical galaxies comprise only 11 per cent of the objects. After comparing the morphological mix and the distributions of Hα/Hβ and axial ratios of ERGs and objects in the red sequence, we suggest that dust, more than stellar population effects, is the driver of the red colours found in these extremely red galaxies.