CfP: Objects of Understanding, Flensburg 19 - 23 July 2021
We would like to invite the submission of paper and poster
abstracts for a five-day conference on the history of objects and
practices in science education. The conference had initially been
planned for June 2020 but had to be postponed due to the COVID-19
pandemic.
Understanding the history of science
education is essential if we want to understand the generation,
reproduction and circulation of scientific knowledge, practices,
practitioners, and objects. While history of science education has moved
from the periphery to the focus of history of science in recent
decades, the central role of instruments, demonstrations and models in
teaching has barely been explored. Particularly with respect to the
analysis of scientists’ formation in different periods, the role of
objects and of practices in laboratories appears to be crucial.
Moreover, with respect to the political and social function that was
ascribed to science, the role and purpose of objects in school science
education needs a more thorough reflection.
In
this conference, we want to discuss objects that were explicitly
designed for the purpose of science education such as teaching
demonstrations and students’ experiments, models and collections of
specimens. Moreover, we want to address the relationship between
teaching and research instruments and collections, and the practices
associated with them. We explicitly want to bring together objects and
practices from the different contexts and periods of science teaching in
schools and technical training institutes, the formation of future
scientists at universities, and teaching a general audience about and
through science. Following the conference Learning by Doing hosted in
2009 at the University of Regensburg, we invite historians of science as
well as scholars from neighboring fields such as material culture
studies, history of education and science museums to present their work
on the historical development and role of objects that were intended to
represent, present and transfer knowledge within the scientific
disciplines.
We invite proposals for
presentation of individual papers of 20 minutes as well as posters.
Please submit an abstract of no more than 250 words to OoU-conference@uni-flensburg.
We
will not hold this conference as an online conference and assume that
it will be possible again to travel and meet in person in July 2021.
However, in the case of travel restrictions for individual regions due
to COVID-19, we will consider the possibility of online participation
and presentation of affected participants.
Organizers:
Peter Heering, Europa-Universität Flensburg, Germany, and Roland
Wittje, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, India
The
conference is sponsored by the Scientific Instrument Commission (SIC),
the International History, Philosophy, and Science Teaching Group
(IHPST), the International Committee for University Museums and
Collections (UMAC) and Universeum, the European Academic Heritage
Network