The International History, Philosophy, and Science Teaching Group was formed in 1987 in order to bridge humanistic, social, scientific, and pedagogical scholarship.
The group is concerned to promote the betterment of school and university science and mathematics education by making them informed by the history, philosophy, and sociology of science and mathematics. It has a particular interest in bringing these spheres of knowledge into teacher-education programmes.
The group through its activities and journal promotes:
- The utilization of historical, philosophical and sociological scholarship to clarify and deal with the many curriculum, pedagogical and theoretical issues facing contemporary science education.
- Collaboration between the communities of scientists, mathematicians, historians, philosophers, cognitive psychologists, sociologists, and science educators, and school and college teachers.
- The inclusion of appropriate history, philosophy, and sociology of science courses in science teacher-education programmes.
- The dissemination of accounts of lessons, units of work, and programmes in science, at all levels, that have successfully utilized history, philosophy, and sociology.
- Discussion of the philosophy and purposes of science education, and their place in, and contribution to, the intellectual and ethical development of individuals and cultures.
The 2009 conference will be the tenth in the group's history. The previous conferences:
1989 |
Tallahassee, Florida (USA) |
1992 |
Kingston, Ontario (Canada) |
1995 |
Minneapolis, Minnesota (USA) |
1997 |
Calgary, Alberta (Canada) |
1999 |
Pavia (Italy) |
2001 |
Denver, Colorado (USA) |
2003 |
Winnipeg, Manitoba (Canada) |
2005 |
Leeds (England) |
2007 |
Calgary, Alberta (Canada) |
2009 |
Notre Dame, Indiana (USA) |
The conferences are attended by about 200-250 researchers and teachers from 25-30 countries. Full proceedings have been printed, or made available on CD, for each conference.
The group has been associated since 1992 with the research journal Science & Education; it arranges the periodic publication of special issues of other academic journals devoted to 'History, Philosophy, and Science Teaching'; and it supports the periodic publication of scholarly anthologies based on journal contributions and conference proceedings.
The IHPST maintains a website at www.ihpst.org.
