How do different student constituencies (not) learn the history and philosophy of their subject? Case studies from science, technology and medicine

Abstrak / Ringkasan

[FIRST PARAGRAPH]
Why should H.E. teachers concern themselves with how their
students do or don’t learn? Much has been said recently about the
alleged merits and demerits of ‘student-centred’ learning, especially on
the extent to which student autonomy in the learning process is
beneficial to their long-term interests. This paper is a not a contribution
to that debate. Rather it focuses on how teachers might uphold their
conventional educational responsibilities but make their role more
effective. Its central thesis is that this role is most effective when treated not so much as the ‘teaching’ of students as the process of helping students
to learn. This particular study concerns how university students of
science, technology and medicine (STM) can be helped to learn the
history and philosophy of their respective subject from practitioners in
the history and philosophy of science, technology and medicine. But I
will not be focussing on those students (sometimes the majority) who
have no trouble learning to think in historical and philosophical ways
about their subject. They are not the ones who require most help from
us. More importantly, I look at those students who—despite the best
efforts of their teachers—find the historical or philosophical sensibility
to be difficult, repellent, uninteresting, irrelevant, pointless or simply
weird. In the worst case scenario such students learn nothing substantial
or valuable from classes in the history and philosophy of their subject,
and become bored, alienated or hostile to the whole enterprise.

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