Date and time: Thursday, 26 February 2026, 16:00

Format: hybrid; López Piñero Interuniversity Institute - UV and  Zoom access code: 118696

Speakers: Luis Moreno Martínez.

Summary

The history of science teaching is a fertile field of research within the history of science and education. However, its connection with the didactics of experimental sciences is still a pending challenge. There is also a notable disconnect between historical and educational research on science and teaching practice. This session delves into this disconnect by showing how historical studies on science in the classroom can act as a meeting point between teachers, didactics and historians of science. Thus, the analysis of the problems that structured the teaching of physics and chemistry in Spain during the first third of the twentieth century is addressed, based on the recovery of the ideas and practices of its teachers, high school teachers and normal schools, but also of other protagonists, such as students, education inspectors or editors. To this end, the analysis of various hemerographic sources (such as the Bulletin of the Free Teaching Institution, the Journal of Normal Schools, the Journal of Second Education and the Faraday Bulletin) has been carried out, as well as legislation, manuals, textbooks and pedagogical works by various authors of the time. All this provides a privileged proscenium to the teaching of physics and chemistry from the 1900s to the 1930s, which allows us to identify multiple problems and challenges still in force in our educational system, according to international studies, such as those carried out by John Rudolph. The historical journey made reveals the naïve nature of the current sterile pedagogical debate between innovation and tradition in education, the need to build a science didactics that connects with the realities of educational centers and incorporates its own history, fleeing from genealogical archetypes that despise any development prior to its forging as a university discipline and the imperative need to recover and disseminate the work carried out by science teachers of pre-university education in the history of education and science in Spain. From this perspective, lines of action are offered to think about and guide current scientific education of interest to undertake from teaching practice, teacher training, academic research and public administrations.