6533b828fe1ef96bd1288279

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Beyond Borders in the History of Science Education

subject

description

In this chapter, I explore the interactions between the new history of science education and the research agenda of the group “Science and Technology in the European Periphery” (STEP). While reviewing the contributions made by STEP members to this field, I discuss some missed opportunities and challenges faced by peripheral contexts in mainstream narratives of the history of science education. Many authors have called for cross-national studies and the application of a comparative approach to the history of science education, but studies of this kind are few. They require researchers to use sources written in several languages and to master a wide range of local studies and highly fragmented secondary literature. Multinational groups such as STEP are promising forums for promoting a project of this kind, but many barriers, and not only national borders, still persist. In this paper, I consider two interrelated problems: the tensions and connections between different bodies of scholarship in the history of science education, and the problems facing the construction of a global, decentred narrative in the history of science.