Dreams about the Universe

In this project DSE and the National Museum develop a cross-disciplinary teaching activity that can be used in the general study (AT) teaching. The activity is about the paradigm shift from the geocentric worldview to the heliocentric. It will be held at the National Museum and  includes role play, a guided tour and experimental work.

Project period: February - June 2009
Project staff: Vibeke Mader, the National Museum (responsible for the project), Jesper Bruun, Department of Science Education, University of Copenhagen
External project staff: Peter Frederiksen, the National Museum, Valdemar Kølle, Department of Science Education, University of Copenhagen

Project description:

The project is about developing a teaching activity which can be used in upper secondary schools. It will carried out at the National Museum by history students in cooperation with the class physics teacher and perhaps the history teacher.

The aim is that the students obtain an understanding of how scientific worldviews can change. Physical data, as well as the time, the world and the persons which these data are set in relation to and interpreted by, are all important to understand how sciencific worldviews change. The activity is primarily for AT projects.

The project is in cooperation between the National Museum, DSE and selected upper secondary schools. The National Museum is responsible for the project and the historical content while DSE is responsible for the didactical and physics content. The project staff work closely together through all parts of the project to ensure that the activity becomes cross-disciplinary. The upper secondary schools participate to test and give feecback on the product.

To model how sciencific worldviews change, the activity is based upon Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" and the therein presented notions: paradigm shift and incommonsurability. The students should gain insight by participating in an active guided tour, by working in groups with instruments from the time of Tycho Brahe and Galiloe Galilei and by arguing through a role play for a specific interpretation of data from different worldviews.

At the end of the project we will test the activity on classes from upper secondary schools. We will collect feedback from the teachers about the academic content and the teaching methods and also ask the students about gain and attitude. Last but not least we will use the feedback from the history students who has led the activity.

The project will be offered by the National Museum from Autumn 2009 and by that time the project group will write an article to the National Museum's magazine, Arbejdsmarken.

Dreams about the Universe is a part of DSE's upper secondary school development projects and it also uses museum didactical research and development.