ScienceHumanities – Research – Department of Teacher Education
ScienceHumanities
The ScienceHumanities research group at Department of Teacher Education, NTNU
The ScienceHumanities research group applies perspectives from the humanities and the social sciences to the study of natural science (including science in school) as a discipline and cultural practice, past and present. We study, among other things, the history of science and science education, the (re)presentation of science in textbooks and how the Nature of Science (NOS) is taught in the classroom, cultures of writing, students’ understanding of science, and practical experiments in science teaching.
Interview with Annette Lykknes
On-going projects
STEMkey (2020-2023) is an Eramus+ project which aims to transform future teachers’ approach to teaching standard STEM topics. To achieve that, we want to rethink, reshape and redirect the delivery of fundamental STEM subject knowledge in the direction of key competence development. In STEMkey, 12 partners from institutions across Europe will develop innovative teaching modules for initial teacher education to help future teachers connect standard STEM topics to real-life contexts, using an interdisciplinary approach.
Collective volume edited by Annette Lykknes and Brigitte Van Tiggelen (World Scientific, 2021)
History of science is full of examples of scientific discoveries, priority disputes related to such discoveries, and discussions on what aspects of a discovery that qualify for credit. In textbooks and popular accounts, however, discoveries are often presented as clear-cut and a point for sudden change of thought (or even as decisive for paradigm shifts), while insight into the context in which the discovery took place, the time involved in developing new knowledge, and the contributions by a range of actors of different rank, is often omitted.
This volume will focus on chemical elements and will offer well researched case studies. Questions we seek to shed light on include: How the discovery process can be reconstituted through historical documentation, how one (or more) ‘discoverers’ found their place in popular historical accounts, and what stage in a discovery constitutes the ‘discovery’. Indeed, we want to stress that discovery is a collective process and the result of narratives that are context dependent as they occur in specific time place and social settings.
Previous projects
In December 2017 the United Nations (UN) General Assembly declared 2019 the International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements. UNESCO, scientific societies, educational and research institutions, and other organisations came together for the IYPT. The activities related to the IYPT at NTNU were coordinated by the ScienceHumanities research group, and supported by the Department of Teacher Education, the Faculty of Natural Sciences (and its Departments of Chemistry, Material Science and Engineering, Chemical Engineering, and Biotechnology and Food Science), and the Royal Norwegian Society for Sciences and Letters. Collaborators included The Geological Survey of Norway (NGU) and the Science Center in Trondheim (Vitensenteret).
A variety of activities were organised, for example Stjernestøv (“Stardust”), a “chemistry van” which has been equipped with samples of the chemical elements visiting schools in the provinces of Trøndelag; a periodic table app (currently in development); a scientific anthology, two special issues of journals, and articles; a popular science book and lectures for the general public; a web site; and two exhibitions at the Natural Science Library at NTNU, all covered variously by the press. Overall, the activities have aimed to disseminate knowledge on chemistry in general, to make sense of the periodic system and its elements in particular, and to use the history of the periodic system to show that science is a multifaceted, complex and collaborative pursuit, rather than the stand-alone achievement of individual geniuses.
Website for Periodesystemets år ved NTNU
Selected publications:
- Unni Eikeseth and Annette Lykknes. Periodesystemet: Fra alkymi til kjernekjemi (Museumsforlaget, 2019)
- Annette Lykknes and Brigitte Van Tiggelen (eds.). The Periodic System: The (Multiple) Values of an Icon: Introduction. Special issue of Centaurus (2019) [in press]
- Brigitte Van Tiggelen, Annette Lykknes and Luis Moreno-Martinez (eds.). The Periodic System: A History of Shaping and Sharing. Special issue of Substantia (2019)
- Annette Lykknes and Brigitte Van Tiggelen (eds.). Women in their Element: Selected Women’s Contributions to the Periodic System (World Scientific, 2019)
- Brigitte Van Tiggelen and Annette Lykknes. Celebrate the women behind the periodic system. Nature 565 (2019)
- Unni Eikeseth m.fl. Hvordan bygger man en verden? Et hefte om grunnstoffer og periodesystemet
- Articles (in Norwegian) about the periodic system and our activities in the chemistry journal Kjemi
- Articles (in Norwegian) about the periodic system in the teacher’s journal Naturfag
Recent master theses
- Vitenskapshistorie for å undervise om naturvitenskapens egenart (NOS). En studie og analyse av fysikeren Maria Goeppert-Mayers liv og virke, i lys av family resemblance approach (FRA) til NOS (Aleksander Knutsen 2020)
- Læreres bruk av spørsmål under laboratorieforsøk. En undersøkelse av fire læreres praksis og refleksjoner i kjemi 1 og kjemi 2 (Kristine Fjelldal Sunde 2020) [finner ingen lenke, så tittel får stå for seg selv)
- Argumenterende skriving i kjemi - Elevers opplevelse av å skrive faglig argumenterende tekster, på bakgrunn av et case-basert undervisningsopplegg, Birgitte Fisketjøn (2018
- «Atomer reagerer for å oppfylle åtteregelen» - En kvalitativ studie om seks naturfagelevers forståelse for atomer, molekyler og åtteregelen, Synne Apold Korsbrekke (2018)
- Naturvitenskap, mer enn bare fakta? En undersøkelse om hvilket bilde på naturvitenskapens egenart som formidles i Tellus 8-10 (Hege Sletten 2017)
- Det er greit å ha et bilde å sette ordene på - En undersøkelse om elevers forståelse for atommodeller (Silje Marie Eide 2017)
- "Det er kanskje det vi har lært mest, at det ikke er ett svar i rapporten, men det vi tenker…" - En studie om elevers oppfatninger om rapportskriving før og etter undervisning om naturvitenskapens egenart (Siri Leirbekk Mjøsund 2017)
Member of research group
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Helena Bichao Associate Professor
+47-73412848 helena.bichao@ntnu.no Department of Teacher Education -
Per-Odd Eggen Associate Professor
+47-73551136 +47-90994382 perodde@ntnu.no Department of Physics -
Unni Eikeseth Assistant Professor
+47-73412824 +47-99603335 unni.eikeseth@ntnu.no Department of Teacher Education -
Festo Kayima Associate Professor -Chemistry didactics
+47-73559695 +47-97397256 festo.kayima@ntnu.no Department of Teacher Education -
Pål Kvello Associate Professor
+47-73412325 pal.kvello@ntnu.no Department of Teacher Education -
Rolf Jonas Persson Associate Professor
+47-73551127 +47-91348570 jonas.persson@ntnu.no Department of Physics -
Jesper Aagaard Petersen Associate Professor / head of research
+47-73598312 jesper.petersen@ntnu.no Department of Teacher Education
Mirtachew Tihar Ali, PhD student
- Development and Use of Low-Cost Locally Available Instructional Materials as a Vehicle for Enhancing the Quality of High School Chemistry Education in Ethiopia
Ehtegebreal Aregehagn, PhD student
- Improving the Learning of Geometrical Optics with Multiple Representations
Madelene Losvik Berntsen
- Understanding Temperature as Nature of Science
Synne Mogstad Høivik
- Teachers’ perception of education for sustainable development
Jørgen Hage
- Students’ sense of critical thinking through the use of media articles