The following is an excerpt from our recent *Science & Education* paper, (Stinner, et. al., 2003) The Renewal of Case Studies in Science Education. *Science & Education*, 12, 617-643.

**The Units of Historical Presentation in Science**

Before discussing the nature of contextual teaching in science for the various grade levels, we will briefly outline what we call “the units of historical presentation”. This is not an exhaustive list but includes most approaches used in placing science in context and in the presentation of history. In designing these units our pre–service teachers use the guidelines given in Table 1.

*Vignettes*. The smallest unit of presentation is the historical vignette, developed and discussed in great detail by Wandersee (1992). He argues that introducing a well–crafted and well–chosen vignette into the classroom connects the concepts and ideas under study with the interests of the student. Vignettes should also “serve as motivation and encouragement for students to read more about science and scientists” (Wandersee, 1992, p. 21).

*Case Studies*. Case studies are historical contexts with one unifying idea, designed according to the guidelines for writing a large context problem (LCP), shown in Table 1. Students form groups of three and make a commitment for planning a case study. Each group is asked to present the case study in three parts, one part prepared by each student:

1. *Historical context:* Student one presents the scientific ideas of the historical period and show how they are connected to the topic.
2. *The experiment(s) and the main ideas:* Main ideas and/or empirical support for what is central to the case study is presented by student two, assisted by his/her colleagues. If possible, these demonstrations should also involve the students in the audience.
3. *Implications for scientific literacy and the teaching of science:* Student three responds to the following questions: where do the concepts fit in the science curriculum? How would one present these concepts/ideas/experiments in the classroom? What are the diverse connections of the concepts under discussion?

*Confrontations*. We are inclined to think of modern science as having resolved most issues. Quite the contrary is true; science in the 20th century is fraught with confrontations, some completely or partly resolved, and others still raging. Sometimes there are many competing theories seeking to lay the foundations of a new discipline, as in the case of the eighteenth–century science of electricity and Lavoisier’s new chemistry and the alchemists, but mostly scientific confrontation is the squaring off between two rival theories.

*Thematic Narratives*. This approach identifies general themes that transcend the boundaries of individual scientific disciplines and may have interdisciplinary and humanistic connections. For example, the thematic couple of atomism and continuum “played an important role in shaping the conceptual structure of early twentieth–century biology and science” (Jordan, 1989). Other themes could be conservation, time, regularity and evolution. These themes transcend individual disciplines and often link major activities in the various disciplines and touch on humanistic activities. It is often convenient to connect several small case studies to produce a continuous narrative with an underlying theme.

*Dialogues*. Galileo used the dialogue format in his books in order to dramatise his science. To make his “new science” more accessible to the general reader he wrote the text in Italian rather than in the conventional Latin. Galileo’s approach has been “rediscovered” by several science educators (Lockhead & Dufresne, 1989; Raman, 1980): “The method I discovered recently was to present the relevant information and ideas in the form of a dialogue in which the original scientists are mad to speak of their ideas and theories” (Raman, 1980, p. 580). The following dialogues have been developed and presented in class by students: Copernicus and the Aristotelians; A creationist confronts an evolutionist; Priestley and Lavoisier discuss the relative merits of phlogiston and oxygen theories in explaining combustion and ‘calcination’.

*Dramatization*. The role of the scientist in society has been a subject for playwrights for hundreds of years, many modern plays have been written about science and scientists in modern society (Brecht: *The Life of Galileo*; Golding: *The Physicists*; Kipphard: *In the Matter of J. Oppenheimer*. Recently the play Copenhagen that is essentially a dialogue between Heisenberg and Bohr in 1941 has been playing to capacity audiences in Europe and North America. Jonathan Duveen and Joan Solomon (1994) have written and used such plays as *The Great Evolution Trial* to encourage students to role–play in the classroom.

In our science history classes we have developed dramas (as amateur playwrights, of course) for the purpose of presenting them in a science classroom. They have been quite successful in the University setting: *The Trial of Galileo; The public debate between science and the Church of England*: Darwin (actually, his “bulldog” Huxley) confronts Bishop Wilberforce; *The Age–of–the–Earth debate* (A debate set in 1872, with Kelvin, Huxley, Lyell, and Helmholtz representing the disciplines of physics, biology, geology, and cosmology).