Course Identification

The course will comprise 14 two-hour lectures, and reading assignments between the lectures.

In the course, students will become acquainted with a variety of theoretical and empirical approaches to the study of a long-standing educational challenge. These approaches are general enough to be useful beyond the scope of the particular challenge in which they will be studied.

Topics that will be addressed (not necessarily in this order):

• The nature of the gap between the various academic disciplines and their parallel school subjects

• Theoretical framings of this gap, e.g.:

  • Anthropological theory of the didactic (Guy Chevallard)

  • Practical Rationality (Patricio Herbst & Dan Chazan)

• Research on the gap

• Intervention projects to narrow the gap

Upon successful completion of the course, students should be able to:

• Describe the phenomenon of existing gaps between scientific disciplines and the ways they are taught in school

• Draw on educational theories to explain the phenomenon

• Describe disciplinarily-faithful teaching practices and norms, with respect to science education in general and to their own discipline in particular

• Demonstrate proficiency in basic research on gaps between academic disciplines and their teaching as school subjects

• Suggest a preliminary plan for research to investigate aspects of these gaps in the discipline that the students specialize in

The following is a tentative list. Some reference are specific to particular disciplines. Students will be expected to read sources that are general or specific to their own discipline.

Bruner, J. S. (1960). Chapter 2: The importance of structure. In The Process of Education, pp. 17-32

Chinn, C. A., & Malhotra, B. A. (2002). Epistemologically authentic inquiry in schools: A theoretical framework for evaluating inquiry tasks. Science education, 86(2), 175-218.

Chinn, C. A., & Brewer, W. F. (1998). An empirical test of a taxonomy of responses to anomalous data in science. Journal of Research in Science Teaching: The Official Journal of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching, 35(6), 623-654.

Harpaz, Y. (2011). Back to knowledge: The ironic path of teaching thinking. Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines, 26(3), 39-46.

הרפז, י. (2012). למה תיאטרון? ממקצוע לתחום משמעות. הד חינוך פ"ו (05), 52-55.

Herbst, P. G., & Chazan, D. (2023). Keeping theorizing in touch with practice: Practical rationality as a middle range theory of mathematics teaching. In Theorizing teaching: Current status and open issues (pp. 189-224). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

Kind, P. E. R., & Osborne, J. (2017). Styles of scientific reasoning: A cultural rationale for science education?. Science education, 101(1), 8-31.

Lampert, M. (1990). When the problem is not the question and the solution is not the answer: Mathematical knowing and teaching. American Educational Research Journal, 27(1), 29-63.

Lin, J. Y. (2007). Responses to anomalous data obtained from repeatable experiments in the laboratory. Journal of Research in Science Teaching: The Official Journal of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching, 44(3), 506-528.

Pinto, A., & Cooper, J. (2023). “But this is not mathematics!”—mathematicians and secondary teachers explore the affordances of tertiary mathematics for teaching secondary probability. ZDM–Mathematics Education, 55(4), 883-896.

Sensevy, G. (2025). Towards an epistemic kinship between school mathematical practices and the practice of mathematicians: The journal of number. In Where is the Mathematics in Your Math Education Research? (pp. 221-248). Springer, Cham.

Shwartz, Y., Dori, Y. J., & Treagust, D. F. (2013). How to outline objectives for chemistry education and how to assess them. In Teaching chemistry–A studybook: A practical guide and textbook for student teachers, teacher trainees and teachers (pp. 37-65). Rotterdam: SensePublishers.

Winsløw, C. (2011). Anthropological theory of didactic phenomena: Some examples and principles of its use in the study of mathematics education. Un Panorama de TAD, CRM Docume, 117, 138.

Zafrani, E., & Yarden, A. (2022). Dialog-constraining institutional logics and their interactional manifestation in the science classroom. Science Education, 106(1), 142-171.