Approximations between philosophy of science and didactics of science: teaching at the scientific level and school philosophy of science

Abstract

This paper reviews two of the close relationships that can be established between the philosophy of science and the didactics of experimental sciences. For this purpose, I analyze, on the one hand, the way in which using metatheoretical tools (mainly coming from the philosophy of science) it is possible to understand and support the process of construction of school scientific models, those constituents of the so-called 'school science'; and, on the other hand, I review how teaching processes are developed not only in the levels of science teaching usually recognized (primary, secondary or university), but also in the processes of scientific change. In this way, the first part of the paper postulates a possible field of specific epistemological reflections that take as an object of study the construction of school scientific models, which could suggest a special field of work within the philosophy of science: 'the philosophy of school science'. And, in the second part, the existence of a 'level of scientific teaching' centered on the dynamics of comparison of rival theories, referred to the teaching processes (and not mere communication) carried out by scientists in the so-called 'periods of crisis and revolution'