Scientific Knowledge as a Culture

Igal Galili was trained in theoretical physics in The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He further specialized in physics education research and teaching development in the universities of San Diego (SDSU) and Berkeley (UCB). For years, he served as a professor of science education, a head of the science teaching department and the Amos de Shalit Science Teaching Centre in the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His study explored the physics knowledge of school students and teachers structuring it in terms scheme-facets of knowledge. In considering the subject matter for teaching physics he investigated the topics of optics, mechanics, and electromagnetism introducing their conceptual structure and potential obstacles for understanding. He explored the new approaches to teaching physical concepts (in particular their operational definition and relationship with the structure of knowledge). This study eventually arrived to the production of the paradigm of discipline-culture (DC) as a framework of the scientific knowledge to be mirrored in school curriculum. Three different forms of DC-based curriculum were introduced and developed in the forms of - long and short disciplinary courses, conceptual excursus and summary lecture. It was suggested to use artistic images in the holistic representation of scientific ideas and of the features of science nature. His studies were published in international research journals and supported his production of physics textbooks in introductory physics (classical and modern). In particular, a special culturally oriented course of optics was produced. It considered theory of light and vision as a cluster of four fundamental theories (rays, particles, waves and photons).