Science Teaching Improvement Projects in Argentina (1958–1978): A New Regime of Veridiction in Physics Teaching

Abstract

The subject in which this paper is framed is the training of Physics teachers in Argentina. It analyzes the emergence of certain spaces and voices with historically constituted legitimacy to enunciate problems related to the teaching of Physics in secondary school, as well as the figures of the teaching subject that they entail.

Through the theoretical and methodological criteria proposed by Michel Foucault’s genealogy of practices, a documentary corpus is analyzed around the axes of power, knowledge, truth, and discourse. Argentine national official resolutions, reports from academic meetings on science teaching, and training materials for Physics teachers from the period 1958–1978 were considered.

The hypothesis on which the analysis is based indicates that, around 1960, a specialized domain of practices and knowledge related to the teaching of Physics in secondary school emerged, producing profound transformations in the ways in which the issue of Physics teacher training had been problematized.

In the first half of the twentieth century, disputes over science teaching were organized around different figures: the scientist, the professional, and the certified teacher. By contrast, in the 1960s and 1970s, the emergence of the expert in science education and of the notion of the “Improvement of Science Teaching” opened up a new regime of truth for enunciating the problem of teacher training and science teaching.