STS: The Nature Study Movement in Education, 1890-1932

项目摘要萨利科尔施泰特，明尼苏达大学教育中的自然研究运动，1890- 1932年世纪末，教育工作者第一次开始把自然科学的教学作为公立学校课程的一个组成部分，一直到最低年级。在私立学校，甚至在少数公立学校，都曾尝试过倡导和实验科学教学，但直到世纪之交，才出现了一场将自然科学引入城市和农村公立学校课堂的全国性运动。最明显和最广泛提倡的教学方法是“自然研究”，其支持者为向儿童介绍植物、昆虫、鸟类、气象观测和其他现象提出了多种理由。这个历史性的项目提供了第一次广泛的讨论自然研究运动从它的起源在19世纪90年代初通过20世纪20年代，当教育领导人呼吁一个根本不同的教学方法。往往深刻不同的地理，社会和经济环境的儿童在城市中心，在郊区的位置，在小城镇，在农村地区，一室和两室学校的服务也意味着方案在原理、教师培训质量、教学资源的可用性以及儿童的利益方面存在差异。尽管如此，还是有一些因素使自然研究成为一场运动，包括几本用于教师培训和课堂的著名教科书，一本专门的教育杂志《自然研究评论》，以及一个由运动中的管理人员和教师组成的会员组织。在正规学校培训和官僚化的城市甚至全州范围的学校系统中，标准化程度的提高使实施成为可能，但正是当地社区以及学校管理人员和教师更广泛的承诺在美国各地建立了自然研究，尽管在南方较贫困的学校中显然没有多少。自然研究教育制定了一套学习第一手自然世界的原则，这些原则被扩展到非正式的环境中，比如男孩和女孩童子军，这些新的环境自然中心环绕着城市地区，奥杜邦和野花协会内的初级俱乐部。这个项目允许调查人员花一个月的时间做最后的研究，将运动的讨论扩展到没有被全面调查。 它还支持一个研究生的努力，调查在这四十年期间产生的自然研究文献，包括来自德国的材料。 科学史家早就注意到了自然研究运动，经常顺便提及它，并假定它是短暂的或不是高度相关的。 这项研究的出版物确立了它在几十年中的普遍性及其与这一时期自然科学动态变化的关系。

Project Abstract Sally Kohlstedt, University of MinnesotaThe Nature Study Movement in Education, 1890-1932In the late nineteenth century for the first time educators began to make instruction in the natural sciences an integral part of the public school curriculum down to the most elementary grades. Advocacy for and experiments with science teaching had been tried in private schools and even a few public ones, but only at the turn of the century was there a national movement to introduce the natural sciences into urban and rural publicly funded school classrooms. The most visible and widely advocated pedagogical technique was "nature study" and its proponents offered multiple justifications for introducing children to plants, insects, birds, meteorological observation, and other phenomena. This historical project provides the first extensive discussion of the nature study movement from its origins in the early 1890s through the 1920s when educational leaders called for a radically distinct pedagogical approach.The often profoundly different geographic, social, and economic circumstances of children in urban centers, in suburban locations, in small towns, and in the rural countryside serviced by one and two room schools also meant programs differed in rationale, in quality of teacher preparation, in availability of resources for teaching, and in the interests of the children. Nonetheless, there were elements that made nature study a movement, including several prominent textbooks used for teacher training and for classrooms, a specialized educational journal, Nature-Study Review, and a membership organization of administrators and teachers in the movement. Increasing standardization in normal school training and in bureaucratic urban and even state-wide school systems made implementation possible, but it was broader commitment by local communities as well as school administrators and teachers that established nature study across the American landscape, although apparently not much in the poorer schools of the South. Nature study education framed a set of principles for learning first hand about the natural world that was extended into informal settings like the Boy and Girl Scouts, the new environmental nature centers ringing urban areas, and junior clubs within the Audubon and Wild Flower societies.This project allows the investigator to spend a month doing the final research that extends the discussion of the movement to geographical locations that have not been fully investigated. It also supports the efforts of a graduate student to survey the nature study literature generated during this forty-year period, including materials from Germany. Historians of science have long noted the nature study movement, often mentioning it in passing and presuming that it was ephemeral or not highly relevant. The publications from this research establish its pervasiveness over several decades and its relationship to the dynamic changes in the natural sciences during this period.