Research in Science Education, 1990, 20, 220 - 229 HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE TEACHING: CURRENT BRITISH, AMERICAN AND AUSTRALIAN DEVELOPMENTS Michael R. Matthews University of New South Wales ABSTRACT The history and philosophy of science components of the new British National Curriculum, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science Project 2061 curriculum guidelines are described. Some curriculum background is given to these developments; and a contemporary international project concerned with the utilization of the history and philosophy of science in science teaching and teacher education is also described. Finally the recent Discipline Review of the Training of Science and Mathematics Teachers in Australia is examined and crificised for its lack of recommendations about the need for appropriate history and philosophy of science courses to be included in science teacher education programmes. INTRODUCTION Science education has largely been conducted independently of explicit reference to the history and philosophy of science. There have of course been some exceptions to this history of separate development. Some philosophers and historians of science, such as Nunn, Schwab, Robinson, Conant, Holton, Scheffler and Martin have engaged with science educators and their curricula and pedagogical problems. Among curricula, the Harvard-based Project Physics course, developed in the mid-1960s, is a fine example of what collaboration between scientists, historians, philosophers, and science educators can produce when the resources and determination are present (Holton 1967, 1978). However these scholarly interventions and curricula developments have been exceptions to the general rule. The recent history of the relations between HPS and science education has been aptly summarised in the title of a 1985 paper: 'Science Education and Philosophy of Science: Twenty-five Years of Mutually Exclusive Development' (Duschl 1985). Pleasingly this long tradition of intellectual apartheid seems now about to end. The two outstanding contemporary examples of the convergence between HPS and science education are the new British National Curriculum, and the American AAAS Project 2061 curriculum. The history and philosophy of science is prominent in both of these reform proposals. Beyond these there have been curricular developments in Denmark, The Netherlands, and Italy that have also been constructed on historical principles, and that attempt to introduce some elementary philosophical considerations into school science courses (Bevilacqua & Kennedy 1983, Thomsen 1986, Blondel & Brouzeng 1988, Nielsen & Thomsen 1990).