The general level of writing skills amongst science students is often below standard. Many universities try to remedy this situation with extra courses. In "Writing Right", Ingrid McLaren and Dale Webber from the University of the West Indies at Jamaica, describe results from a project based on a course given to students of Ecology. The background to the work involved a interdisciplinary collaboration between the Departments of Life Sciences, Language, Linguistics and Philosophy and the implementation of "Writing Across the Curriculum" strategies.
In "The perception of Conception", Dietmar Höttecke, who is scientific Lead of the European project "History and Philosophy of Science in Teaching" (HIPST), sets out the importance of History and Philosophy of Science for science education.
In "Discipline-Culture Framework of Implementing The History and Philosophy of Science into Science Teaching", Igal Galili, who is also involved in the HIPST project argues for the historical and cultural aspect of science under the term "Cultural Content Knowledge" to be emphasized in teaching science. This type of approach, according to Galili, reduces scientific misconceptions amongst students and helps demolish the widespread myth of teaching physics without philosophy.
The proceedings of the Science Matters conference, which we reported in Issue 28, October 2007, have been published and are available from the publishers – World Scientific.