Information literacy supports higher education learners in becoming conversant in scholarship, including “sources of evidence, methods, and modes of discourse” (ACRL, 2015, p. 20). Grounded in their own expert practices, academics often have difficulty identifying challenges faced by students (Riegler, 2020), including engaging with disciplinary information. Drawing from research on publishing practices, this paper identifies specific information challenges encountered by students studying the history of science and outlines learning activities that may enable them to successfully navigate history of science scholarship.
History of science, including history of medicine, and history of technology, are burgeoning subdisciplines of history. Engaging with these fields can present information challenges for students encountering publications in these scholarly specializations. Pursuing published research in history of science and its attendant specializations requires students to, among other things, ascertain the dualistic externalist and internalist approaches in history of science. An externalist approach is concerned with larger contexts, such as social, political, and cultural issues and phenomena, whereas the internalist approach is concerned less so with context outside of the phenomena itself (Shapin, 1982).
The externalist versus internalist debate among historians in these fields results in two overarching approaches in their publications (Shapin, 1992; Yturbe, 1995). Examining these approaches informed the development of an educational model that can be used with undergraduates to focus their attention on the interpretation of the externalist versus internalist debate. Novice students’ ability to navigate this problematic space is crucial for their learning in these specializations. Students understanding the difference between both approaches can inform their information seeking, interpretation, and efforts in producing responsive and valid history of science research projects.
Hypothetically, this model can be applied with undergraduates in an introductory history of science course by introducing students to both approaches theoretically, and critically, though an examination of scholarly articles from a spectrum of history journals, including humanities and social science journals not generally associated with historical scholarship per se, but publishing historical research. Historical Abstracts and America: History and Life databases provide target databases for information triage. Utilizing a template of questions, students would be asked to categorize journal articles according to the externalist/internalist paradigm. Students further embed their categorizations within the context of historiographic best practices explicating the choices they made. Knowledge of externalist and internalist approaches equips history of science students to identify critical information aspects necessary to assess the scholarship.
References
- Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL). (2015). Framework for information literacy for higher education. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/ilframework
- Riegler, P. (2020). Decoding the disciplines. A roundtrip from novice to expert back to novice. DiZ-Zentrum fur Hochschuldidaktik. Retrieved from https://diz-bayern.de/images/cwattachments/506_549cb112bb9684e079d3fb2f5ca21787.pdf
- Shapen, S. (1992). Discipline and bounding: The history and sociology of science as seen through the externalist-internalist debate. History of Science, 30, 333–369.
- Shapen, S. (1982). History of science and its sociological reconstructions. History of Science, 20, 157–211.
- Yturbe, C. (1995). The history of science: Internal or external? In S. Ramirez, R. S. Cohen (Eds.), Mexican Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. 172). Dordrecht: Springer.
Jean-Pierre V. M. Hérubel, Clarence Maybee
Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA
English 
French