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Abstract
The direct involvement of students in conducting experiments in order to learn science has been a common part of U.S. educational practice since the late 19th century, the result of the rapid spread of what was known as the “laboratory method” of teaching. Those promoting the laboratory method recognized it as a new educational approach, often crediting it to European exemplars that were then “imported” into American educational institutions. Yet the extended history of science instruction in the U.S., including earlier attempts at laboratory-based instruction, raises questions about the American context of this pedagogical development and how earlier generations of scientists prepared themselves and their students for scientific work.
In this dissertation, educational uses of the laboratory and the experiment during this earlier period are examined through the work of three American scientists in the early-to-mid 19th century: Benjamin Silliman (Sr.), professor at Yale; Amos Eaton, professor at Rensselaer School/Institute (later Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute); and Eben N. Horsford, professor at Harvard’s Lawrence Scientific School. In examining the ways in which these scientists integrated the scientific experiment into their educational endeavors, this work shows that instructional uses of science experiments examined reflect complex interactions between scientific epistemology (ideas of how scientific knowledge is produced) and educational philosophy (ideas of how individual knowledge is developed through education). Furthermore, this dissertation establishes an important prehistory for the development of the laboratory method, particularly considering how experimental science became part of the tumultuous landscape of American higher education as academic institutions sought to determine their best form and purpose.
