Similarities and differences between two key proposals on science education in Argentina during the early Twentieth Century

Adolphe Ganot and Tebaldo Ricaldoni

Abstract

This paper aims to be a contribution to understand the conditions in which physics was taught during the early twentieth century in Argentinean secondary schools. Two of the most widely used handbooks in the country are being analyzed and compared: “Elementary Treatise of Physics” by the French author Adolphe Ganot, and “Notes on Physics” by the local professor Tebaldo Ricaldoni. Similarities and differences are considered in several aspects: origin and preparation of the authors, degree of update on the latest scientific advances, pedagogical perspective, socio-educational context in which the textbooks were published, and impact of their dissemination. In deepening our analysis in terms of disciplinary content, the work focuses on electromagnetic waves, relating them to different models of interaction between matter and radiation, since at the time this was a subject of considerable progress in science and technology.