Using the history of science to promote students' problem-solving ability

The purpose of this study was to investigate the efficacy of promoting students' problem-solving ability through the history of science teaching. Two classes of 8th graders ( n = 74) participated in this study. The experimental group was taught with the historical-rich supplementary materials, which include descriptions of previous scientists' experiments, debates, and discussions of their ideas. The control group was taught as usual, using a regular physical science textbook. After one year of teaching, with the statistical procedure of the analysis of covariance, it was found that the experimental group students outperformed their counterparts in the chemistry conceptual problemsolving ability, the initial results revealing that the students benefited from the introduction of the development of scientific concepts.

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