An intervention program for teaching chemistry through history was developed to determine whether this instructional approach would promote conceptual problem-solving ability of secondary school students. Three chemistry teachers and five classes of 8th graders ( N = 220) participated in this quasi-experimental study. The quantitative results of a conceptual problem-solving test revealed that the experimental group students outperformed their counterparts in both the control and the comparison groups. In addition, low achievers benefited more from this teaching strategy than high achievers. The qualitative results of interviews indicated that students have learned from the history of science to avoid alternative conceptions held by previous scientists.
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Huann‐shyang Lin (1998) studied this question.