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French textbooks from 1840 to the last reform and three recent Tunisian textbooks were studied to analyze how electrochemistry, and particularly the Daniell cell, was presented to students in secondary school. The technical and historical importance of the Daniell cell induced curriculum designers to introduce it very early in the chemistry sequence. However, due to progress in the understanding of redox reactions, emphasis was finally put on half reactions involving only one redox couple. As a consequence, a teaching model of the Daniell cell consisting of two half-cells separated by a salt bridge, different from any Daniell cell ever built in history, invaded French and Tunisian textbooks. Analysis of several important studies on students' misconceptions in electrochemistry shows that students have trouble in understanding ionic conduction and the structure of solutions. In this context, the separation between the two solutions and the presence of the salt bridge, although useful for presenting redox reactions, tends to reinforce misconceptions. Taking into account classical misconceptions and the remedial teaching proposed by researchers, our critical analysis of the teaching model of the Daniell cell led us to propose a new approach for teaching the electrochemistry of cells, which we present here.
Boulabiar et al. (Sat,) studied this question.