The effect of using the history of sciences on conceptual understanding and intrinsic motivation

The main purpose of this study was to explore the effects of HoS on students’ understanding of GO concepts and their intrinsic motivations to learn GO. Before giving any instruction about GO, the university students in both experimental and control groups were examined in order to their intrinsic motivation and understanding GO concepts. It was found that there is no statistical difference between experimental group and control group students.

All students in EG, attended a teaching sequence using HoS in the case of GO. It was designed mainly to increase student’s intrinsic motivation to learn GO in order to improve their understanding of GO concepts and reduce misconceptions as compared with what may be done in traditionally designed GO courses only. Then the GOUCT and GOIMS were administered, again, to all subjects after the treatment to know the effects of HoS on students’ understanding of GO concepts and their intrinsic motivation. Inquiry EG had a significantly higher post-test mean score on the GOUCT and GOIMS than the just traditionally taught group. Following this result, the intrinsic motivation and understanding of GO concepts, for students who have undergone traditional education only, did not changed. This confirms the results obtained by many studies in sciences education, concerning the non effectiveness of the use of traditional teaching strategies for science teaching (Elcin and Sezer, 2014).

The HoS designed GO instruction may cause to difference in intrinsic motivation and conceptual change of students at university.

The obviously high positive correlation of 0.81 is very indicative of a real relationship between students’ intrinsic motivation and understanding of GO concepts. Students with high intrinsic motivation towards learning GO, generally, did well on the GOUCT and students with low motivation generally did poorly on the same test. In other words, this relationship suggests that if the motivation is low, students’ understanding of GO concept will be low, and if motivation is high, students’ understanding of GO concept will be correspondingly high as consistent with the study (Noels et al., 1999).

The enhancing intrinsic motivation allows the students to gain satisfaction in completing the learning task successfully (Deci and Ryan, 2002). Also, Hancock (2004) asserts that a motivated learner gives good results.

Conceptual change was noted. Many misconceptions appeared to be completely eliminated. For example, after teaching the GO, 23% of the CG students have correctly answered question 3 of GOUCT, while they were 19% in the pre-test to answer correctly the question (just 4% of students have completely eliminated their misconception). Although, 16% students of the EG had moved from a belief that “light do not propagate in vacuum or propagate just in horizontal direction when air does not exist” to a belief that “in vacuum, light propagate in all direction” This type of conceptual change was classified, by Palmer (2003) as radical change because it involved a replacement or reorganizing of a central concept (Posner and al., 1982).

Also, we noted that almost 50% of students in EG have corrected their misconceptions about vision. This result is in accordance with the results of the study conducted by de Hosson and Kaminski (2007). They showed that the historical account of vision is probably the best way to confront students’ ideas and facilitate conceptual change.

According Zemplén (2007), the development of understanding of the concept among the scientists could have an impact on conceptual change and motivation among students.

So, as Oon and Subramaniam (2009) confirmed; infusing a historical dimension can spice up interest levels, pique attention and promote motivation. The HoS may be a useful and enriching expansion of the established ways of physics education.