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

This work is important because most studies have focused on geometrical optics at the elementary and the secondary school indeed; it is seldom that the teaching of GO for university students in Algeria has been studied. Moreover, what makes our study more interesting and practical is the fact that we kept the traditional teaching methods. Despite the unsatisfactory results of these methods in the learning of sciences, higher education in our country cannot ignore them for the reason of the increase of the number of first-year university students and lack of resources to use more modern technology like simulation and experiences. Also, there is need to motivate students in biology department towards studying GO or physics so that the learners can acquire knowledge and concepts that will be relevant in their future studies.

As a conclusion of this research paper, the following items summarize the findings after comparing the results of the experimental group and the control group at the pre-test and the post-test:

intrinsic motivation has increased among students in the experimental group;
intrinsic motivation for learning the OG, among students in control group, has not changed;
high positive correlation (0.81) between the intrinsic motivation and understanding of GO concepts;
many misconceptions appeared to be completely eliminated in a substantial number of students in the experimental group and among fewer students in control group.

From these findings, we can response to our researches questions:

teaching sequence using HoS approach has a positive effect on university students’ intrinsic motivation for learning GO;
teaching sequence using HoS approach help university students’ to understand concepts of GO;
it exists a positive correlation between intrinsic motivation and students’ understanding of GO concepts.

Thereby we can conclude that the use of HoS helped the students to fully benefit from the GO courses. We think that when students notice the importance of certain concepts (eg: refraction, vision), it could urge them to be more interested in the learning of these concepts. In other words, their intrinsic motivation increases. When the students discover that scientists, very famous in their times, had similar misconceptions and that the concepts are provisional and evolutionary, it could cause them to have an intrinsic motivation and a self-determination to continue their learning. This can facilitate the conceptual change and the understanding concepts.

Following this research, several perspectives are possible to develop teaching strategies integrating the history of science in order to improve student motivation or a favourable conceptual change.

However, because of the small number of students participating in this study, these results will need to be re-confirmed on a larger number of individuals. In order to more clarify the students’ misconceptions on OG, a qualitative study is recommended. Also, to ensure the effective role played by HoS, the study should be expanded to include other specialties such as: electricity, chemistry….. In addition, the effect of the increase in intrinsic motivation on student achievement in the case of geometrical optics could be the subject of a future study.