Tell me a story, professor! The effect of historical science stories on academic achievement and motivation in a physics class

ABSTRACT Background Achieving the targeted of university physics courses and improving student motivation requires varying types of instructional design. One alternative approach to the traditional lecture format involves the use of historical science stories, which are narratives that present episodes from the life of a scientist, as well as characterizing the nature of science, providing students with a historical perspective of the subject being taught and helping them to comprehend and retain the concept. Purpose The purpose of our study was to investigate the effect of using historical science stories (HSS) on the academic achievement and motivation of future teachers. Design and methods A pretest-posttest research design compared two classrooms: one that included the story-based history of science in the teaching the topic of free fall movement and one that did not. Sample A total of 35 preservice science teachers (17 in the experimental group and 18 in the control group) participated in the study. The results showed that the preservice teachers in the experimental group performed better than those in the control group. Results The use of the historical science story-based approach also promoted the motivation of the participants. Analysis of the data revealed that the intervention had a statistically significant effect on the academic achievement of the student teachers. On the other hand, although the motivation scores in the experimental group increased, this increase was not found to be statistically significant. Conclusions The findings of this study support the use of historical science stories to improve academic achievement in higher education. The conclusions reached here may enable teacher educators to introduce historical events in a similar environment to support better comprehension of physics.