| Students often rely upon the rote memorization of information in chemistry. This compromises conceptual understanding and makes chemistry uninteresting. Despite success solving stoichiometric problems, students often do not demonstrate an understanding of underlying concepts, particularly the fundamental concept of the mole. Research suggests that integrating history into teaching chemistry helps showcase it as an interesting and dynamic topic, and promotes student learning. This thesis investigated the impact of historically placed "interactive vignettes" on students' understanding of the mole concept, and their interest level in chemistry. Ten interactive vignettes, following the chronological history of the mole, were presented to a grade 11 Chemistry class. The application of a validated student attitude test ("TOSRA") showed an increase in interest towards chemistry leisure, chemistry careers, and openness to new ideas. However, students' academic scores showed no significant increase in their understanding of the mole. Going forward, the knowledge of the historical information presented in the vignettes may allow educators to approach the topic of the mole in a way that captures their students' interest and enables them to better understand the mole concept. |
