The use of history of science in physics teaching: an application for electromagnetism

The present is a revision of different proposals that utilize History of Science in teaching. They have been grouped according to the purpose they pursue: to evoke discoveries, to highlight the human aspect of Science through the contributions of renamed scientists, to teach the processes of scientific construction, to detect students' preconceptions and teach concepts, and to highlight the socio-cultural basis of scientific ideas and research. We discuss why we consider that this last aspect includes the other ones, and elaborate general guidelines for the use of HC in a particular case dealing with electromagnetic field. Our proposal is focused on the controversy between "action-at-a-distance" and "field", and is elaborated on the basis of key experiments carried out by Heinrich Hertz.