This special issue of Science & Education deals with the history of instruments and experiments in science teaching. The five papers highlight different aspects of this historical development in Europe and North America from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century.

Experiments play a crucial role in science education. This statement appears too uncontroversial to be debated. The significance of experiments is not limited to a particular level of education; on the contrary, laboratory courses exist in all science faculties at the university level. Experimenting and working with scientific instruments are generally acknowledged to be an essential part in the formation of a scientist. Things are similar at the school level, except for a different formal structure—there are usually no isolated laboratory courses; experiments are simply part of classroom teaching. As science education is an integral component of compulsory education and not merely professional formalisation, science teachers are required to justify course methods and content. Consequently, different reasons for conducting experiments in the process of school education are to be found (and experiments fulfil different purposes in the educational process). Among the reasons ascribed to experiments in education are motivation, encouragement, support to the learning processes (for example, by allowing learners to question existing preconceptions, or by enabling them to develop or establish new conceptual knowledge), or to form an occasion to reflect about certain aspects of the nature of science.