At St. John's College (back in the 90's anyways), we called this "teaching science and math historically" (as opposed to teaching the history of science and math -- which tends to emphasize dates and names).

By telling the story of science and math, we gained the context of who did what for what reasons. Which unlocked my understanding of science and math in a way that textbooks never did.

Hence why The Phoenix Project was much better at teaching the basic concepts of DevOps than any DevOps how-to book or technical reference.