In science education, chemistry is a discipline that involves macroscopic matter and microscopic particles. It is difficult for the traditional teaching approach to help learners comprehend abstract chemical knowledge. Researchers have attempted to use Virtual Reality (VR) to help learners realize meaningful knowledge via visualizing the learning content. However, merely engaging students in experiencing the scientific contexts is not enough. To fill this gap, the present study adopted Spherical Video-based Virtual Reality (SVVR) to create authentic learning contexts for learners, and proposed an exploration-based SVVR approach which aimed to promote students' understanding of abstract concepts and improve their competence of completing chemistry experiments. A quasi-experimental design was employed to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. A total of 136 junior high school students from three classes were recruited for the experiment. The experimental group adopted the exploration-based SVVR approach, control group I adopted the conventional SVVR approach, and control group II adopted traditional instruction. The results showed that the exploration-based SVVR approach not only improved students' learning achievement, but also increased their learning motivation, learning attitude, and creative thinking tendency. Besides, students adopting this approach had more positive behaviors, including finding problems, making assumptions, investigating and verifying, and discussion.