Students Talk about Energy in Project- Based Inquiry Science

We examine the types of emergent language eighth grade students in rural Maine middle schools use when they discuss energy in their first experiences with Project-Based Inquiry Science: Energy, a research-based curriculum that uses a specific language for talking about energy. By comparative analysis of the language used by the curriculum materials to students’ language, we find that students’ talk is at times more aligned with a Stores and Transfer model of energy than the Forms model supported by the curriculum

Productive resources in students’ ideas about energy: An alternative analysis of Watts’ original interview transcripts

For over 30 years, researchers have investigated students’ ideas about energy with the intent of reforming instructional practice. In this pursuit, Watts contributed an influential study with his 1983 paper “Some alternative views of energy” [Phys. Educ. 18, 213 (1983)]. Watts’ “alternative frameworks” continue to be used for categorizing students’ non-normative ideas about energy. Using a resources framework, we propose an alternate analysis of student responses from Watts’ interviews. In our analysis, we show how students’ activated resources about energy are disciplinarily productive. We suggest that fostering seeds of scientific understandings in students’ ideas about energy may play an important role in their development of scientific literacy

Elements of Proximal Formative Assessment in Learners’ Discourse about Energy

Proximal formative assessment, the just-in-time elicitation of students\u27 ideas that informs ongoing instruction, is usually associated with the instructor in a formal classroom setting. However, the elicitation, assessment, and subsequent instruction that characterize proximal formative assessment are also seen in discourse among peers. We present a case in which secondary teachers in a professional development course at SPU are discussing energy flow in refrigerators. In this episode, a peer is invited to share her thinking (elicitation). Her idea that refrigerators move heat from a relatively cold compartment to a hotter environment is inappropriately judged as incorrect (assessment). The instruction (peer explanation) that follows is based on the second law of thermodynamics, and acts as corrective rather than collaborative

Student-teacher interactions for bringing out student ideas about energy

Modern middle school science curricula use group activities to help students express their thinking and enable them to work together like scientists. We are studying rural 8th grade science classrooms using materials on energy. Even after spending several months with the same curriculum on other physics topics, students\u27 engagement in group activities seems to be restricted to creating lists of words that are associated with energy. Though research suggests that children have rich and potentially valuable ideas about energy, our students don\u27t seem to spontaneously use and express their ideas in the classroom. Only within or after certain interactions with a teacher do students begin to explore and share these ideas. We present and characterize examples of student-teacher interactions resulting in students\u27 deeper engagement with their ideas about energy. This preliminary analysis of video-recorded classroom dialog is a step toward helping teachers improve their students\u27 learning about energy

The Role of Playing in the Representation of the Concept of Energy: a Lab Experience for Future Primary School Teachers

Energy, particularly in introductory physics at primary school level, is of-ten taught in terms of list of different “forms of energy” and seldom as a uni-fying concept underlying many aspects of the world. However, the “sub-stance” ontology for energy seems to be particularly productive in develop-ing understanding of energy and energy transfers. From a methodological point of view, narratives and forms of “playing” are valuable and significant representations that allow learning scientific concepts. Through a physical experience, in the form of role play, we help to develop the concept of ener-gy flow/current and storage. In this contribution, we propose a laboratory activity in which future primary school teachers represent the process of energy exchange among energy carriers. The participants are required to study a simple toy, finding the energy carriers, and the role of each of them; additionally, they have to write a story, with as many characters as the ener-gy carriers, telling how they exchange energy in the parts of the toy. Energy conservation and heat production are perceivable in the act of exchanging confetti which represent energy. The role play helps the participants to vis-ualize the energy as a substance, even though it is imperceptible. The analy-sis of the students’ role plays and the information collected from question-naires give feedback about students’ conceptualization of some of the most significant aspects of energy

Energy Tracking Diagrams

Energy is a crosscutting concept in science and features prominently in national science education documents. In the Next Generation Science Standards, the primary conceptual learning goal is for learners to conserve energy as they track the transfers and transformations of energy within, into, or out of the system of interest in complex physical processes. As part of tracking energy transfers among objects, learners should (i) distinguish energy from matter, including recognizing that energy flow does not uniformly align with the movement of matter, and should (ii) identify specific mechanisms by which energy is transferred among objects, such as mechanical work and thermal conduction. As part of tracking energy transformations within objects, learners should (iii) associate specific forms with specific models and indicators (e.g., kinetic energy with speed and/or coordinated motion of molecules, thermal energy with random molecular motion and/or temperature) and (iv) identify specific mechanisms by which energy is converted from one form to another, such as incandescence and metabolism. Eventually, we may hope for learners to be able to optimize systems to maximize some energy transfers and transformations and minimize others, subject to constraints based in both imputed mechanism (e.g., objects must have motion energy in order for gravitational energy to change) and the second law of thermodynamics (e.g., heating is irreversible). We hypothesize that a subsequent goal of energy learning—innovating to meet socially relevant needs—depends crucially on the extent to which these goals have been met