A Philosophically Informed Teaching Proposal on the Topic of Energy for Students Aged 11–14

Abstract

Learning about energy is recognized as an important objective of science teaching starting from the elementary school. This creates the need for teaching simplifications that compromise the abstract nature of this concept with students' need for a satisfactory qualitative definition. Conventional teaching approaches have failed to respond to this need in a productive manner. In an attempt to maintain consistency with how energy is understood in physics, they tend to either provide abstract definitions or bypass the question what is energy?, which is vitally important to students. In this paper, we describe the epistemological barriers that are inherent in conventional attempts to introduce energy as a physical quantity and we suggest that shifting the discussion to a philosophicallyoriented context could provide a means to address them in a productive manner. We propose a teaching approach, for students in the age range 11-14, that introduces energy as an entity in a theoretical framework that is invented and gradually elaborated in an attempt to analyze the behavior of diverse physical systems, and especially the various changes they undergo, using a coherent perspective. This theoretical framework provides an epistemologically appropriate context that lends meaning to energy and its various features (i.e. transfer, form conversion, conservation and degradation). We argue that this philosophically informed teaching transformation provides a possible means to overcome the various shortcomings that typically characterize attempts to introduce and elaborate the construct of energy while at the same time it allows integrating, in a meaningful and coherent manner, learning objectives relevant to the understanding of the Nature of Science (NOS), which is recognized as a valuable component of learning in science. In this paper, we outline the rationale underlying this teaching approach and describe a proposed activity sequence that illustrates our proposal.

Nature of Science and Science Content Learning

“…In accordance with Papadouris and Constantinou (2011), we view them complementary to the non-epistemological disciplinary aspects that mainly focus on the properties of energy as it is conceptualized and defined, like energy forms, transfer, conservation, and degradation (see, e.g., Duit 2013). NETC, in this sense, refers to understanding the nature of the concept as being a theoretical construct, as well as the purpose the concept of energy serves in being a universal framework that bears great predictive power (see Bächtold and Guedj 2014)-rather than to understanding and applying the disciplinary aspects of energy for problem solving.…”

“…NETC, in this sense, refers to understanding the nature of the concept as being a theoretical construct, as well as the purpose the concept of energy serves in being a universal framework that bears great predictive power (see Bächtold and Guedj 2014)-rather than to understanding and applying the disciplinary aspects of energy for problem solving. In order to value energy as a concept that is important both in science and in everyday life, students should understand that (1) energy is a universal concept in a sense that it can be applied to a broad variety of phenomena, and (2) energy is a theoretical concept that has been brought up by scientists, rather than having been developed, but which nevertheless holds great value due to its explanatory power (Papadouris and Constantinou 2011). To understand and appreciate these aspects, a sophisticated understanding of NOS seems important (Papadouris and Constantinou 2011).…”

“…In order to value energy as a concept that is important both in science and in everyday life, students should understand that (1) energy is a universal concept in a sense that it can be applied to a broad variety of phenomena, and (2) energy is a theoretical concept that has been brought up by scientists, rather than having been developed, but which nevertheless holds great value due to its explanatory power (Papadouris and Constantinou 2011). To understand and appreciate these aspects, a sophisticated understanding of NOS seems important (Papadouris and Constantinou 2011). NOS, in this regard, could serve as a framework that students can refer to when engaging in learning about energy-and other scientific concepts-while at the same time reflecting on their ways of modeling these concepts and on how this is in accordance with a realistic view of science and scientific knowledge.…”

“…The NOS unit, which only group A students were taught, was based on generic NOS activities (Lederman and Abd-El-Khalick 1998), which were critically discussed in an explicitreflective manner (see Akerson et al 2000;Clough 2006;Khishfe and Abd-El-Khalick 2002). The administered NOS unit partly followed the schedule of the teaching approach of Papadouris and Constantinou (2011). Sample activities and NOS aspects that were addressed are given in Table 2.…”

“…In addition to the four Btraditionalâ spects of energy which are mentioned in the literature (Duit 2013;, the concept of energy also has some facets that are more epistemological in nature (Papadouris and Constantinou 2011). First, energy can be regarded as a very universal theoretical concept, bridging several scientific domains and being applicable to a broad range of scientific phenomena.…”