Assessing learning progression of energy concepts across middle school grades: The knowledge integration perspective

Lee, Hee‐Sun; Liu, Ou Lydia

doi:10.1002/sce.20382

Cited by 135 publications

(106 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…Research by Lee and Liu (2010) suggest that energy conservation is more difficult because it requires a higher level of integration of energy ideas than the forms, transfer, and dissipation ideas require. However, a rank ordering of all 14 ideas by average difficulty (see Table 6), does show that items testing students' understanding of the forms of energy tend to be easiest, items testing their understanding of energy transfer are more difficult, and items testing their understanding of conservation are the most difficult.…”

Section: Research Questions 1 and 2: Validating The Progression Of Enmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A number of studies have investigated learning progressions for the energy concept (Liu & Collard, 2005;Lee & Liu, 2010;Liu & McKeough, 2005). Liu and McKeough (2005) used the responses from three populations of U.S. students (3rd and 4th graders, 7th and 8th graders, and 12th graders) to 27 multiple-choice and short-answer items from the TIMSS database.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Liu and McKeough (2005) used the responses from three populations of U.S. students (3rd and 4th graders, 7th and 8th graders, and 12th graders) to 27 multiple-choice and short-answer items from the TIMSS database. In a follow up study, Liu and Collard (2005) administered three performance assessments to 67 students from one 4th grade class, one 8th grade class, and one high school physics class in the U.S. Lee and Liu (2010) selected eight multiple-choice items and two explanation items from item sets released by TIMSS and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and tested them with 2,688 middle school students from across the U.S. Each of these studies concluded that students' understanding of energy progressed through four conceptual categories. First, students perceive energy as activity or the ability to do work.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…As a second example, conservation of energy may seem counterintuitive without understanding that energy can be transferred or transformed and that the dissipation of energy to the surrounding environment accompanies all energy transfers and transformations. In fact, the idea of conservation of energy has been specifically identified as one that requires a high level of knowledge integration (Goldring & Osborne, 1994;Lacy et al, 2014;Lee & Liu, 2010).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Investigating a learning progression for energy ideas from upper elementary through high school

Herrmann‐Abell

DeBoer

2017

J Res Sci Teach

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This study tests a hypothesized learning progression for the concept of energy. It looks at 14 specific ideas under the categories of (i) Energy Forms and Transformations; (ii) Energy Transfer; (iii) Energy Dissipation and Degradation; and (iv) Energy Conservation. It then examines students' growth of understanding within each of these ideas at three levels of increasing conceptual complexity. The basic level of the model focuses on simple energy relationships and easily observable effects of energy processes; the intermediate level focuses on more complex energy concepts and applications; and the advanced level focuses on still more complex energy concepts, often requiring an atomic/molecular model to explain phenomena. The study includes results from 359 distractor-driven, multiple-choice test items administered to over 20,000 students in grades 4 through 12 from across the U.S. Rasch analysis provided linear measures of student performance and item difficulty on the same scale. Results largely supported a model of students' growth of understanding that progresses from an understanding of forms and transformations of energy to energy transfer to conservation while also progressing along a separate dimension of cognitive complexity. An analysis of the current state of students' understanding with respect to the knowledge identified in the learning progression showed that elementary level students perform well in comparison to expectations but that middle and high school students' performance does not meet expectations. # 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 55: 2018

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Section: Research Questions 1 and 2: Validating The Progression Of Enmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Investigating a learning progression for energy ideas from upper elementary through high school

Herrmann‐Abell

DeBoer

2017

J Res Sci Teach

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“…Duit (1986) for instance, proposed to differentiate forms, transfer/transformation, degradation and conservation. This differentiation as well as the general consensus of seeing energy as one of the major scientific concepts have influenced both research as well as policy documents, although to a different extend and with different emphasis (AAAS 2007; Lee and Liu 2010;National Research Council 2011;KMK 2004).…”

Section: Students' Understanding Of the Energy Conceptmentioning

confidence: 99%

Composition-Effects of Context-based Learning Opportunities on Students’ Understanding of Energy

Podschuweit

Bernholt

2017

Res Sci Educ

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Context-based learning has become a widespread approach in science education. While positive motivational effects of such approaches have been well established empirically, clear results regarding cognitive aspects of students' learning are still missing. In this article, we argue that this circumstance might be mainly rooted in the definition of context itself. Based on this argument, we shift from the issue of if contexts are cognitively beneficial to focus on the question of which composition of contexts is, at least by tendency, more effective than another. Based on theories of conceptual change, we therefore conducted a small-scale intervention study comparing two groups of students learning in different sets of contexts focusing on the same scientific concept-the cross-cutting concept of energy. Results suggest that learning in a more heterogeneous set of contexts eases transfer to new contexts in comparison to learning in a more homogeneous set of contexts. However, a more abstract understanding of the energy concept does not seem to be fostered by either of these approaches. Theoretical as well as practical implications of these finding are discussed.

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Metacognitive learning in the ecology classroom: A tool for preparing problem solvers in a time of rapid change?

et al. 2016

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Abstract. Building communities that are resilient and adaptive to climate change requires the development of education strategies that train community members in higher order thinking skills that can be used to solve complex environmental problems. This study provides an empirical test of hypotheses within social-ecological systems resilience theory that have suggested metacognitive learning strategies could increase resilience thinking skills such as scenarios thinking, systems thinking, and the ability to interpret and apply ecological data in complex problem solving. During a 6-week long ecology unit with 108 seventh-grade students, we taught half the students using standard inquiry teaching methods and the other half using the same method, with the addition of a daily metacognitive learning intervention. We investigated the short-term (after six weeks of intervention) and long-term (1 yr after the intervention ended) effects of the intervention on student's metacognitive ability and resilience thinking skills. Over the long term, we found a modest increase in the metacognitive ability of students who received the daily metacognitive journaling exercise. Interview data suggest that the structured metacognitive practice did most to improve the resilience thinking level of students who had low resilience thinking ability prior to the intervention period. However, the interaction between pre-treatment ability level and the treatment group was not detected in the written assessment data. These data suggest that the metacognitive learning intervention we used can benefit metacognitive ability over the long term, but has limited transferability to resilience thinking skills for most students. We suggest additional instructional practices for implementing metacognitive teaching approaches that could enhance the generalizability of their benefits across resilience thinking skills and student's ability levels.

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Assessing learning progression of energy concepts across middle school grades: The knowledge integration perspective

Cited by 135 publications

References 47 publications

Investigating a learning progression for energy ideas from upper elementary through high school

Investigating a learning progression for energy ideas from upper elementary through high school

Composition-Effects of Context-based Learning Opportunities on Students’ Understanding of Energy

Metacognitive learning in the ecology classroom: A tool for preparing problem solvers in a time of rapid change?

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