Systems, transfer, and fields: Evaluating a new approach to energy instruction

Abstract

Energy is a central concept in science in every discipline and also an essential player in many of the issues facing people everywhere on the globe. However, studies have shown that by the end of K‐12 schooling, most students do not reach the level of understanding required to be able to use energy to make sense of a wide range of phenomena. Many researchers have questioned whether the conceptual foundations of traditional approaches to energy instruction may be responsible for students' difficulties. In response to these concerns, we developed and tested a novel approach to middle school physical science energy instruction that was informed by the recommendations of the Framework for K‐12 Science Education (National Research Council, 2012a) and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) (NGSS Lead States, 2013). This new approach differs substantially from more traditional approaches to energy instruction in that it does not require energy forms and it emphasizes connections between energy, systems, and fields that mediate interaction‐at‐a‐distance. We investigated student learning during this novel approach and contrasted it with student learning within a comparable unit based on a more traditional approach to energy instruction. Our findings indicate that students who learned in the new approach outperformed students who learned in the traditional approach in every quantitative and qualitative aspect considered in this study, irrespective of their prior knowledge of energy. They developed more parsimonious knowledge networks in relation to energy that focused primarily around the concept of energy transfer. This study warrants further investigation into the value of this new approach to energy instruction in both middle and high school.

Supporting Students in Using Energy Ideas to Interpret Phenomena: The Role of an Energy Representation

“…", "Wait, is it kinetic or potential energy that is stored"). While this might be surprising, it is in line with findings presented in (Fortus et al, 2019;Kubsch et al, 2019) and may be interpreted as evidence that students adapt the systems-transfer perspective very well and demonstrate little need for the idea of energy forms.…”

“…In the unit, fields are not introduced as mathematical abstractions (as they typically are), but as systems that energy is transferred to or from in phenomena that involve interaction at a distance. First evidence suggests that 7th grade students use these ideas successfully (Fortus et al, 2019;Kubsch, Nordine, Neumann, Fortus, & Krajcik, 2019).…”

Idle chatter or compelling conversation? The potential of the social media‐based #NGSSchat network for supporting science education reform efforts

“…While the use of social network analysis in science education research is growing (e.g., Fortus et al, 2019; Navy, Nixon, Luft, & Jurkiewicz, 2020), it remains limited, and much of the research on technology‐ and social media‐based networks is primarily descriptive (Macià & García, 2016). While descriptive uses of social network analysis are valuable, if researchers wish to design or impact social networks, a focus upon social network processes may be particularly important—including selection processes to interrogate who interacts with whom and influence processes to understand how involvement in interactions or relationships matter.…”

Transferring Knowledge in a Knowledge-in-Use Task—Investigating the Role of Knowledge Organization

“…Both units were about 10 weeks long, followed project-based learning pedagogy [38], and emphasized knowledge-in-use. However, while one unit conceptualized energy in terms of different forms that can be transformed into each other, the other conceptualized it as a unitary quantity that can be transferred (see [39] for more details on the units).…”

“…However, when it comes to developing conceptual understanding of major ideas such as energy, evolution, or chemical reactions, non-normative ideas play an important role [14]. Often collectively referred to as misconceptions, non-normative ideas have been a focus of discipline specific education research as they are believed to inhibit students from developing conceptual understanding (see e.g., [38,39]). However, as those ideas are often deeply rooted in students' everyday experiences and cultural background, e.g., students thinking of energy as a kind of substance that flows [44], they have shown to be resistant to change [14,56,57].…”