Abstract
The chapter describes a case study of a guided inquiry approach for teaching the topic of electricity to Year 6 students. Design-based research explored the challenges in teaching and learning electricity adopting a Representation Construction Approach (RCA). Classroom teachers and researchers collaborated over 2 years to develop and refine sequence of lessons where students constructed multi-modal representations in response to hands-on challenges. The chapter conveys the teachers’ perspectives as they negotiated changes in their classroom practice necessary to adopt the RCA. The study concludes that an emphasis on energy transfer and transformation and hands-on exploration, using multi-modal representations provides a strong foundation for primary students’ learning the phenomenon of electricity.
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Hubber, P., Preston, C. (2021). Teaching Electricity to Year 6 Primary Students Using Representational Pedagogies: From Simple Circuits to Complex Ideas. In: Geelan, D., Nichols, K., McDonald, C.V. (eds) Complexity and Simplicity in Science Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79084-4_11
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