Abstract
This chapter presents a general framework for thinking about the goals of pre-college energy education and a detailed learning progression for Grades 3–5. This work is based on a review of existing literature on children’s understanding of energy as well as interviews and teaching interventions with elementary students. We propose that energy education focus on how scientists use what we call the “Energy Lens” to examine a broad range of phenomena in terms of energy. We identify a network of four interdependent foundational ideas that are central to a scientific understanding of energy, essential for an informed citizen, and can progressively and meaningfully evolve, with instruction, from their precursors in childhood to principles endorsed by scientists. Our proposed learning progression builds on students’ initial ideas and indicates how students’ understanding of the network of foundational energy ideas and the Energy Lens will broaden and deepen over the course of a 3-year instructional sequence from Grades 3–5. This approach shows promise to help students restructure their ideas about energy and prepare them for further instruction and learning in middle school. In pilot classroom activities, 3rd and 5th grade students began to develop language, representations, and habits of mind that enabled them to adopt a model of energy as something that manifests itself in different forms and to associate energy increases with energy decreases, paving the way to understanding energy transfer and, eventually, energy conservation.
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Notes
- 1.
We recognize that some of these terms are controversial, particularly “forms” and “transformations,” and we discuss those issues later in this paper.
- 2.
More precisely, work done by the frictional force. At this grade level we do not think it is productive to focus on the distinction between force and work. “Friction” is used here to refer to a general phenomenon, aspects of which include the frictional force, energy dissipation, and frictional heating.
- 3.
- 4.
Again, the alternative is to describe the energy as residing in the gravitational field (Swackhamer 2005). On a microscopic level, the energy in the compressed spring is due to interactions between the atoms and is not a property of the atoms themselves. So the distinction between the two cases is pedagogical rather than fundamental. Since the interacting atoms are all within the spring, we can describe the stored energy as a property of the spring, due to its compressed state, without reference to any external object.
- 5.
We do not think it is useful to treat electrical currents as carriers of energy (Millar 2005). It is not accurate to consider the energy as carried by the current, and such a description can contribute to misconceptions such as that the energy is kinetic energy of the electrons and that in a complete circuit the energy returns to the battery.
- 6.
We see no benefit to emphasizing or enforcing the thermodynamic distinction between heat and internal energy at this grade level, but we encourage the use of the term “thermal energy” to emphasize that “heat” is a manifestation or form of energy, rather than a distinct quantity or substance.
- 7.
In transcribing the recorded interview we could not consistently distinguish the voices of the two students, so an utterance by either student is indicated by “S” without further identification.
- 8.
This misconception is documented in the AAAS Project 2061 Science Assessment website: “When two objects at different temperatures are in contact with each other, thermal energy is transferred from the warmer object to the cooler object and “coldness” or “cold energy” is transferred from the cooler object to the warmer object.” (AAAS n.d.)
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Acknowledgement
This work was supported by National Science Foundation Awards #1020013 and #1020020.
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Lacy, S., Tobin, R.G., Wiser, M., Crissman, S. (2014). Looking Through the Energy Lens: A Proposed Learning Progression for Energy in Grades 3–5. In: Chen, R., et al. Teaching and Learning of Energy in K – 12 Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05017-1_14
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