The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of a constructivist teaching intervention on 6th grade students' cognitive progress on large-scale Energy Generation Systems (EGS), specifically on a Thermal Power Plant (TPP). This intervention was designed according to the constructivist approach for teaching and learning science, and it can be described as an autonomous teaching module appropriate for an elementary science curriculum. With the application of this intervention in real classroom settings, the majority of students were able to construct sufficient technological and scientific knowledge in order to describe and explain the operation of a TPP in qualitative energy terms, as our research data ascertained.
The present study refers to the design principles of an educational simulation for the introductory physics level and their application on a recently developed simulation (IGasES: Ideal Gas Educational Simulation) for classical thermodynamics and specifically for the First Law of Thermodynamics. These principles rely on three modeling aspects (physics teaching, learning and educational simulations) and their convergence for the construction of a model-based educational simulation. The study also reviews some of the issues that commonly used simulations encounter for the teaching and learning of this topic. For addressing these issues, we choose the energy chain model as a proper representation of a thermodynamic system for mediating between the phenomenology and the mathematical expression of the First Law. In conclusion, this study draws attention on the characteristics of the educational software rather than the way they are put in use and also to the modeling procedures than can facilitate the student’s conceptual understanding.
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