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We investigated whether it is possible for 12-year-old students to develop a qualitative conceptualization of energy and four associate features (forms of energy, transfer processes, conservation, and degradation) as a framework for constructing interpretive accounts for the operation of physical phenomena (specifically, for changes taking place in simple physical systems). We implemented, in authentic classroom environments, a specific teaching-learning sequence designed to promote this particular learning objective. The implementation involved three intact classes (N ¼ 64) and lasted nine 80-minute sessions. We collected data through open-ended tasks and follow-up interviews, so as to investigate what could be achieved by students in terms of employing energy for analyzing the operation of physical systems. The findings suggest that, to a large extent, the students were able to productively meet this challenge. At the same time, the data revealed specific conceptual, reasoning, or other difficulties they encountered. Our findings have implications for specific issues debated in the literature on teaching and learning about energy, including the developmental appropriateness of energy as a learning objective for the lower middle school grades and the instructional value of forms of energy. We discuss boundary conditions in terms of what falls within the reach of lower middle school students and highlight implications for the characteristics of physical systems that could be productively analyzed by students of this age. #

The aim of this study is to explore the ways in which students, aged 11–14 years, account for certain changes in physical systems and the extent to which they draw on an energy model as a common framework for explaining changes observed in diverse systems. Data were combined from two sources: interviews with 20 individuals and an open‐ended questionnaire that was administered to 240 students (121 upper elementary school students and 119 middle school students). We observed a wealth of approaches ranging from accounts of energy transfer and transformation to responses identifying specific objects or processes as the cause of changes. The findings also provide evidence that students do not seem to appreciate the transphenomenological and unifying nature of energy. Students' thinking was influenced by various conceptual difficulties that are compounded by traditional science teaching; for instance, students tended to confuse energy with force or electric current. In addition, the comparison between the responses from middle school students and those of elementary school students demonstrates that science teaching and maturation appeared to have a negligible influence on whether students had constructed a coherent energy model, which they could use consistently to account for changes in certain physical systems. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 45: 444–469, 2008

Learning about energy is recognized as an important objective of science teaching starting from the elementary school. This creates the need for teaching simplifications that compromise the abstract nature of this concept with students' need for a satisfactory qualitative definition. Conventional teaching approaches have failed to respond to this need in a productive manner. In an attempt to maintain consistency with how energy is understood in physics, they tend to either provide abstract definitions or bypass the question what is energy?, which is vitally important to students. In this paper, we describe the epistemological barriers that are inherent in conventional attempts to introduce energy as a physical quantity and we suggest that shifting the discussion to a philosophicallyoriented context could provide a means to address them in a productive manner. We propose a teaching approach, for students in the age range 11-14, that introduces energy as an entity in a theoretical framework that is invented and gradually elaborated in an attempt to analyze the behavior of diverse physical systems, and especially the various changes they undergo, using a coherent perspective. This theoretical framework provides an epistemologically appropriate context that lends meaning to energy and its various features (i.e. transfer, form conversion, conservation and degradation). We argue that this philosophically informed teaching transformation provides a possible means to overcome the various shortcomings that typically characterize attempts to introduce and elaborate the construct of energy while at the same time it allows integrating, in a meaningful and coherent manner, learning objectives relevant to the understanding of the Nature of Science (NOS), which is recognized as a valuable component of learning in science. In this paper, we outline the rationale underlying this teaching approach and describe a proposed activity sequence that illustrates our proposal.

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This paper reports on an attempt to help 12‐year‐old students develop a specific optimization strategy for selecting among possible solutions in socioscientific decision‐making situations. We have developed teaching and learning materials for elaborating this strategy, and we have implemented them in two intact classes (N = 48). Prior to and after the implementation, which lasted for nine 80‐minute sessions, we collected data through a number of open‐ended tasks that asked students either to address certain decision‐making situations or to evaluate given decisions. Twenty students (42%) also participated in follow‐up interviews. Data analysis revealed that this type of intervention may lead to an improvement in students' decision‐making reasoning strategies, starting from an early stage. Specifically, after the implementation (i) most students spontaneously selected to apply the targeted optimization strategy and provided appropriate justifications for their decisions, (ii) there was a substantial reduction in the frequency of responses that either relied on noncompensatory approaches or synthesized the available information in a nonvalid manner, and (iii) there was an improvement in students' ability to elaborate reasoning flaws in given decision‐making approaches. In addition, the findings provide insights into certain challenges and confounding factors involved in designing learning materials for promoting such reasoning strategies. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed 96:600–630, 2012

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