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.
Science standards of different countries introduced disciplinary core ideas and crosscutting concepts-such as energy-to help students develop a more interconnected science understanding. As previous research has mostly addressed energy learning in specific disciplinary contexts, this study targets students' cross-disciplinary understanding of energy. Since no respective test instrument was available, we present the development and validation of an instrument that can be used to compare students' progressing energy understanding across contexts from biology, chemistry, and physics. In a cross-sectional study, we administered the new instrument to N = 752 students at the end of grades 6, 8, and 10. In addition to a detailed discussion of the instrument's reliability and validity, the study findings compare progressing energy understanding in the three disciplinary contexts. With regard to energy as a crosscutting concept, the results are then used to discuss how students' energy understanding may be connected across disciplinary boundaries.
The concept of energy serves biologists as a powerful analytical model to describe phenomena that occurs in the natural world. Due to the concept's relevance, educational standards of different countries identify energy as a core idea for the teaching and learning of biology and other science subjects. However, previous research on students' energy understanding has mostly focused on physics contexts. This cross-sectional study extends insight to the field by providing a systematic analysis of students' (N = 30, grades 5, 7, 9, 11) conceptions about energy in biological contexts. In order to connect the findings to previous research, the study analyses conceptions about four energy aspects that are regarded as central for understanding the concept in different disciplinary contexts, i.e. (1) energy forms/sources, (2) transfer/ transformation, (3) degradation/dissipation and (4) energy conservation. The findings identify substantial changes in students' conceptions about energy between the different grade levels, but also highlight conceptions that students consistently employed across age groups. The results are discussed in the light of previous research on students' progressing energy understanding and the connection of their energy understanding across different disciplinary contexts. Lastly, the article provides implications for the further development of energy teaching in biological contexts.
Past research has identified elements underlying modeling as a core science and engineering practice, as well as dimensions along which students’ learn how to use models and how they perceive the nature of modeling. To extend these findings by a perspective on how modeling practice can be used in classrooms, we used design-based research to investigate how the modeling practice elements, i.e., construct, use, evaluate, and revise, were integrated in a middle school unit about water quality that included using an online modeling tool. We focus on N = 3 groups as cases to track and analyze 7th grade students’ modeling practice and metamodeling knowledge across the unit. Students constructed, used, evaluated, and revised their models based on data they collected and concepts they learned. Results indicate most students succeeded in constructing complex models using the modeling tool by consecutively adding and specifying variables and relationships. This is a positive finding compared to prior research on students’ metamodeling knowledge. Similar to these studies, we observed several basic metamodeling conceptions and generally less progress in this field than in students’ models. We discuss implications for applying modeling practice in classrooms and explain how students make use of the different modeling practice elements by developing their models in the complexity and quality dimensions.
Energy conservation is a fundamental concept in physics and across the sciences as it provides a lens for investigating a wide range of phenomena. Research into energy learning progressions has shown that a majority of students across K-12 struggle with energy conservation. These studies characterize students’ learning progressions as starting from energy being manifest in different forms. Research suggests that learning progressions that begin with the idea of forms only lead to an understanding of conservation for a minority of students. Thus, the question arises whether there are alternative, more productive pathways towards conservation than going through forms. We investigated to what extent students progress towards conservation if they are taught in a transfer-only approach to teaching energy that does not require forms. Drawing on interviews from N = 30 students across different time points in a 10 week transfer-only unit, we found that at the end of the unit, most students tracked energy successfully across systems, and did not violate energy conservations when explaining phenomena, that is, progressed towards a qualitative understanding of conservation. Our results imply that energy learning progressions do not have to go through forms and in fact a more productive pathway towards conservation may exist in the transfer-only approach.
Six assessment cohorts ( = 703 items) from the International Biology Olympiad, a top-tier student competition in the life sciences, were analyzed to derive assessment characteristics for high-ability tests in the life sciences. The findings address the items’ formal features, cognitive aspects, scientific content/practices, and representations.
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