Constructing a Sustainable Foundation for Thinking and Learning About Energy in the Twenty-First Century

Seeley, Lane; Vokos, Stamatis; Minstrell, Jim

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-05017-1_19

Cited by 11 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Adult learners wrestle with many of the same issues, as described by Daane et al 5 and by Seeley et al 19 In the following exchange, from one of the Focus on Energy professional development workshops, two teachers, Ellen and Samantha, are discussing how to represent the same springboard/pompom scenario. They are using Energy Cubes-an abstract, semiquantitative representational scheme that is central to the curriculum and that the teachers and students learn to use fluently to reason about and communicate the flow of energy in any scenario.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Where does energy go when it's “Gone”? Promoting understanding of energy dissipation

Tobin

Lacy²,

Crissman³

et al. 2019

American Journal of Physics

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The principle of energy conservation cannot be fully accepted or applied in most real-world contexts without an understanding and acceptance of the idea of dissipation: when the perceptible changes in the system have stopped, the energy that was present in the beginning is still present in the system and its environment, even if it is no longer detectable. This idea is challenging for learners of all ages and presents a serious obstacle to understanding. Results from Focus on Energy, an innovative elementary-school energy curriculum, show that fourth-and fifth-grade students can engage productively with the idea of dissipation, leading to a model of energy that includes dissipation. The curriculum does not explicitly include dissipation as a learning target, but it includes early and frequent exposure to dissipative phenomena, a meaningful conceptual framework, and appropriate representational tools. These resources offer opportunities to reason about dissipation and incorporate it into the students' developing energy model. In an openresponse assessment, 23% of Focus on Energy students spontaneously included dissipation in their tracking of energy in a wind-up toy, compared to 3% for students who received standard energy instruction. Adult teachers experience similar difficulties with the concept of dissipation, and results from professional development workshops show that the same curricular approach is effective with these adult learners. We suggest that if young children and adult teachers can begin to reconcile energy conservation and energy dissipation, then similar instructional approaches could enable high school and college students to engage productively with dissipation ideas.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Where does energy go when it's “Gone”? Promoting understanding of energy dissipation

Tobin

Lacy²,

Crissman³

et al. 2019

American Journal of Physics

Self Cite

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show abstract

“…Initially, we identified constituent ideas of the energy model based on our substantial experience with energy model development [12,[25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35]. As our analysis continued, we refined our list of constituent ideas to reflect the features of the energy model that appeared most clearly or repeatedly in the standards that we analyzed.…”

Section: Ngss Model Of Energy In the Physical Sciencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Drawings of energy: Evidence of the Next Generation Science Standards model of energy in diagrams

Gray

Wittmann

Vokos

et al. 2019

Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. Res.

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The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) provide a succession of objectives for energy learning and set an expectation for teachers to assess learners' representations of energy in a variety of science contexts. To support teachers in evaluating the extent to which representations of energy display NGSS objectives, we have (i) discerned the constituent ideas that comprise the NGSS model of energy in the physical sciences and (ii) developed a checklist for assessing the extent to which an energy diagram provides evidence of the NGSS energy model. This energy diagram checklist is representation independent (so that diverse diagrams in a course may all be evaluated) and scenario independent (so that it can be applied throughout the physical science curriculum). We demonstrate the use of the checklist for assessing both pedagogical energy diagrams and learner-invented energy diagrams, including measuring a class's increased facility with energy diagrams.

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“…We have used the pulley task and several similar tasks to study shifts in energy reasoning. In this paper we will confine our analysis to the pulley scenario though we saw similar shifts in energy reasoning strategies on other tasks [4]. A pre-test including the pulley question was administered at the beginning of a two-week workshop for secondary science teachers in the summer of 2012.…”

Section: Experimental Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing for shifts in learner's energy reasoning strategies

Seeley¹

2014

2013 Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings

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Abstract:The Energy Project is a research effort aimed at increasing learner engagement with energy concepts in K-12 classrooms. We work closely with elementary and secondary science teachers, offering professional development opportunities in which teachers use energy tracking strategies to make sense of energy conservation in a wide range of complex physical phenomena. We value the construction and refinement of flexible, rigorous and intuitive energy models which will empower learners to make sense of phenomena and resources that they care about in the real world. Therefore, both in instruction and assessment we prioritize energy reasoning strategies over static lists of energy facts or correct explanations. In this paper we share preliminary evidence of significant shifts in teacher's constructive use of diagrams and rigorous attention to energy tracking when confronted with a novel energy scenario. We believe that this study has methodological implications for future research on shifts in energy understanding.

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Constructing a Sustainable Foundation for Thinking and Learning About Energy in the Twenty-First Century

Cited by 11 publications

References 9 publications

Where does energy go when it's “Gone”? Promoting understanding of energy dissipation

Where does energy go when it's “Gone”? Promoting understanding of energy dissipation

Drawings of energy: Evidence of the Next Generation Science Standards model of energy in diagrams

Assessing for shifts in learner's energy reasoning strategies

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