Teaching energy in high school by making use of history and philosophy of science

Abstract

How to improve students' understanding of energy transformation and conservation remains one of the main challenges of energy teaching. To address this challenge, we developed a new teaching strategy suited to high school based on history and philosophy of science (HPS). It involves five key ingredients: study and reproduction of Joule's paddle-wheel experiment, introduction of Rankine's definition, study of a historical text of Joule, use of an "ID card of energy," and early introduction and multiple application of the principle of energy conservation. This strategy was built and implemented in the frame of a collaborative and iterative work involving researchers and teachers. We examined the effects of this HPS-based teaching strategy on students' understanding of energy. We used a quantitative method based on pre-and posttests (N = 95/87) completed by a qualitative analysis using both video recordings of classroom activities and videos produced by students during one of the teaching sequences. The outcomes show that the teaching strategy had an overall positive impact on students' learning of energy: in particular, Joule's paddle-wheel experiment seems to favor their understanding of the notion of energy transformation, while the early introduction and multiple application of the conservation principle appears as a relevant option to facilitate its mastering. This study illustrates how HPS might actually be introduced in classrooms and brings to light its usefulness for building new science teaching strategies.

Teaching Philosophy Statement for Physics Teachers: Let’s Think About

“…The teaching statement is sometimes referred to as "statement of teaching philosophy" and captures the statement's purpose of teachers in the classroom (Oxley, 2015). Overall, from 28 reviewed articles, authors find some articles using the term in philosophy of science teaching (2 studies) (Matthews, 1988;Pospiech, 2003), philosophy of physics (6 studies) (Seeger, 1960;Crowe, 1999;Noll, 2002;Scott, 2015;Rajapaksha & Hirsch, 2017;Bächtold & Munier, 2019), philosophy of science in teaching (5 studies) (Terhart, 1988;Matthews, 1990;Elkana, 2000;Teixeira et al, 2012;Henke & Höttecke, 2015), teaching philosophy (2 studies) (Kurki-Suonio, 2011;Bartholomew et al, 2012), teaching statement (1 study) (Oxley, 2015), and teaching philosophy statement (12 studies) ( Beatty et al, 2009a( Beatty et al, , 2020a( Beatty et al, , 2020bGrundman, 2006;Eierman, 2008;Kearns & Sullivan, 2011;Alexander et al, 2012;Drolet, 2013;Supasiraprapa & De Costa, 2017;Laundon et al, 2020;Merkel, 2020;Trellinger Buswell & Berdanier, 2020). The most common words mentioned by the researchers on this issue are the teaching philosophy statement (TPS).…”

“…The teaching strategy using philosophy could improve students' understanding clarified by Bächtold & Munier (2019) (N = 95). They examined the students' understanding of energy transformation and conservation theory which remains one of the main challenges when teaching physics.…”

Preservice Teachers’ Experience of History and Philosophy of Science Course: A Phenomenological Research

“…Pre-service teachers supported the use of constructivist teaching in the teaching of this course. It is believed that using constructivist teaching in this course would have an enormous effect on the cognitive development of pre-service teachers (Bächtold & Munier, 2019). Pre-service teachers themselves argued how utilising constructivist teaching would result in permanent learning; they maintained that different teaching methods and techniques should be employed to run the process.…”

The Problem of Values in Psychiatry: A Contribution of Philosophy to Medical Education

“…Philosophy of Science (hereafter PS) is recognized as an important part of scientific knowledge, which improves science teachers' competence for teaching science in a wider context with many theoretical and educational debates. Many research was done on History and Philosophy of Science (hereafter HPS) in science teaching in the last 20 years (Bächtold & Munier, 2019;Henke & Höttecke, 2015;Matthews, 1998;Matthews, 2014;Maurines & Beauflis, 2013;Monk & Osborne, 1996;Pearce, 2018). Inclusion of HPS in the curricula and classroom teaching are not the sole solution to the 'problems of science education' but is making the subject more 'appealing', providing a broader understanding of the context, and better connected with other subjects being learned (Matthews, 2014;Monk & Osborne, 1996;Solomon et al, 1992).…”