The Energy Field Approach

Abstract

Energy is an important crosscutting concept across middle and high school grades. However, studies show that students struggle understanding this concept. To address this problem, we started a design-based research project called “the energy field approach” (EFA). This project develops a teaching learning sequence (TLS) for high schools (grades 10-12). The design follows the model of educational reconstruction and builds on a clarification of the scientific content as well as on knowledge about students’ conceptions and misconceptions on the relevant topic. The result is a teaching concept and TLS that can be used by teachers for energy instruction. As a key feature, it traces traditional energy forms back to only kinetic energy and field energy. This simplifies the surface structure of the energy concept and makes sense of the meaning of energy forms like for instance chemical energy that have been “blackboxes” in traditional energy instruction before. This makes students more likely to draw back on energy ideas when reasoning about phenomena. The TLS is cyclically evaluated and re-designed by conduct and qualitative analysis of teaching experiments according to the method of probing acceptance. Results show that the concept and TLS are helpful for students to combine ideas about energy and fields and analyze processes from an energy perspective. The concept is found to be useful for a “deeper understanding” in the students’ perception. Further studies still have to be conducted to investigate the effects in a bigger setting and on further learning.