Constructing a sustainable foundation for thinking and learning about energy
in the 21st century
Lane Seeley & Stamatis Vokos, Seattle Pacific University
Jim Minstrell, Facet Innovations
Addressing the energy challenges of today and tomorrow will require energy experts in
fields from municipal government to public health. These experts will draw from their diverse,
sophisticated and nuanced understandings of energy and society which go far beyond static lists
of energy facts or forms. They will need to think and communicate using energy concepts that
are flexible, relevant, and negotiated.
Historically energy instruction has been
compartmentalized and rigid. Students often associate the energy ideas they learn in school as a
regimented program of taxonomy and bookkeeping. They understand their task as correctly
identifying forms and tabulating transfers and transformations. Students also learn a scientific
concept of energy that is conserved; yet live in a world in which people are constantly ‘using up’
energy. Students need to recognize energy as a universally applicable model for making sense of
processes and resources in the physical world.
The Energy Project at Seattle Pacific University
The Energy Project is a five-year NSF-funded project with an overarching goal of
increasing learner engagement with energy in K-12 classrooms. We work directly with
elementary and secondary teachers’ to help them build their personal understanding and
formative assessment practices in the context of energy. Our goals for energy learning include:

Flexible application of the conservation principle and tracking of energy in ‘real-world’
processes

Construction of a personally owned energy model which can be flexibly applied to novel
scenarios.

Recognition of the affordances and limitations of various energy representations.

Application of energy models and representational strategies to socio-politically relevant
energy questions.
Our progress toward some of these goals is reported elsewhere (E. W. Close, Scherr, Close, &
McKagan, 2011; H. G. Close, DeWater, Close, Scherr, & McKagan, 2010; H. G. Close &
Scherr, 2011; Harrer, Scherr, Wittmann, Close, & Frank, 2011; McKagan, Scherr, Close, &
Close, 2011; Scherr, Close, Close, & Vokos, 2012; Scherr, Close, McKagan, & Vokos, 2012). In
this paper we will describe how we have worked toward the preceding goals in workshops for K12 teachers by:
●
Providing representational strategies which recruit learner ideas, mandate energy
tracking, encourage sense making and promote scientific questioning.
●
Explicitly and implicitly reinforcing the idea that scientific language, representations and
classification strategies are inherently subjective and negotiated.
● Scaffolding productive learner engagement with specific scenarios that foreground
complex and subtle aspects of the energy concept.
We will also share some preliminary evidence of significant changes in learner engagement with
energy concepts. We will conclude by discussing the critical, and in our minds unsolved
challenge of developing a pedagogically accessible model for energy use, usefulness and
degradation that makes sense to learners and is widely applicable.
I. Providing representational strategies which recruit learner ideas, mandate energy
tracking, encourage sense making and promote scientific questioning
Energy is an inherently abstract concept. We don’t see or touch or measure energy
directly and the evidence for energy comes in a wide range of forms. Therefore, it is essential
that learners construct meaningful representations of energy. Energy representations should be
flexible enough that learners feel empowered to apply them to a wide range of scenarios and
energy ideas. They must also be rigorous enough to problematize and refine learner thinking
about energy. The Energy Project has promoted two dynamic energy representations, Energy
Theater and Energy Cubes, which we find helpful for supporting constructive and creative
thinking about energy. We have also encouraged learners to draw Energy Tracking Diagrams
which capture dynamic energy processes in a static diagram.
Energy Theater
Energy Theater is an activity introduced by Scherr, Close, Close and Vokos (2012) that
uses the body to represent a “chunk” of energy. Groups of 8-12 participants “become” chunks of
energy and must “act out” the transfer(s) and/or transformation(s) of energy associated with
specific scenarios. Energy Theater encourages learners to express their thinking about energy
with their bodies and provides learners with a personal and bodily experience of energy
conservation. The rules of Energy Theater are:
 Each person is a unit of energy
 Regions on the floor correspond to objects involved in the selected scenario
 Each person indicates his/her form of energy in some way (usually with a hand sign).
 People move from one region to another as energy is transferred, and change sign as the
energy changes form.
 The number of people in a region or making a particular hand sign corresponds to the
quantity of energy in a physical object or of a particular form, respectively.
Figure 1 shows a group of secondary science teachers who are using Energy Theater to represent
the ‘energy story’ associated with a hand pushing a box across a floor at constant speed. The
teachers on the left are representing chemical and motion/kinetic energy in the person/hand. The
teachers at the left are representing motion and thermal energy in the box, Other teachers are
leaving the box as thermal and sound energy into the floor and air.
Figure 1 - “Energy Theater” representation of a hand pushing a box across a floor at constant
speed. (Used with permission from Scherr, Close, Close & Vokos (2012).)
Energy Theater is pedagogically useful because it:
●
Promotes universal participation – Because everyone is part of the representation,
each learner has to participate in the process of negotiating the energy transfers and
transformations that are involved in a chosen energy scenario.
●
Provides opportunities for formative assessment – Because learners represent
energy processes in a public way, teachers and other learners have an opportunity to observe
and respond to the ideas of others.
●
Encourages negotiation and consensus building – Energy Theater provides a
supportive context for negotiating energy ideas. Learners will often spontaneously form a
discussion circle during the planning stage and must reach (at least tentative) consensus in
order to enact their representation.
●
Encourages attention to energy conservation – Many students in secondary
science courses are familiar with energy conservation. A central conceptual challenge in
learning about energy is figuring out how energy is conserved in a wide array of dynamic
physical processes. This involves answering questions like: Where does the energy start?
Where does it go after that? What form does the energy take along the way? Energy Theater
mandates energy conservation because learners – who represent units of energy – cannot
spontaneously appear or disappear. The learners must negotiate where to begin, where and
when to move, and what form to exhibit along the way.
●
Balances creativity with representational rigor – The rules of Energy Theater
challenge learners to devise a sequence of energy transfers and transformations that satisfy
conservation of energy and correspond to a given physical scenario. Simultaneously,
learners must make a number of representational choices based on what they think is
important to show.
In an upcoming paper we describe teachers using Energy Theater to explore the energy processes
associated with an incandescent light bulb that is providing constant illumination. In this case,
Energy Theater supports learner efforts to disambiguate matter and energy. They are challenged
to differentiate between electrons which flow around the circuit and the energy that those
electrons carry from the wall outlet to the filament. We also describe how Energy Theater
provides a shared representational space for learners to theorize mechanisms of energy transfer.
In order to negotiate a sequence of energy steps for an incandescent light bulb, the teachers are
compelled to decide whether the electrical energy is converted directly into light energy or if the
filament glows because it is hot.
Energy Cubes
Energy Cubes is an activity in which
learners use small cubes to represent “chunks” of
energy. Designated regions on a whiteboard
represent objects of interest. Groups of 3-5 learners
move and flip these cubes on the whiteboard to
dynamically represent the transfer(s) and/or
transformation(s) of energy associated with specific
scenarios. For example in figure 2 which depicts
an energy cubes representation of a person lifting a
box at constant speed a learner might represent the;
 energy conversion associated with the Figure 2. “Energy Cubes” representation of
physiological effort of raising the hand by a hand lifting a box vertically. (Used with
flipping an energy cube in the hand from permission from Scherr, Close, Close &
displaying a ‘C’ for chemical energy to Vokos (2012).)
showing a ‘K’ for kinetic energy
 mechanical transfer of energy from the hand to the box by moving an energy cube
showing ‘K’ from the region depicting the hand to the region depicting the box
 increase in gravitational energy of the box by flipping an energy cube in the box from
showing ‘K’ to showing ‘G’ for gravitational energy
 mechanical transfer of energy from the box to the air by moving an energy cube showing
‘K’ from the region depicting the box to the region depicting the air
 dissipation of collective air motion by flipping an energy cube in the air from showing
‘K’ to showing ‘T’ for thermal energy
Energy Cubes provides some of the same pedagogical affordances as Energy Theater while
allowing learners to work in smaller groups. Energy Cubes do not necessitate universal
participation since participants can choose to let others flip and move the cubes. Learners can be
challenged to coordinate their motions in order to show, for example, the constant speed
associated with the box lifting scenario. They would need to recognize that constant speed
implies contant amounts of kinetic energy in the hand and box. Then, they would be challenged
to choreograph their ‘moves’ so that the number of K’s in both of these objects does not change.
Additional energy scenarios for which we have used Energy Theater and Energy Cubes to
engage and problematize learner thinking about energy are described below.
Energy Tracking Diagrams
Energy Tracking Diagrams are learner-invented representations of energy processes.
Learners work in groups to draw a static representation (on a whiteboard; e.g. Figure 3) of the
dynamic representation they constructed using Energy Theater or Energy Cubes. In constructing
these diagrams learners are challenged to show all of the information that would be needed to
recreate the dynamic representation in Energy Theater or Energy Cubes. The results is a diverse
array of strategies for representing steps that have a complex distribution in space and time as
described by Scherr, Close, Seeley and McKagan (2012).
Figure 3. Learner-invented representations that track energy transfers and transformations in (a)
a ring launched across the floor by a bent-back meter stick; (b) an incandescent lightbulb burning
steadily; (c) incandescent and compact fluorescent light bulbs; (d) a pumped balloon; (e) a runner
eating pasta; (f) a pullback car; (g) a person pushing a chair. (Taken with permission from
Scherr, Close, Close & Vokos (2012).)
Scherr, Close, Close & Vokos (2012) claim that ‘the variety in the diagrams’ surface
features is a testament to the learners’ creativity and originality in producing the diagrams. The
diagrams are entirely original in the sense that to our knowledge, no similar diagrams appear in
textbooks or in prior energy instruction that the learners may have had. We consider these
diagrams to be evidence that our participants have, and are making good use of, the creativity
that will be required of them to translate their energy learning into activities for their own
classrooms. Research suggests that activities in which learners invent representations may have
hidden efficiencies, leading to strong gains in procedural skills, insight into formulas, abilities to
evaluate data from an argument, and transfer of learning to other contexts (Podolefsky and
Finkekstein (2007), Scwartz and Martin (2004))… Underlying the apparent variety of the
diagrams, however, are deeper regularities. These regularities show that the features that
learners consider important to represent are the very features that indicate a substance model
for energy and enable tracking of energy transfers and transformations: i.e., energy is
conserved, emplaced, located in objects, transfers among objects, accumulates in objects, and
changes form. Learners who encode the deep structure of problems in self-generated
representations are more likely to transfer their understanding of those problems to new
contexts. (Swartz (2009))’
II) Explicitly and implicitly reinforcing the idea that scientific language and classification
strategies are inherently subjective and negotiated
Energy is a technical science word, but it is also a word that learners hear and use many
times a day outside of science class. As a consequence, learners bring many productive ideas
about energy and they also use language about energy that they have acquired outside of the
science classroom. In Energy Project workshops we have adapted an instructional approach to
the regimentation of community discouse which was introduced by Moses (2001) and the
Algebra Project. Close, DeWater, Close, Scherr and McKagan (2010) have previously described
the reasons for adopting the algrebra project approach,
“Our own (attempted) release of control over topical coverage and instructional sequence (on
multiple instructional time scales) called for another framework to be introduced into instruction
in order to achieve some adequate level of discipline and accountability in classroom discourse.
Through the Algebra Project we found an alternative instructional method that seeks less to
direct the specific content of the learner’s thinking and more to regiment the relationship
between that thinking and its expression and communication through multiple representations.”
The algebra project instructional approach foregrounds the distinction between people talk which
is intuitive and feature talk which has been negotiated and regimented within a scientific
community. Feature talk can take the form of language, and it can also take the form of
negotiated and regimented representational strategies. We challenge the participants to limit
their use of feature talk which has not yet been negotiated by the community. Initially it is the
workshop instructors who challenge participants to explain the meaning behind their scientific
language. Eventually a classroom culture is established in which most participants are willing to
demand a negotiated understanding of new scientific terminology. Below are several specific
examples where we think it is critical to negotiate and build shared understanding from energy
language.
Potential energy and the potential to have energy
Potential energy is a phrase for which the regimented science meaning and popular
language meanings are disparate. Many learners associated the phrase potential energy with the
potential to have energy. For example, learners may claim that, “the meter stick has potential
energy, (or potential elastic energy) because it is can be bent.” We have consistently found that
some learners will still use the phrase potential elastic energy even after instructors have
repeatedly referred to the energy as elastic energy or elastic potential energy. The phrase
potential elastic energy is certainly more consistent with the idea of a potential to possess elastic
energy. For related reasons learners may say that the bowling ball has potential energy or
potential kinetic energy because it can be lifted up or because it can be rolled, etc...) In our
Energy Project workshops we use ideas presented by Moses (2001) to foreground the difference
between an intuitive use of potential as people talk and a regimented use of that word as feature
talk. Participants discuss the difficulties which arise when some members of the learning
community are using the word in a scientifically regimented way and others are understanding
the word intuitively. This provides a motivation for negotiating language that is intuitive for
everyone. For example, elastic energy is intuitively a type of energy, not a description of an
objects elasticity or potential to have elastic energy.
Heat energy, thermal energy and the kinetic energy of particles
While we prioritize the negotiation of scientific language we also recognize that the
negotiation of scientific language should not occur in an isolated learning community. All
learners, and especially teachers, should be sensitive to the regimented scientific language of the
broader scientific community as established through scientific articles, textbooks, published
curricula, state and national standards One might conclude that the learners simply need to learn
and adopt the regimented language of the broader scientific community. Unfortunately the
regimented scientific language itself is often not consistent from one community to the next.
Kraus and Vokos (2011) did a scientific nomenclature study of energy concepts related to
temperature in widely used college textbooks, pre-college curricula and various standards
documents. They found a wide spectrum of terminology used to describe with the energy
contained by an object that is dependent on its temperature, including heat, heat energy, thermal
energy, internal energy, average kinetic energy of the particles and translational part of the
kinetic energy of the molecules. Kraus and Vokos suggest that teachers qualify with the word
“energy” whatever terms they choose to use, as in “the object contains heat energy” or “there is
heat energy transferred from the warmer object to the cooler object.” They further recommend
that teachers “begin first with the phenomena and observations, for which you want to build a
scientific description. Next, as students begin to use new and different language to try to explain
their observations, ask learners to qualify exactly what they are describing.” Energy Project
instructors discuss and attempt to model these recommendations in order that teachers can adopt
them for their own teaching.
Classification of energy forms
Energy educators hold many different perspectives on the preferred role, or lack of a role,
for forms within a pedagogically accessible energy model. Falk, Herrman and Schmid (1983)
argued that forms should be de-emphasized in energy instruction because it is not always
possible to clearly delineate energy in this way. They argue to focus instead on energy carriers
which they define as the ‘substance-like’ quantities which are transferred simultaneously with
energy (entropy, momentum, charge, etc…) The suggestion to de-emphasize energy forms has
been taken up by others (Brewe 2011) and has recently been incorporated in the most recent draft
of the Next Generation Science Standards in the U.S. Since teachers will have to be responsive to
changing standards and curriculum we hope that they can be empowered with the idea that forms
are subjective. For example, the energy associated with a solid that increases when temperature
increases may be described as thermal energy or internal energy. On the other hand the same
energy might be separated into the disordered kinetic energy and disordered electric potential
energy associated with vibration of the molecular lattice. In our Energy Project workshops we
aim toward an understanding of forms as ‘categories of evidence for the presence (or change) of
energy’ as described by McKagan et al. (2011).
We have seen participants in our workshops take ownership of the subjective nature of
scientific classification. For example, the participants in one of our workshops suggested that
they use ‘phase energy’ to describe the energy that a gas has more of than a liquid at the same
temperature. One of the participants rationalized their scientific license to make up energy forms
as follows, “Isn’t it all arbitrary anyway?... I mean, you know, thermal energy - that’s an idea.
Like you could have called it pancake energy if you wanted to.” This teacher appears to be
recognizing that energy forms are subjective systems of categorization and are flexible. The
ways in which we categorize forms will depend on what we care about and the particular
problem we are trying to solve.
III) Scaffolding productive learner engagement with specific scenarios that foreground
complex and subtle aspects of the energy concept
Many learners are familiar with the mantra that “energy is never created or destroyed,”
but lack the inclination and/or tools to make sense of this principle in everyday scenarios. We
have chosen to use Energy Theater and Energy Cubes as primary strategies for representing
energy scenarios. In doing so, we have chosen representational strategies which mandate energy
conservation. As long as people, or cubes, don’t come into being or cease to exist, energy is
conserved. Therefore, learners are not challenged to decide if energy is conserved but rather
how energy is conserved. This challenge typically leads to two fundamental questions, where
does the energy come from and where does the energy go? We specifically choose to present
physical scenarios for which these questions problematize learner thinking about energy.
Rising basketball in a pool scenario – where does the energy come from?
When considering a basketball floating upward from the bottom of a swimming pool, many
learners readily identify several important aspects of the energy story associated with this
physical scenario. The kinetic energy of the ball is increasing or leveling off as the ball moves
upward. The gravitational energy of the ball is also increasing as the ball moves upward. In
addition, many learners recognize that the thermal energy of the ball and water must also be
increasing as the ball moves through the water. Tracking energy in this scenario leads naturally
to the question of where all this energy is coming from. When thinking about this source of the
energy most learners will recognize that buoyancy plays a central role in explaining where the
energy is coming from. This connection then naturally leads to challenging questions. Is
buoyancy a force or a type of energy? If buoyancy can be a type of energy, is it a new energy
form or is it related to an existing energy form? These questions challenge learners to
distinguish between force and energy and to consider the way in which energy forms should be
categorized. Typically small groups of participants in our workshop will recognize that
buoyancy is more correctly described as an interaction between objects and, therefore, a force.
They also will recognize that buoyancy does not seem to be a type of energy that is located in the
ball. They might spontaneously, or after an instructor prompt, consider the change in location of
the water as a result of rising ball. ‘Where does the water come from that fills the space the ball
leaves behind?’ In this way, they can recognize that, while there is additional energy associated
the submersion of buoyant objects, the additional energy can logically related to a form with
which they are familiar, namely the gravitational energy of the water/Earth.
Goals for learner engagement with energy scenarios
In our workshop with teachers we have explicitly attempted to provide teachers with
flexible tools for representing energy, to build a culture of negotiated scientific language and to
present multiple scenarios which problematize the energy conservation principle. Two primary
content goals of our workshops are that:
●
teachers become more likely to rigorously attend to energy tracking when analyzing
specific energy scenarios.
●
teachers become more likely to use diagrams constructively to track energy in specific
scenarios.
We think these goals are also very relevant to all learners who need a flexible and
rigorous model for engaging novel energy concepts. By flexible we mean that the model can be
applied in to a wide range of energy scenarios and questions. By rigorous we mean that the
model allows the learner to rule out certain possibilities and refine their questions. In order to
study teacher growth in these dimensions we have administered assessments before and after we
work with them to develop representational tools and strategies for tracking energy. The
following is an example question from one of these assessments.
Lowering a Bowling Ball - A person carefully lowers a bowling ball from eye level to waist
level. During this motion the bowling ball moves downward at a slow, constant speed.
(a) Describe what is happening with energy during this process. If you aren’t completely sure
what is happening with energy, describe what you know and feel free to speculate when you
are uncertain. Please feel free to include diagrams.
(As you go, write down questions that you ask yourself and need to answer in order to
provide a reasonably complete description of the energy processes involved. Please write
these questions in the box at the bottom of this page.)
The lowering scenario was chosen based on the idea that learners who carefully attend to energy
tracking will likely struggle with the question of where the energy goes. Gravitational energy is
decreasing, chemical energy is presumably being ‘used up’ and the kinetic energy is not
changing. The idea that all of the lost gravitational energy and chemical energy could be
transformed into thermal energy is counterintuitive for many learners as we will show below.
The pre-test of this question was administered at the beginning of a two-week workshop
for secondary science teachers in the summer of 2012. The post-test was administered at the
beginning of the second week of the workshop. During the intervening week participants had
been introduced to Energy Theater, Energy Cubes and Energy Tracking Diagrams. They had
worked through several scenarios including a scenario involving raising a bowling ball at
constant speed. We had not yet considered the lowering scenario as a part of class instruction.
We wanted to offer them the option of drawing diagrams but not to imply that diagrams were
required. A total of 22 teachers in our workshop completed both the pre and post-tests.
Results – attending to energy tracking
The question asked the participants to ‘describe what is happening with energy’ as an
effort to encourage energy tracking. Nevertheless, on the pre-test, only 4 of 22 participants
provided answers which demonstrated an effort to identify the ending form and location of the
energy. Of these 4, 3 cited that energy was transforming into thermal energy but did not clarify
whether this increase of thermal energy was incidental or critical to the energy story. Only one
participant articulated a concern over where the energy was going. She asked ‘Is kinetic energy
increasing if it isn’t accelerating?’ Several participants cited work being done on the bowler but
did not track the energy associated with that work to the bowler.
On the post test, 18 of 22 participants explicity focused on where and into what form the
energy went in their response. Of these, 5 gave a clear answer that the energy was transformed
into thermal and the remainder expressed their inability to figure out where the energy was
going. The transition in the participants’ inclination to track energy can be most clearly seen by
following individual participants. One participant summed up her energy analysis in her pretest
by writing,
“The energy … must have been transferred to the bowler as he lowered the ball. Also, the
energy was transferred from potential energy to kinetic energy while moving.”
While she is clearly cognizant of energy forms and transfers she does not follow the energy when
it is transferred to the bowler. One week later the same participant writes a lengthy inquiry into
the energy process which includes an energy tracking diagram. She circles the gravitational
energy that is originally in the ball and asks,“converted, but I don’t know where or to what?”
She describes the increase in thermal energy in the air but also apparently decides that this
increase in thermal energy cannot be sufficient to account for the energy decreases in her
analysis. “I still have questions about gravitational energy units in the ball. I can’t track
them?”
Many other participants articulate an inability to account for where the energy goes.
Another participant writes,
“If a ball is being lowered and decreasing the gravitational energy, where is that energy going if
it is moving at a constant rate? Can’t go back to chemical, so is it lost to the environment as
thermal? Or does it become “stored”???? IDK! ”
And another participant writes,
“In this case, the potential energy becomes....? Kinetic energy in the hands? But the hands
don’t speed up. Thermal energy? Certainly not all of it.... Maybe as it is converted into kinetic
energy , it is then moved into the arms as elastic energy at a constant rate so there is only one K
present in the ball at all times. The increasing elastic energy represents the effort of to hold the
ball by muscle increasing over time. But is that force?”
Even the participant whose pre-test response most completely addressed the question of
where the energy goes demonstrated an increase in their scientific questioning and efforts at
sense making. On their pre-test they correctly identified that, “KE was turned into (thermal?
elastic?) energy in the muscles.” On the post-test, the question raised a more elaborate and
refined set of questions for this participant.
“GPE must go somewhere -> into arm is only choice but KE of arm does not increase
because arm speed is constant... Definitely does not get reclaimed in stored chem. PE in muscles
(like a hybrid with regenerative braking... How do arm muscles receive energy from an external
source (not through digestion, ATP, etc...)? Go up, muscle PE to ball gravitational PE make
some sense but going down, loss of GPE becomes ….? Don’t know.”
This participant’s original response seems satisfactory to us and to the participant. They
apparently recognize that the ‘arm muscles receive energy’ yet express uncertainty about how to
describe or account for this accumulated energy in the muscles. Nonetheless, on their post-test
they raise new questions about their analysis of the energy transfers and transformation. They
articulate a reclaimed energy model and intuitively rule it out. They make a scientific
comparison with the lifting scenario appear to decide that while the motions are simply reversed
the energy story cannot simply be reversed. If it could then muscles would be acting like a car
with regenerative braking. We infer that they are making use of the intuition that we cannot ‘recharge’ our muscles by lowering bowling balls.
Results – using diagrams as reasoning tools
We also observed an increase in both the prevalence of diagrams in participant responses
and the apparent use of diagrams as reasoning tools when analyzing this scenario. On the pretest only 5 of 22 participants included a diagram in their answer. Of these 5 diagrams, we
classified three as being primarily used to illustrate an idea (Figure 4).
Fig. 4. Examples of diagrams that are primarily used to illustrate an idea.
A week later we see a dramatic increase both
in the prevalence of diagrams and in the degree to
which diagrams were used as tools for tracking
energy. 16 out of 22 participants included diagrams in
their analysis and of these, 12 were clearly using these
diagrams as tools for tracking the energy in this
scenario. Figures 5 and 6 shows examples of two such
diagrams.
Fig. 5. An energy diagram which was used
to arrive at a self-consistently analysis of
where the energy went.
Fig. 6. An energy diagram which was successfully used by a participant to refine their questions
about where the energy went.
We think that the complexity and evidence of progressive refinement in these diagrams suggests
that they are being used constructively by these participants in their efforts to figure out what is
happening with the energy in this scenario.
Summary of preliminary findings
In this preliminary study we saw a consistent increase in the degree to which participant
responses raise ideas and questions about where the energy goes. We also observed an increase
in the prevalence and constructive use of diagrams. There are a number of possible explanations
for these changes:
●
The in-class analysis of a similar scenario involving raising a bowling ball may have
primed participants for engagement with this scenario
● Participants may have become acculturated to the kinds of questions and representations
that were more highly valued by the Energy Project instructors
● Participants may have progressed in their ability and/or inclination to track energy
● Participants may have progressed in their ability to use energy tracking diagrams
constructively
We suspect that all of these factors influenced the changes that we observed in participant
responses. Nevertheless, this preliminary study demonstrates that the way in which participants
document their analysis of a challenging energy scenario changed significantly as a result of
participating in a single week of professional development. Furthermore, we feel that these
observed changes correspond to fundamental goals for learner engagement with energy concepts.
IV) Developing a pedagogically accessible model for energy use, usefulness and degradation
that makes sense to students and is widely applicable.
At some point in their schooling, most learners encounter a model for energy that is
transferred and transformed but is always precisely conserved. In the popular press, citizens
encounter a resource model in which energy is bought and sold, used and wasted, and can be
conserved only through human efforts. If learners merely adopt a science classroom definition
for energy conservation which they cannot connect with their understanding of energy that can
be used well or wasted then they will be less likely to apply energy models from the science
classroom to the energy issues that they care about.
The challenge of constructing an accessible model for energy usefulness remains an
unanswered question for us. This model must include the ways in which energy degrades but
also integrate naturally with the conservation model. In addition to the ‘standard’ model of
irreversibly increasing entropy, the literature suggests models for energy degradation which
include energy spreading (Leff, 2012) and entropy as freedom (Amin, 2012). It seems that an
appropriate model may need to include both objective and subjective components. Consider the
way in which a light bulb transforms electrical energy into thermal energy in a lighted room.
There is an objective sense in which the energy is degraded because there is no way to reverse
this process and transform the thermal energy completely back into electrical energy. There is
also a subjective sense in which the thermal energy in the room is more useful if the occupant
wants the room warmer and less useful if the occupant wants the room cooler. As one of the
teachers in our workshops pointed out, “The heat from a light bulb isn’t wasted if you are a chick
in an incubator.” We expect that a model for energy usefulness which can empower learners to
address socio-politically challenging energy issues will integrate objective scientific principles
with subjective normative priorities. We also hope to identify specific scenarios which catalyze
learner engagement with concepts relating to energy usefulness.
V. Conclusions
We are working with teachers to build a model for energy that is precisely conserved
while it is often degraded both objectively and subjectively. We hope to empower teachers to
constructively engage with energy questions using flexible representational strategies within
classroom learning communities that are characterized by negotiation, consensus building and
sense-making. In the preceding pages we have described instructional strategies which we have
found to be effective in summer Energy Project workshops for teachers. We have found that this
approach encourages teachers to represent, negotiate, and refine their energy understanding
through engagement with conceptually challenging energy scenarios. We have shown
preliminary evidence that teachers become more likely to rigorously attend to energy tracking
and use diagrams constructively to track energy in specific scenarios. We anticipate that through
empowering teachers to constructively engage with their own energy questions we will also
empower them to facilitate similar engagement on the part of their own students. In
collaboration with Facet Innovations (www.diagnoser.com) we are also developing web
resources to help teachers adapt Energy Project instructional strategies in their classrooms and to
support formative assessment practices in the context of energy. Many of the teachers from our
summer workshops have anecdotally reported increased engagement with energy questions
among their own students but we have not done a systematic study.
References
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