Psychology
Opportunities and approaches for teaching and learning about energy: Looking through the energy lens: A proposed learning progression for energy in grades 3–5
Document Type
Book Chapter
Abstract
This chapter presents a general framework for thinking about the goals of pre-college energy education and a detailed learning progression for Grades 3–5. This work is based on a review of existing literature on children’s understanding of energy as well as interviews and teaching interventions with elementary students. We propose that energy education focus on how scientists use what we call the “Energy Lens” to examine a broad range of phenomena in terms of energy. We identify a network of four interdependent foundational ideas that are central to a scientific understanding of energy, essential for an informed citizen, and can progressively and meaningfully evolve, with instruction, from their precursors in childhood to principles endorsed by scientists. Our proposed learning progression builds on students’ initial ideas and indicates how students’ understanding of the network of foundational energy ideas and the Energy Lens will broaden and deepen over the course of a 3-year instructional sequence from Grades 3–5. This approach shows promise to help students restructure their ideas about energy and prepare them for further instruction and learning in middle school. In pilot classroom activities, 3rd and 5th grade students began to develop language, representations, and habits of mind that enabled them to adopt a model of energy as something that manifests itself in different forms and to associate energy increases with energy decreases, paving the way to understanding energy transfer and, eventually, energy conservation.
Publication Title
Teaching and Learning of Energy in K-12 Education
Publication Date
2014
First Page
241
Last Page
265
ISBN
9783319050171,9783319050164
DOI
10.1007/978-3-319-05017-1_14
Keywords
learning progression, heat energy, energy gain, energy education
Repository Citation
Lacy, Sara; Tobin, R. G.; Wiser, Marianne; and Crissman, Sally, "Opportunities and approaches for teaching and learning about energy: Looking through the energy lens: A proposed learning progression for energy in grades 3–5" (2014). Psychology. 860.
https://commons.clarku.edu/faculty_psychology/860
