Addressing Some Common Difficulties in Teaching and Learning Energy in High School

Abstract

There are so many educational research projects devoted to energy teaching at all school levels, that it may seem hard to add something original and relevant. However, the persistent difficulties documented by both teachers and students in this area show that there is still a great need for coherence and consistency in its presentation, in particular in an interdisciplinary perspective. This paper collects materials made available at the beginning of the seminar for the joint debate on energy teaching. Section “Introduction” presents the motivation and a general look at the energy teaching; section “The Proposal and the Theoretical Background” is devoted to four ideas suggested as a starting point for the discussion; in section “Experiments” concrete experiments are sketched, illustrating how the proposed approach to energy naturally enhances the interconnections between different aspects of natural phenomena and permits students’ introduction to dynamical modelling activities (more thoroughly presented in a poster session report). While it was not possible to enter in the specific context of the various proposals outlined during the seminar discussions, some aspects were discussed in depth, and will form part of the report on the discussion of the working group.