Teacher responses to their multiple goals for teaching energy

Abstract

Teachers discussing pedagogical strategies to help students with anincorrect idea about potential energy expressed competing goals forguiding student thinking: keep it simple and explore complexity. On theone hand, teachers wished to avoid being ``overly complicated{''} intheir teaching, suggesting that they should have students stick tonaming forms of energy in a system and naming principles like the law ofconservation of energy. On the other hand, teachers recognized thatstudents might also engage with, wonder about, and have good ideas aboutsystems, mechanisms, and causality. In addition, teachers themselvesshowed a need develop operational understandings of energytransformation, conservation, and system even in a simple energyscenario, rather than simply identifying forms and principles. Thus, theinitial desire for keeping instruction simple was contradicted both bythe recognition that students were capable of more complex analysis,even if it interfered with the goals of simple instruction, and by anawareness that understanding even a simple energy scenario involvesgrappling with complex ideas.