期刊名称：Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Science Education Research
电子版ISSN：2662-2300
出版年度：2021
卷号：3
期号：1
页码：1-18
DOI：10.1186/s43031-020-00030-7
语种：English
出版社：Springer
摘要：Energy conservation is a fundamental concept in physics and across the sciences as it provides a lens for investigating a wide range of phenomena. Research into energy learning progressions has shown that a majority of students across K-12 struggle with energy conservation. These studies characterize students’ learning progressions as starting from energy being manifest in different forms. Research suggests that learning progressions that begin with the idea of forms only lead to an understanding of conservation for a minority of students. Thus, the question arises whether there are alternative, more productive pathways towards conservation than going through forms. We investigated to what extent students progress towards conservation if they are taught in a transfer-only approach to teaching energy that does not require forms. Drawing on interviews from N = 30 students across different time points in a 10 week transfer-only unit, we found that at the end of the unit, most students tracked energy successfully across systems, and did not violate energy conservations when explaining phenomena, that is, progressed towards a qualitative understanding of conservation. Our results imply that energy learning progressions do not have to go through forms and in fact a more productive pathway towards conservation may exist in the transfer-only approach.
