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Students’ Energy Concepts at the Transition Between Primary and Secondary School

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Abstract

Energy is considered both a core idea and a crosscutting concept in science education. A thorough understanding of the energy concept is thought to help students learn about other (related) concepts within and across science subjects, thereby fostering scientific literacy. This study investigates students’ progression in understanding the energy concept in biological contexts at the transition from primary to lower secondary school by employing a quantitative, cross-sectional study in grades 3–6 (N = 540) using complex multiple-choice items. Based on a model developed in a previous study, energy concepts were assessed along four aspects of energy: (1) forms and sources of energy, (2) transfer and transformation, (3) degradation and dissipation, and (4) energy conservation. Two parallel test forms (A and B) indicated energy concept scores to increase significantly by a factor of 2.3 (A)/1.7 (B) from grade 3 to grade 6. Students were observed to progress in their understanding of all four aspects of the concept and scored highest on items for energy forms. The lowest scores and the smallest gain across grades were found for energy conservation. Based on our results, we argue that despite numerous learning opportunities, students lack a more integrated understanding of energy at this stage, underlining the requirement of a more explicit approach to teaching energy to young learners. Likewise, more interdisciplinary links for energy learning between relevant contexts in each science discipline may enable older students to more efficiently use energy as a tool and crosscutting concept with which to analyze complex content.

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Notes

  1. For reading convenience, the aspects will only be referred to as (1) forms (2) transfer (3) degradation, and (4) conservation in the following.

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Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge funding by the federal state of Hamburg and the convenient access to the field as a part of the research program accompanying the “Hamburger Schulversuch alles> > könner”. The support of the participating schools, teachers, and students was essential for this study. We want to thank Maika Drews and Annetha Pries for helping with data sampling. For statistical and methodological advice, we are grateful to Michael Leucht, Martin Senkbeil, Gabriel Nagy, and Olaf Köller from IPN, Kiel. Finally, we thank two anonymous reviewers for their critical, yet supportive comments that made many points in this article much clearer.

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  1. Kiel University, IPN - Leibniz Institute for Science and Mathematics Education, Olshausenstrasse 62, D - 24118, Kiel, Germany

    Sebastian T. Opitz, Ute Harms, Knut Neumann, Kristin Kowalzik & Arne Frank

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Opitz, S.T., Harms, U., Neumann, K. et al. Students’ Energy Concepts at the Transition Between Primary and Secondary School. Res Sci Educ 45, 691–715 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-014-9444-8

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