Fields in Energy Learning in Middle School (FiELdS)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Knut Neumann, since 9/2021
• Subject Area: General and Domain-Specific Teaching and Learning
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 458465679

The energy concept is one of the most important concepts in science, particularly in physics. The principle of energy conservation provides a lens for interpreting novel phenomena and designing solutions to complex problems – including those students regularly meet in their everyday lives. The importance of the energy concept is contrasted by the vast amount of research reporting that even by the end of school, many students have not developed an adequate understanding of energy. Students particularly struggle with the principle of energy conservation, and traditional approaches to energy instruction have been criticized as potentially exacerbating student struggles. Recently proposed approaches, which are widely considered promising, claim that student learning may be improved by introducing energy as an entity that can be stored in the field between two objects interacting at-a-distance. However, little evidence has been provided to test this claim. The goal of this project is to investigate the extent to which instruction that explicitly connects energy and fields concepts can indeed help students develop a more sophisticated understanding of energy.This three-year project will investigate how fields-based energy instruction supports students in using energy ideas to explain phenomena and solve problems. To do this, we will compare fields-based energy instruction to non-fields-based energy instruction in the context of a two-phase study. In phase one, students’ learning in both treatment conditions will be compared according to students’ learning about fields and energy, with students’ abstract reasoning ability measured as a covariate. In a second phase, we will assess the extent to which both approaches prepare students for future energy-related learning through a double-transfer design in which all study participants are asked to solve a target transfer problem and half of the students in each instructional condition are given relevant learning resources. This design enables the researchers to determine the extent to which the learning resource was helpful in each instructional condition and whether one instructional condition prepared students for learning about novel energy-related phenomena and problems better than the other. Both phases of the study will be carried out in a laboratory study involving a single teacher who teaches energy using each instructional approach in different classes and in a field study involving 20 teachers who are randomly assigned to instructional condition.Results of this project will provide much-needed empirical evidence for the long-running debate regarding the design and enactment of effective introductory energy instruction that better puts students on a path to understanding conservation and prepares them for future learning. This project therefore contributes to a deeper understanding of the teaching and learning of energy as a central area of physics education.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Ehemaliger Antragsteller: Professor Dr. Jeffrey Nordine, Ph.D., until 8/2021