Aspects of Secondary Students’ Understanding of Energy

The report from the Children’s Learning in Science Project (CLIS) gives an account of a number of aspects of students’ ideas about energy including:

*Do students use ideas about energy spontaneously to help them interpret phenomena?

*When students are ‘cued’ that energy is involved in a situation, what ideas about energy do they use?

*Do students recognise that energy can be quantified?

*Do students use the idea that energy is conserved?

Contents of the summary report

*Meanings of the word energy

*Issues investigated in this study

*How were students’ understandings investigated?

*How many students use accepted ideas about energy in their responses?

*What other ideas do students use in their responses?

*What do these findings suggest for teaching and learning about energy?

*Main findings of the energy study

*Implications for practice

Contents of the full report

Section 1: The scope of the report

Section 2: Energy in secondary school science courses

Section 3: Definition of terms

Section 4: Review of literature on students’ understanding of ideas about energy

Section 5: Methodology

Section 6: Responses to questions about energy

Section 7: Interviews with students about energy

Section 8: Discussion of the findings

Section 9 Implications