Energy is a critical component across science disciplines and a key element in developing a sophisticated understanding of scientific literacy.
Energy project was a four-year, $1.8 million project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). This project built upon prior research into how students learn the energy concept. Drawing upon the Framework for K-12 Science Education and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), this project aims to support middle school students in developing a deep and useful understanding of energy by prioritizing the idea of energy transfer between systems.
The project team developed a new middle school unit to support students in using energy transfers between systems to interpret phenomena and solve problems. This unit emphasizes these ideas:
1. Identifying and representing systems
2. Energy transfer between systems
3. The role of fields in storing and transferring energy
In addition to instructional materials, the project team developed three-dimensional assessment tasks that gauge middle school students’ ability to use energy to make sense of phenomena and solve problems.
This project was a collaboration between CREATE for STEM Institute at Michigan State University, the Leibniz-Institute for Science and Mathematics Education (IPN) in Germany, and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.
