Supporting High School Students in Constructing Quantitative Knowledge-in-Use of Energy

Energy is a central idea in science. Many students, however, struggle to understand and apply quantitative ideas about energy and its conservation, in part because energy continues to be taught using the compartmentalized 19th century language of “forms”. 

Building off prior work in middle schools, this project will develop instructional materials and assessments for high school physics that focus on building students’ quantitative energy knowledge-in-use through a project-based learning approach grounded in a systems-transfer and fields model of energy and energy conservation. The curriculum, which emphasizes quantitative modeling of energy transfers in complex real-world phenomena represents a substantial departure from how energy is typically presented in high school physics. This work will lead to future studies on the efficacy of replacing common energy “forms” instruction with a system-transfer approach.