Students understanding on Energy in the early years of High School

Abstract

Energy is one of the key ideas of school science curricula. Research literature about students understandings of energy is ample, but concerned only with the identification of alternative conceptions. Learning about energy is considered difficult, for a number of reasons: it s too abstract, mysterious, the term of energy is confused with force and power, and energy is not used in the same way in the other scientific disciplines such as chemistry and biology, not to mention everyday language. Learning what energy means in physics demands abstraction and specialized knowledge of mechanics, electricity, thermodynamics, and other subjects. This work reports part of a research project in which we developed a didactical sequence to teach energy to year 9 (high school) secondary school students. We developed a learning environment to help students in making explicit and revise their understandings through collaborative work and discussions during their classes. In this work we present only students models of energy identified just before instruction.