Teacher awareness of problematic facets of meaningful metaphors of energy
Published: 2017
Publication Name: Latin American Journal of Physics Education
Publication URL: http://www.lajpe.org/jun17/2327_AAPT_2017.pdf
Abstract:
How teachers respond to students depends, in part, on what they see in their students’ thinking. In a teacher professional development setting, we asked teachers to provide possible incorrect responses and explanations that students might give when discussing the gravitational potential energy of identical hikers walking to the summit of a mountain along different paths, from the same starting point. Teachers were aware of the common difficulties that students might have, including (1) energy is “used up” because of travel time, travel distance, or the effort exerted during travel (2) double-counting work and energy, and (3) energy being an intrinsic property of the hiker. Several of these difficulties use the metaphor of energy as a substance-like quantity, but teachers never made explicit that they were aware of the value of this metaphor in thinking about energy. We discuss the need for teachers to respond to multiple grain sizes of student thinking, including the metaphors they use and the different and at times problematic facets of each.
Wittmann, M. C., Alvarado, C., & Millay, L. (2017). Teacher awareness of problematic facets of meaningful metaphors of energy. Latin American Journal of Physics Education 11, 2327. http://www.lajpe.org/jun17/2327_AAPT_2017.pdf