Challenges associated with the teaching and learning of energy: Using ideas from the history of science and linguistics to develop a learning progression for energy in socio-ecological systems

This chapter discusses students’ intuitive energy conceptions in socio-ecological systems (i.e., coupled human and natural systems). We begin with a historical and linguistic examination of how the scientific view of energy is different from a variety of informal views of energy that appeared earlier in the history of science and are embedded in colloquial English. Our analyses indicate that the scientific view of energy is different from the informal views of energy in two important ways: association and tracing. First, in the scientific view, energy is associated with its indicators in specialized ways, whereas in the informal views, energy is often associated with life, feeling, perceptions, or emotions. Second, the scientific view highlights energy as a constraint, whereas the informal views treat energy as a cause. We then describe how these ideas were used to develop a learning progression for energy. The learning progression depicts two trends of student development. Regarding association, there is a trend from broad to restricted association. Regarding tracing, the trend is from tracing the cause-and-effect chain to the specialized scientific way of tracing energy—tracing energy separately from matter and with heat dissipation. Finally, we discuss the implications of the learning progression for teaching energy at the K-12 level.