Design, Implementation and Evaluation of a Research-Informed Teaching Sequence about Energy

We present the design, implementation and evaluation of a research-informed teaching sequence that aims to promote conceptual understanding about energy among Cypriot students, ages 15-16. The design addressed the requirements of the official curriculum and was underpinned by Feynman’s (1963) abstract perspective. Two design tools were used to inform design decisions: learning demand and communicative approach. A quasi-experimental design was used to compare the conceptual understanding of students in a group (n=18) who had followed the designed teaching sequence, with a comparison group (n=18) who had followed the school’s usual approach. Students who were taught through the designed teaching sequence were significantly better at producing energy descriptions of physical systems than were students who had followed usual traditional teaching, demonstrating that a conceptual treatment of energy can be accessible to students at this age and stage of their physics education.