A cross-cultural survey of conceptions of energy among elementary school teachers in training — empirical results from Israel and Argentina

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Abstract

How do students in training to be primary school teachers in Argentina and Israel understand the concept of energy? Do they hold correct scientific views that will enable them to instruct their future pupils accurately? Are there fundamental differences between students studying in these different populations? Students’ energy conceptions, expressed on a two-part written questionnaire, showed similarities and differences for Israeli and Argentinean students, as well as for first and second year students in each country. In general, there is a serious discrepancy between both Israeli and Argentinean student teachers’ understanding of energy and the accepted scientific concept. If this fundamental concept is to be used in a correct way in classroom, then every effort must be made to help teachers develop their understanding.

Section snippets

Purpose of the study

Because many primary school teachers teach science and use the energy concept in their lessons (mostly in its socialized, every-day meaning (Solomon, 1983)), there is an interest in identifying what their conceptions are.

Research interests at the Science Education Department at the Oranim University Division (Haifa University, Israel) and the Education Department at the Comahue National University (Argentina) converged on these questions.

What happens with students studying to be primary school

The samples

Participants in the present study were students from Oranim College in Israel, in a 3-year training program for future primary school teachers, and from the Bariloche Institute for Teachers Training and Improvement in Argentina, in a two and a half-year program for future primary school teachers. The following subjects participated in the study:

Oranim, Israel

  • •

    175 first-year students with ages ranging from 19 to 39 (mean age: 23 yr).

  • •

    129 second-year students with ages ranging from 20 to 42 (mean

Responses of students to the first part of the questionnaire

Fig. 3, Fig. 4 and Table 1, Table 2, Table 3 show the results obtained in the first part of the questionnaire.

Associations

Physical or pseudo-physical words (such as force, electricity, heat, light, power and current) dominated Israeli students’ associations in both years (see Fig. 3). Furthermore, there was no significant difference among associations chosen by Israeli students in both years.

The same physical or pseudo-physical words were chosen by the Argentinean students, but to a much lesser extent (see

Discussion and educational implications of the study

The most important findings of this study can be summarized as follows:

  • 1.

    Both Argentinean and Israeli students held a number of different alternative frameworks when describing physical situations, instead of or in addition to the accepted scientific concept.

  • 2.

    Most in both groups thought that energy is a concrete entity.

  • 3.

    Most in both groups did not accept the idea of energy conservation.

  • 4.

    Most Israeli students rejected the idea of energy degradation. Most Argentinean students, despite accepting this

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