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Opportunities for Reasoning About Energy Within Elementary School Engineering Experiences

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Teaching and Learning of Energy in K – 12 Education

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Abstract

Much of recent elementary engineering curriculum development and research has focused on supporting young students’ design abilities related to the “engineering design process.” However, engineering design also involves attention to physical principles and the modeling of how physical principles affect design outcomes. One of these principles is that energy must be transferred to any designed artifact by its power system, which is specified by the engineering designers, in order for the designed artifact to perform work. The purpose of this chapter is to identify opportunities for students to reason about energy during existing elementary school engineering activities. A review of literature on the engineering profession as well as of guidelines for K-12 science and engineering/technology education resulted in three main goals for young students’ applied knowledge of energy: the ability to recognize when a technology needs energy input, the ability to consider various modes of energy storage, and the ability to identify several possible energy transfer strategies. These learning goals then served as a basis for an analysis of the engineering design activities in Family Engineering (Jackson M, Heil D, Chadde J, Hutzler N, Family Engineering: an activity and event planning guide. Foundation for Family Science and Engineering: Michigan Technological University, 2011), a guide with 26 hands-on challenges useful for introducing children and their families to engineering. The analysis revealed that while several activities explicitly reference connections to energy concepts, even more activities have strong implicit opportunities for students to use reasoning about energy as an engineering design tool.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    I recognize that some readers may interpret this sentence as treating the terms “energy” and “power system” as synonyms. It is not my intent to imply that energy and power are equivalent in engineering. Rather, the phrase “power system” is an engineering term of art. It refers to the portion of a technology that provides energy in the form and rate necessary for the technology to function.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Curriculum and Instruction, Center of Science and Mathematics in Context, University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston, MA, USA

    Kristen Bethke Wendell

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  1. Kristen Bethke Wendell
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Correspondence to Kristen Bethke Wendell .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Environmental, Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of Massachusetts, Boston, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

    Robert F. Chen

  2. Education and Human Development, University of Massachusetts, Boston, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

    Arthur Eisenkraft

  3. Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel

    David Fortus

  4. College of Education, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA

    Joseph Krajcik

  5. Leibniz-Institute for Science and Mathematics Education (IPN), Kiel, Germany

    Knut Neumann

  6. San Antonio Children's Museum, San Antonio, Texas, USA

    Jeffrey Nordine

  7. Massachusetts Department of Higher Education, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

    Allison Scheff

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Wendell, K.B. (2014). Opportunities for Reasoning About Energy Within Elementary School Engineering Experiences. In: Chen, R., et al. Teaching and Learning of Energy in K – 12 Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05017-1_15

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