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Teaching Energy Informed by the History and Epistemology of the Concept with Implications for Teacher Education

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International Handbook of Research in History, Philosophy and Science Teaching

Abstract

In this article, we put forward a new strategy for teaching the concept of energy. In the first section, we discuss how the concept is currently treated in educational programmes at primary and secondary level (taking the case of France), the learning difficulties that arise as well as the main teaching strategies presented in science education literature. In the second section, we argue that due to the complexity of the concept of energy, rethinking how it is taught should involve teacher training specifically developed for the concept. In our view, Epistemology and the History of Science and Technology (EHST) is the best method for a full understanding of the concept of energy and should thus be included in the teacher training programme. In the third section, we provide a general framework for a teacher training programme on energy, based on the history and epistemology of the concept and structured on the following three questions: ‘What is the origin of the concept of energy?’, ‘What is energy?’ and ‘What purpose does the concept of energy serve?’

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See Solomon (1982, 1983, 1985), Watts (1983), Gilbert and Watts (1983), Duit (1984), Driver and Warrington (1985), Agabra (1985, 1986), Gilbert and Pope (1986), Trellu and Toussaint (1986), Trumper (1993), Ballini et al. (1997), and Bruguière et al. (2002).

  2. 2.

    Fact sheet for Cycle 2 (basic learning in first years of primary school) and Cycle 3 (further learning in last years of primary school) (MEN 2002, p. 29)

  3. 3.

    This expression comes from Michel Hulin (1992) in his book entitled Le mirage et la nécessité: pour une redéfinition de la formation scientifique de base.

  4. 4.

    Instituts de Recherche sur l’Enseignement des Mathématiques (Research Institutes for Teaching Mathematics).

  5. 5.

    Société Française d’Histoire des Sciences et des Techniques (French Society of the History of Science and Technology).

  6. 6.

    P. J. Kennedy was professor at the University of Edinburgh.

  7. 7.

    University of New South Wales, Sydney.

  8. 8.

    The core skills are those considered essential to master by the end of compulsory education. The section dedicated to scientific and technological knowledge emphasises: ‘The presentation of the history and the development of concepts, drawing from resources in all the disciplines concerned, is an opportunity to tackle complexity: the historical perspective contributes to providing a coherent vision of science and technology as well as their joint development’ (pp. 12–13).

  9. 9.

    Secondary school teachers should be able to ‘situate their discipline(s) within its history, its epistemological issues, its didactic problems and the debates that affect it’. Framework of reference for teachers’ professional skills (extract from the decree of 19 December 2006 containing guidelines for teacher training, MEN 2007).

  10. 10.

    Several historical and epistemological studies on energy were published by scientists and/or philosophers of science at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century (e.g. Mach, Planck, Poincaré, Meyerson and Cassirer). Later, Kuhn’s (1959) article encouraged science historians to carry out new investigations on the emergence of the concept in the nineteenth century (e.g. Elkana 1974; Truesdell 1980; Hiebert 1981; Smith and Wise 1989; Caneva 1993; Smith 1998; Ghesquier-Pourcin et al. 2010). It should be noted that the history of the concept of energy over the course of the twentieth century, with the advent of the theory of relativity (special and general relativity) and of quantum mechanics, as well as the importation of the concept in many other fields (chemistry, biology, economics, arts, etc.), has not yet been well studied.

  11. 11.

    See in particular the literature indicated in Sect. 8.2.

  12. 12.

    For further information on these aspects, see the references in the previous footnote.

  13. 13.

    The inspiration here is from Papadouris and Constantinou (2011, p. 966), who ‘take the perspective that any attempt to promote students’ understanding about energy should primarily address the question ‘What is energy and why is it useful in science?’. However, we diverge from these writers’ approach on several points: we maintain that it is pertinent to include the question of the origin of the concept of energy; we suggest approaching the three questions drawing on EHST; and, lastly, we do not provide the same answers to the questions posed.

  14. 14.

    In the order of occurrence in Kuhn’s text: Mayer, Joule, Colding, Helmholtz, Carnot, Séguin, Holtzmann, Hirn, Mohr, Grove, Faraday and Liebig. This list is not meant to be exhaustive, and other scientists could be added, such as W. Thomson (Lord Kelvin) and Rankine, whose contributions came later but were no less conclusive.

  15. 15.

    By ‘metaphysical’, we mean an idea that precedes any scientific research.

  16. 16.

    It should be noted that advances in the mathematical sophistication of the laws of physics were a necessary precondition for the emergence of the principle.

  17. 17.

    See, for example, Robardet and Guillaud (1995, Chap. 3), Gil-Pérez et al. (2002, p. 563), Johsua and Dupin (2003, pp. 215–217) and Cariou (2011, pp. 84–86). A survey of teachers would be worth carrying out to corroborate this hypothesis regarding their choice of option (i).

  18. 18.

    In accordance with current terminology, one should speak of the mutual convertibility between kinetic energy and thermal energy (a form of energy, as distinct from heat, or ‘thermal transfer’, which is a mode of energy transfer).

  19. 19.

    As stressed by Caneva (1993, pp. 25–27, 46 and 323), Mayer came to this idea of the conservation of ‘force’ (an ancestor of energy) by making an analogy with the conservation of matter (the latter being still implicit in physics and chemistry at the time of Mayer and made explicit by him). This ‘guiding analogy’ can also be considered as an a priori reasoning towards the principle of conservation of energy.

  20. 20.

    Unlike momentum as it is defined today, Descartes’ ‘quantity of motion’ (quantité de mouvement) was a scalar and not a vector quantity. See Descartes (1996 [1644]).

  21. 21.

    On the controversy between Descartes and Leibniz on this point, see, e.g. Iltis (1971).

  22. 22.

    See Lavoisier (1864 [1789]).

  23. 23.

    Note that, in classical mechanics, potential energy depends only on the relative distances between the interacting bodies. Therefore, if all these interacting bodies are included in the system, the potential energy of this system no longer depends on the choice of the coordinate system.

  24. 24.

    Hertz actually rejected potential energy, emphasising the role of the kinetic energy of hidden masses.

  25. 25.

    It should also be noted that energy is equally employed in the social sciences: economics, psychology, sociology, etc. However, the meaning of the concept of energy and the uses made of it are not necessarily the same as in the physical sciences.

  26. 26.

    Chisholm (1992, p. 217) writes: ‘Energy […] produces changes.’ Bunge (2000, p. 458) identifies energy with ‘changeability’. For us, these two definitions do not adequately elucidate the idea of capacity. Doménech et al. (2007, p. 51) define energy ‘as the capacity to produce transformations’. We criticise this definition for the use of the term ‘transformation’ rather than ‘change’. The latter term is more general than the former and, in particular, can include variation in the value of a quantity (such as temperature or speed), which is not usually described as a ‘transformation’.

  27. 27.

    As observed by Roche (2003, p. 187), ‘Rankine attributes this definition to Thomson’, who ‘in 1849, in an almost casual way […] first used the term energy in print more generally to mean the amount of work any system can perform.’

  28. 28.

    In the viewpoint of current physics, it is a question of the transformation of ‘thermal energy’ into ‘mechanical energy’.

  29. 29.

    An ‘isolated system’ is defined here as a system that does not interact with its environment.

  30. 30.

    Ministère de l’éducation nationale (Ministry of education, France)

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  1. LIRDEF (EA 3749), Universités Montpellier 2 et Montpellier 3, 2, place Marcel Godechot, 4152, Montpellier Cédex 5, 34092, France

    Manuel Bächtold & Muriel Guedj

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Correspondence to Manuel Bächtold .

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  1. School of Education, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    Michael R. Matthews

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Bächtold, M., Guedj, M. (2014). Teaching Energy Informed by the History and Epistemology of the Concept with Implications for Teacher Education. In: Matthews, M. (eds) International Handbook of Research in History, Philosophy and Science Teaching. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7654-8_8

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