This article was downloaded by: [New York University]

On: 03 September 2013, At: 04:49

Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House,
37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

European Journal of Science Education

Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tsed19

Learning about energy: how pupils think in two

domains
a
Joan Solomon
a
Centre for Science Education, Chelsea College, London
Published online: 24 Feb 2007.

To cite this article: Joan Solomon (1983) Learning about energy: how pupils think in two domains, European Journal of
Science Education, 5:1, 49-59

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0140528830050105

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained
in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no
representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the
Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and
are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and
should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for
any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever
or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of
the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic
reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any
form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://
www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
 EUR. J. SCI. EDUC., 1983, VOL. 5, NO. 1, 4 9 - 5 9

Learning about energy:

how pupils think in two domains

Joan Solomon, Centre for Science Education, Chelsea College, London

Introduction
Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:49 03 September 2013

Trying to find out what children believe about the workings of the natural
world is at least as old as the early works of Jean Piaget (Piaget 1926). It is
only quite recently, however, that serious attempts have been made to record
and examine their out-of-school views on topics which arise in science. It has
become commonplace to emphasize that pupils' minds are not a tabula rasa
before they are instructed; since these previous mental constructs are bound
to interact with what we teach them, a new and valuable field of educational
research has developed for probing this unscientific science.
Some work has simply emphasized the 'multiple private versions' of
science that children hold (Sutton 1980). Others (e.g., Tasker 1980, Osborne
and Gilbert 1980, Tiberghine and Delacote 1978) have developed different
types of interview technique for collecting data and categorizing them.
Almost without exception these researchers have commented on the
persistent nature of pupils' views, even in the face of contradictory science
teaching. Driver (1981) has termed these obstinate systems of thought
'alternative frameworks' and called attention to the common trends which are
observable in much of this out-of-school science.
The reason for the commonality of these viewpoints and their per-
sistence is not far to seek. As has been pointed out in papers on undergraduate
mechanics (Viennot 1979), and school children's learning about energy (Duit
1981), these widely held misconceptions are deeply rooted in the society
around us. In daily conversation and through the mass media, our children
are confronted with implicit assumptions about how things move, their
energy and their other properties, which can be directly at odds with the
scientific explanation that they learn at school. Outside the school laboratory,
these adolescents are continually being socialized into a whole repertoire of
non-scientific explanations. Examination of newspaper reports and everyday
language makes clear the pervasiveness of this subversive process.
From this standpoint the persistence of such socialized knowledge
becomes readily understandable. Even when science teaching seems to have
been successful, Duit writes that '[these other notions] generally live on
under a thin layer of physical knowledge'. Similarly, Viennot comments that
these notions are 'highly robust'. But, although both these authors have
correctly traced the source of such popular misconceptions, they still express
surprise, and are concerned that means should be found to extinguish them.
 SO RESEARCH REPORTS

The logic of the situation determines otherwise. Such socialized knowledge

cannot ever, by its very nature, be extinguished. Whether or not our pupils
become successful in science, they must never lose the ability to com-
municate. It would indeed be a poor return for our science lessons if they
could no longer comprehend remarks like 'wool is warm' or 'we are using up
all our energy'. What we are asking from our pupils, then, is that they should
be able to think and operate in two different domains of knowledge and be
capable of distinguishing between them.
These two coexisting spheres—everyday notions and scientific
explanations—are very dissimilar both in their genesis and in their mode of
operation. Fortunately there is no need to construct, ab initio, any new
philosophical approach to examine these differences, since it has already
been done in almost exhaustive detail by Schutz and Luckmann (1973).
Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:49 03 September 2013

Their theory, briefly summarized, runs as follows. In the normal or

'natural attitude' we all tend to categorize our experiences rather loosely—to
'typify' them—so that they can be absorbed into 'meaning structures'. These
are then reinforced by communication with others and by language itself,
which gives this 'life-world' knowledge both social value and great per-
sistence. Since each practical situation is only in limited need of explanation,
such meaning structures will be fragmentary, not logically integrated with
one another and tied to the particular type of experience which prompted
them.
During a secondary process of socialization, such as schooling, other
interpretative systems of knowledge may be learnt. These stand above the
life-world structures, seeking to explain our experiences in another province
of meaning, and forming what have been called 'symbolic universes' of
knowledge (Berger and Luckmann 1967). The primary life-world structures
are not eradicated by such learning since it forms an overarching system with
a radically shifted perspective of interpretation which is foreign to the natural
attitude and considerably more fragile. Its social currency is also much
weaker since it is restricted to a small specialized group, or to certain periods
of time within the school timetable.
Crossing over from one domain of meaning to the other involves an
abrupt discontinuity of thought which Schutz and Luckman compared to the
shock of waking up from a dream into the real world. This emphasizes
another point of difference: from the everyday perspective, gaps or problems
in the symbolic domain can be ignored, whereas experiences in the real world
draw our attention back from the symbolic level to the habitual knowledge of
the life-world. Thus ease of movement between these two domains is not
symmetrical for the two different directions. This is the theoretical standpoint
from which research findings will be analyzed.

Report and results of some new research into learning

about energy

This work centred on the teaching about energy to three fourth-year classes
in one comprehensive school. The pupils, aged 14 to 15 years, all covered
exactly the same elementary work in this field, but the composition of the
 LEARNING ABOUT ENERGY 51

three classes was slightly different. One class, 4P, was taking a traditional
course in Physics alone and contained a wide range of abilities. The other two
classes were studying a mixed Physics-with-Chemistry course; here one
group, 4PC1, contained the higher ability children choosing this option, as
judged by performance in two tests taken earlier in the year, whilst those of
lower ability were in the class labelled 4PC2.
Evidence of the progress of pupils' understanding of energy was
collected in three different ways: by recording class discussions, by tests
administered through normal homework, and by questions set in an end-of-
year examination. In this way, it was possible both to follow the progress of
individual pupils and also to obtain some indications of general trends
whenever they appeared.
For the purpose of this paper we will now move to that point in the
Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:49 03 September 2013

teaching programme where the transformation of energy was being learnt.

Recordings of class discussions had shown that this, unlike the principle of
conservation of energy, gave rise to little apparent difficulty. The pupils were
shown how to construct 'energy chains' whereby the different forms of
energy were connected by arrows to show their successive changes. The
examples given in class included an electric heater, solar energy and
hydroelectric power, human movement, the motor car, dynamo, motor,
battery and many others.
At this point the pupils tackled a test which contained the question
shown in figure 1. This was designed to find out how well they could trace the
energy changes in the operation of an electric drill. It is with responses to the
final part of this question that we are concerned.

Figure 1. Test question: 'An electric drill, working at a rate of 500 watts, is
used to drill a hole in a piece of wood. How much work could it do in 20
minutes? What energy changes are taking place?'

It turned out that the children's own feeling about the easiness of the
task was justified—the overall success rate was 81%. However these correct
answers were presented in a number of different ways. The formalism which
they had been taught for answering this kind of question would have
produced the simple chain
electrical energy-*kinetic energy-*heat energy.

In practice this was the commonest type of answer but, there was also a self-
selected group of pupils who chose to include non-energy terms (in
parenthesis, not within the energy chain) in order to amplify or explain their
answer. This formally unnecessary use of extra words gives valuable
 52 RESEARCH REPORTS

into the pupils' mode of thinking. In terms of Schutz and Luckmann's theory
we have here some clear instances of pupils operating in two different
domains, crossing over from one to the other and distinguishing between
them, as is evident from figure 2. The schematic mapping of answers brings
out three important characteristics:
(a) The energy terms in the symbolic domain serve a selective,
clustering function. The pupils need to pick out certain features and
ignore many more; they need to abstract in order to identify the type
of energy. But these terms are more than higher order generalization
in another plane since they have an over-arching interpretive
function.
(b) Both domains include explanatory networks. In the life-world it
would be commonplace to comment that electricity causes the drill
Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:49 03 September 2013

to rotate, and that the cause of the heat lies in the friction between the
bit and the wood. There is no suggestion that such explanations are
wrong: they are just not concluded at the appropriate level for
answering the question. In the symbolic domain the network is not,
in this instance, so strongly causal. Nevertheless the concept of
transformation allows us to construct a pathway from one energy
form to another, just as the principle of conservation would allow us
to deduce that the total quantity of energy must remain unchanged.
(c) It is necessary to refer thought from one domain to the other.
Abstraction from the life-world is necessary to reach the energy
plane, and any inference made here will have to be referred back to
the life-world for verification. In this case very little work is actually
done at the symbolic level, but this is rather unusual. In more
sophisticated physics far more analysis, often of a mathematical
nature, is carried out before the result is referred back to the life-
world for interpretation.

Symbolic Domain

Hand /
operating/switch
Cable
Plug

Life-world Domain

Figure 2. Schematic mapping of pupils' responses to the second question

in figure 1.
 LEARNING ABOUT ENERGY 53

The first stage in our analysis of the pupils' responses is to separate them into
six categories as follows:
Category 1: A complete and correct energy chain.
Category 2: A partially complete, but correct energy chain (often
omitting heat).
Category 3: A correct energy chain with one or two words added from
the life-world, but used in such a way as to show that they were not
included in the energy domain; e.g., electrical energy-^kinetic energy
-•heat energy (friction).
Category 4: An extension of the previous category in which an almost
complete system of cross-references to the life-world is given, e.g., 'the
electrical energy going into the drill changes into kinetic energy which by
friction drills the hole and changes into heat energy'.
Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:49 03 September 2013

Category 5: One or two words from the life-world used wrongly within
the energy chain, e.g., electric-»kinetic-+heat-»friction.
Category 6: Completely wrong answers; question obviously not under-
stood by pupil.

Table 1. Classification of pupil answers by response categories described

in the text.

Number of answers in categories

Class 1 2 3 4 5 6 Total
4P 6 4 3 3 2 2 20
4PC1 8 7 4 1 2 0 22
4PC2 11 1 0 0 0 5 17

Total 25 12 7 4 4 7 59

The analysis of pupils' responses (which is given in table 1) shows that

out of the 48 pupils with substantially correct replies there was a group of 11
who deliberately crossed over and back between the two domains without
losing their power to discriminate between them. We have no direct
indication about the way in which the remaining 37 pupils in the first two
categories thought out their answers.
A reading of Schutz and Luckmann's theory suggests two hypotheses
against which these results may be tested. These are as follows.
Hypothesis I: Lapse of time will select preferentially for the life-world
structure of meaning if there is no further reinforcement of symbolic
knowledge.
Hypothesis II: Successful crossing over and back from one domain to
another will be more difficult than continuous operation in one domain,
and is indicative of a deeper level of understanding.
An attempt to examine these hypotheses was possible on the basis of
pupil responses to a second question of a similar kind to the one above, which
 54 RESEARCH REPORTS

was given to the same pupils in the end-of-year examination. For pupils in
classes 4P and 4PC1 this occurred about 2\ months after the energy course,
with no further teaching about energy in the intervening lessons. For the
other class, 4PC2, this examination took place immediately after the
completed energy course. This question is shown in figure 3. The answers to
this question were anlysed both pupil by pupil, in order to compare their
answers with those they had given to the question about the drill, and also
into the same categories as in table 1. The results are shown in table 2. It is
immediately clear that the class 4PC2, for whom there was no lapse of time,
was the only class to show an improved performance on the second question.
Closer inspection showed four cases of substantial improvement from
category 6 to category 2. The other classes contained no such cases. There
were only two cases of substantial deterioration in class 4PC2, compared with
Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:49 03 September 2013

seven in class 4P and five in class 4PC1. This is all the more surprising since
this latter class contained those pupils judged to be less able from their
performance in previous examinations. Of the twelve previously successful
pupils in classes 4P and 4PC1 who now failed to answer the question
correctly, there were seven who reverted to using life-world terms in the
wrong domain and five whose failure was due to muddling the energy terms
as a result, perhaps, of simple forgetting. Thus over half the failure rate can
be attributed to life-world knowledge obliterating learned meaning struc-
tures, and this lends support to our first hypothesis.

Flywheel

Boiler

Figure 3. Question in the end-of-year examination (the diagram refers to

the model steam engine used during lessons): 'Name all the energy
changes taking place in a coal-fired steam engine or turbine.'

Table 2. Analysis of pupils' answers to the question given in the caption to

figure 3.

Number of answers in categories

Class 1 2 3 4 5 6 Total

4P 4 1 0 4 3 8 20
4PC1 5 9 1 0 3 4 22
4PC2 3 11 0 0 1 2 17

Total 12 21 1 4 7 14 59
 LEARNING ABOUT ENERGY 55

In order to test the second hypothesis, only the two classes 4P and 4PC1
were considered since they had been exposed to the same lapse of time
between the two tests and because they contained the group of pupils who
had given answers in categories 3 and 4 in the first test and who had therefore
crossed over between the domains. Looking at the overall trends of change,
there is evidence that pupils in the different main categories fared differently
(cf., table 3). The following main findings are noted:
(i) Pupils who were unsuccessful the first time (giving category 5 and
6 answers) fared no better on the second question.
(ii) A substantial proportion of pupils giving correct answers in
categories 1 and 2 on the first occasion, were later unsuccessful in
the second question (categories 5 and 6).
(iii) A majority of pupils giving answers in categories 3 and 4 on the first
Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:49 03 September 2013

question chose the snorter, correct method (categories 1+2) when

answering the end-of-year examination question. Only one pupil
moved to an incorrect (categories 5 + 6) answers.

Table 3. Analysis of pupil movement between the categories (classes 4P

and 4PC1 only). The assymetry in the data is statistically significant at the
0001 level.
Question on the electric drill
(by categories)
1+ 2 3+ 4 5+ 6
Question on the 1+2 12 7 0
steam engine 3+4 2 3 0
(by categories) 5+ 6 11 1 6

Thus it seems that pupils who had demonstrated their ability to cross over
between the domains without error, possessed the more secure understand-
ing of the abstraction of energy and its transformations. This is clearly
brought out by the following data:
Pupils initially in categories (1 + 2): 25 Number successful in second
question: 14
Pupils initially in categories (3 + 4): 11 Number successful in second
question: 10
Tests were then applied to pupils in these three gross categories to examine
their relative abilities in physics as measured by the percentage score they
obtained in the whole end-of-year examination. A comparison between
categories (1 + 2) and (5 + 6) showed a marked difference in mean scores
which was significant at the 1% level. Clearly success or failure in this energy
work is strongly related to ability in the other branches of physics tested in
this examination paper. Pupils in categories (3 +4) also had a slightly higher
mean score than those in categories (1+2), but this was not statistically
significant at 20%. From this we may infer that the markedly better
 56 RESEARCH REPORTS

performance by those pupils who had elected to answer the first question by
crossing over between the domains and were not confused by the process,
was not simply the result of this group containing more of the able pupils. We
may suggest that crossing over between the two domains is substantially
more taxing than operating in the (symbolic) energy domain alone, and that
the greater durability of knowledge shown by those in categories (3 + 4)
supports our second hypothesis.

Application to other research data

This work on pupils' domains of thought arose out of some research designed
to examine a much broader spectrum of their ideas about energy. The
number of pupils involved was necessarily small, but the theoretical
Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:49 03 September 2013

structure used in this analysis has wider application and can be tested on
greater numbers if, for example, we use the data collected by Viennot (1979).
Her work examined students' responses to problems in which objects of the
same mass but with different velocities, were travelling in situations where
each was subject to the same force (the latter was not stated and had to be
inferred by the student). Three of the kinds of question used by Viennot are
illustrated in figure 4. The first two illustrations (a) and (b), refer thought to
the life-world structures of meaning. Viennot quoted newspaper articles and
scientific journals to present a convincing case that speed (or velocity) is
intuitively related to force in what Schutz and Luckmann would have called
the 'natural attitude'. It is interesting to note, in this context, that speed has
been shown (Hibel and Wiesal 1962) to be perceived directly by structures
behind the retina, whereas acceleration (as opposed to the inertial forces
which it produces), figures much less prominantly in the life-world domain
of explanation. For the purpose of testing our first hypothesis on Viennot's
data it seems better to use the example in figure 4(b) since further teaching on
gravitational or other fields of force is likely to figure in university courses,
whereas oscillation on springs is a typical school topic which is rarely
encountered in undergraduate physics.

/ / \
/ /
/ / -Equilibrium
/ /
/ / i level
i/ / \

(a) (b)
Figure 4. Examples of question types used by Viennot (1979).
(a) Free trajectories under gravity
(b) Same displacement at the end of a spring.
(c) Theoretical problem: 'If the same force acts on two identical
masses, are the motions necessarily identical?'
 LEARNING ABOUT ENERGY 57

Students were asked what forces were acting upon the masses involved.
For both French and British samples the percentage of students who
answered this correctly declined markedly as students became more and
more remote from their school learning, as the figures shown in table 4
demonstrate. Lapse of time, it seems, is indeed selecting preferentially for
the life-world structure of meaning in accordance with hypothesis I above.
Results obtained from the third type of question are particularly
valuable for our purpose. Here is a problem with no direct link with any life-
world situation; it can be asked and answered entirely in the symbolic
domain. Having no necessity to cross over from one domain to the other
removes a considerable mental hurdle, and hypothesis II would then predict
a higher success rate for this question. Viennot reported that over 80% of her
group of students gave the right answer here, whilst only 58% of the same
Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:49 03 September 2013

sample could give the correct response to the question illustrated in figure
4(a). We notice that the reasoning required to answer 4(c) should have
ensured success in 4(a), had it not been for the visual details in the illustration
which drew the attention back into the habitual domain of thought where
speed is loosely explicated by the action of a similarly directed force.
It is also interesting to examine from the same theoretical stance some
research on the teaching of energy obtained by Duit (1981) in Germany. A
considerable programme for developing methods for teaching the conserv-
ation of energy was mounted by him since this topic is generally considered
more difficult than the transformation of energy (see above). It is very clearly
in conflict with socialized knowledge which holds that energy is 'used up'
during useful processes. In the problem below, pupils of approximately the
same age as those involved in the energy studies reported in the previous
section, were asked to predict the highest position that the ball would reach
on the other side of the track upon being released from the point shown. They
were also asked to give reasons for their answers. In spite of the considerable
emphasis which had been laid upon the height of rise of a weight and its
potential energy in the preceding course, the success rates in (b) and (c) were
disappointing. Pupils' explanation showed how their thinking had slipped
back from the symbolic energy domain into the life-world realm of
explanation as the more complicated features of the exaplanation stimulated
crossing over.

Table 4. Percentage of students answering the question 'What forces are

acting on the masses involved?' correctly (cf., figure 4).
School University
last year 1st year 2nd year 3rd year

French
students 70 48 37
English
students 64 57
 58 RESEARCH REPORTS

(a) (b) (c)

Figure 5. Test situations used by Duit (1981).

Conclusions
Physics problems are commonly set and illustrated within a familiar context.
Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:49 03 September 2013

The reasons usually given for this are that it makes (i) the situation more
readily comprehensible, (ii) the question more interesting and (iii) the
problem easier to conceptualize. Results discussed in this paper cast very
considerable doubt on the last of these speculations. It is suggested that such
illustrations can all too easily cause pupils to relinquish their grasp on learnt
symbolic knowledge for the familiar everyday system of explanation, after
which crossing back again can prove extremely hard.
The tenacity with which life-world explanations adhere to familiar
situations has not passed without comment. Dreyfus and Jungwirth (1980),
reporting on the prompting effect of everyday situations on the critical
thinking of pupils wrote 'the non-selective population (of pupils) did
significantly worse in everyday contexts'. This finding is confined to
educational research within schools. Donaldson (1978), in her powerful and
sympathetic book Children's Minds, refers to research by Henle (1962) on a
sample of graduate housewives which shows how hard it was for them to
apply their critical faculties to propositional arguments presented in an
everyday situation where the life-world explanations had so secure a footing.
Donaldson uses this and other examples to differentiate between
embedded modes of thought (life-world structures) and disembedded modes
(symbolic domain). Although she argues eloquently about the difficulty and
over-valued nature of disembedded thought which many children find so
forbidding at school, it is doubtful if all her conclusions are substantiated by
our evidence. Everyday 'human sense' situations do not necessarily make
learning easier. However she also writes of symbolic thought that it 'yields its
greatest riches when it is conjoined with doing'. Although the theoretical
model developed in this paper stresses the demanding nature of such a union,
no one would cavil with the high value that she sets upon its outcome. The
deepest levels of understanding are achieved neither in the abstract heights of
'pure' physics, nor by a struggle to eliminate the inexact structures of social
communication, but by the fluency and discrimination with which we learn
to move between these two contrasting domains of knowledge.
Acknowledgement
I am very grateful to Professor Paul Black for many helpful comments made
during discussion of this work.
 LEARNING ABOUT ENERGY 59

References
BERGER, P. L. and LUCKMAKN, T . 1967, The Social Construction of Reality (Penguin:
Harmondsworth).
DONALDSON, M. 1978, Children's Minds (Fontana: London).
DREYFUS, A. and JUNGWIRTH, E. 1980, A Comparison of the 'Prompting Effect' of Out-of-
School with that of In-School Contexts on Certain Aspects of Critical Thinking.
European Journal of Science Education, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 301-309.
DRIVER, R. 1981, Pupils' Alternative Frameworks in Science. European Journal of Science
Education, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 93-101.
DUIT, R. 1981, Understanding Energy as a Conserved Quantity: Remarks on the Article by
R. U. Sexl. European Journal of Science Education, Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 291-301.
HENLE, M. 1962, The Relationship between Logic and Thinking. Psychological Review,
Vol. 69, pp. 366-78.
HUBEL, D . H. and WEISAL, T . N. 1962, Receptive fields, Binocular Interaction and Functional
Architecture in the Cat's Visual Cortex. Journal of Physiology, Vol. 160, p. 106.
OSBORNE, R. J. and GILBERT, J. K. 1980, A Technique for Exploring Students' Views of the
Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:49 03 September 2013

World. Physics Education, Vol. 15, No. 6, p. 376.

PIAGET, J. 1929, The Child's concept of the World (Harcourt & Brace: New York).
SCHUTZ, A. and LUCKMANN, T . 1973, The Structures of the Life World (Heinemann: London).
SUTTON, C. R. 1980, The Learner's Prior Knowledge: a Critical Review of Techniques for
Probing its Organisation. European Journal of Science Education, Vol. 2, No. 2, p. 107.
TASKER, R. 1980, Reconsidering the Framework. Working Paper No 14 Learning in Science
Project (University of Waikato: New Zealand).
TIBERGHIEN, A. and DELAC6TE, G. 1978, Resultats preliminaires sur la Conception de la
Chaleur. Physics Teaching in Schools (Taylor & Francis: London).
Viennot, L. 1978, Le Raisonnement spontané en dynamique élémentaire. Doctoral thesis,
University of Paris VII.