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Energy and Change: Introducing a New Approach Energy and Change: Background Stories for Teachers Energy and Change: Activities for the Classroom

Every once in a while there is something I have learnt to call a paradigm shift. These booklets are the result of an ASE and Nuffield sponsored project to help one such shift on its way - from those who ponder the philosophy of science to those who pass it on in the classroom. For any science teacher it is hard enough to learn the science in an area new to them and then develop the appropriate scheme of work to go with it: but it is far, far more difficult to have to reassess old ways of doing familiar science in the light of new thinking. Just that has happened to many of us over the business of energy. In our separate science departments we have banned the use of certain expressions (rather in the spirit of political correctness) without really getting to grips with a coherent, across-department approach to presenting the subject in a positive way. We don't say 'forms of energy' any more and we 'transfer energy' rather than let it 'change', but after that it gets hard to think through what explanations a department will use across physics, chemistry and biology that will work everywhere, be able to introduce some very complex concepts while still being helpful to those of low abilities or with language difficulties. These booklets are an answer. They present the results of a project (including school trials) of a new language using abstract diagrams to qualitatively explain energy and change. It's not just a bit here and there but a whole approach, thought through and tried out, to introducing a wide range of situations across all the sciences in a consistent way. At the centre of the approach, offered in this material, is a descriptive framework where all changes are driven by differences, differences such as temperature differences, concentration differences, pressure difference etc. This statement is used to replace the misinformation contained in the phrase 'energy makes things happen'. A flame heats a pan of water, not because the flame has a lot of energy but because it is at a higher temperature than the pan. There is a temperature difference. The abstract diagrams developed by the project are soon learnt and reading them becomes intuitive. They are extremely powerful in their ability to express complex ideas very concisely. The authors have used symbols to distinguish between changes which 'just happen by themselves' (energy flowing down a temperature gradient) and 'changes which do not just happen by themselves' (the temperature of two things becoming different). These are very friendly terms, as are others in this material, which older pupils will readily modify to more common scientific expressions later on. In the meantime, they will have the benefit of getting to grips with the nature of these two categories and how one kind of change can drive the other kind of change in many situations. (As the temperature difference disappears in a hot saturated solution of copper sulphate, a concentration difference appears, i.e. a crystal is formed.) The booklet Introducing a New Approach is an overview of the symbolic diagrams and language. It gives a good idea of how readily, across differing examples, the general concepts become plain. The method is applied to energy flows, storing differences, describing the world of particles (as they join, split, build and break), springy things and much, much more. The Background Stories for Teachers presents familiar situations and explains them from the altered perspective of 'change driven by differences' using the symbols of this approach: essential reading before entering the next phase and using some of the intriguing activities contained in the third booklet. This is good science and eminently applicable to the classroom. Most useful for years 7 - 9 probably, but the pupil discussions stimulated by this material and reported by the authors includes steady states, the second law of thermodynamics and explaining chemical reactions. These booklets alone could make the basis for excellent in-service training within an institution but there are further packs of material available, including an INSET pack, from the University of London Institute of Education.