Naslov
Teaching upper-secondary students about conservation of mechanical energy: two variants of the system approach to energy analysis

Autori
Halilović, Asila ; Mešić, Vanes ; Hasović, Elvedin ; Vidak, Andrej

Izvornik
Journal of Baltic science education (1648-3898) 20 (2021), 2; 223-236

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Radovi u časopisima, članak, znanstveni

Ključne riječi
quasi-experiment ; mechanical energy ; teaching materials ; teaching strategies

Sažetak
Conventional teaching about the law of conservation of mechanical energy (LCME) often results with students trying to solve problems by remembering similar problems they already covered in classes. Consequently, many students fail to transfer their knowledge to simplest real-life problems. Therefore, a pre-test – post-test quasi-experiment was conducted to evaluate the effects of an alternative, system-based approach to teaching about LCME. The study included 70 upper-secondary students from the First Bosniak Gymnasium Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Firstly, all students learned about energy in a conventional way. Then they wrote a test on LCME and had three additional hours of teaching about this topic, where one group of students learned in line with the forces-variant of the system approach (e.g., discussing conservative and nonconservative forces) and the other group with the process-variant of the same approach (e.g., discussing system’s states and processes like in thermodynamics). For both variants, only three hours of system-based teaching proved to substantially improve the students’ level of LCME understanding compared to the level of understanding they had after conventional teaching. It follows that the system approach may work well at the upper-secondary level, if it is introduced through the scaffolding-andfading technique.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Fizika, Interdisciplinarne prirodne znanosti

POVEZANOST RADA