Goals for teacher learning about energy degradation and usefulness

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) require teachers to understand aspects of energy degradation and the second law of thermodynamics, including energy’s availability and usefulness, changes in energy concentration, and the tendency of energy to spread uniformly. In an effort to develop learning goals that support teachers in building robust understandings of energy from their existing knowledge, we studied teachers’ impromptu conversations about these topics during professional development courses about energy. Many of these teachers’ ideas appear to align with statements from the NGSS, including the intuition that energy can be present but inaccessible, that energy can change in its usefulness as it transforms within a system, and that energy can lose its usefulness as it disperses, often ending up as thermal energy. Some teachers’ ideas about energy degradation go beyond what is articulated in the NGSS, including the idea that thermal energy can be useful in some situations and the idea that energy’s usefulness depends on the objects included in a scenario. Based on these observations, we introduce learning goals for energy degradation and the second law of thermodynamics that (1) represent a sophisticated physics understanding of these concepts, (2) originate in ideas that teachers already use, and (3) align with the NGSS.

Figure 1

Teachers’ ideas related to energy degradation.

Figure 2

The path of Marissa’s hand movement for “So we could keep following it and following it and following it, ‘til it comes back around.”

Figure 3

Vicki’s gesture for “It juuuust keeeps goooing out.”

Figure 4

Owen’s gesture after he states, “I think it essentially continues to travel.”

Figure 5

Rosie’s gesture for “We just talked about dissipate, so that’s the same thing as saying gone away from us.” (Rosie is holding a lollipop.)

Figure 6

Learning goals for energy degradation and the second law of thermodynamics.