Conclusion and summary comments: Teaching energy and associated research efforts

The Energy Summit and the chapters in this book started with the premise that energy is both a critical disciplinary idea as well as a crosscutting concept, as elaborated in the Framework for K-12 Science Education (National Research Council 2012). Energy serves a central role in our everyday lives, as well as in all science disciplines. We were influenced by the argument presented in Framework for K-12 Science Education that energy is a critical concept that cuts across the disciplines and as such all learners need a solid understanding of this idea. However, the general population and many professionals, including K-12 science teachers, many science graduate students and scientists, lack a solid understanding of energy across all disciplines. Many of the challenges learners face in understanding the energy concept result not only because energy is a challenging concept but also because energy is seldom taught as a unifying idea; it is more likely taught using different language in different disciplines. For example, most learners never develop a rich conceptual understanding of what is meant by “energy is stored in chemical bonds.” This problematic situation most likely arises because there are substantive differences in how the energy concept is used across disciplines that result from shorthand usage of language. Although many scientists can translate between the various shorthand ways of using energy, this language is never clearly explained to students and practitioners, including teachers and curriculum developers. In fact, many graduate students do not fully understand the idea of energy. This has led to many misunderstandings of energy including “energy being stored in chemical bonds” as meaning “energy is released when bonds break.” As such, throughout the globe, we face challenges in teaching the energy concept, both because energy is such a challenging, misunderstood concept and different language is used to express different manifestations of it.