Primary Corrections: Heating up

This section includes the unabridged content from the PrimaryConnections 'Heating Up' resource.

It includes a number of comments to highlight issues that will help teachers better understand the science of 'heat'.

A number of sample Primary Connections 'heating up' lessons are analysed, high-lighted and annotated using the flag.

As one reviewer wrote (see Lesson 2):

  "Given a hierarchy of things that are important to know about heat,
  the above exercises (sic PrimaryConnections) focus on some of the
  most ambiguous and useless. The lesson outcomes are more likely to
  reinforce the existing misconceptions of both students and teachers
  than to promote scientific understanding."

Primary Connections: Heating up

S7154 Primary Connections: Heating up

Learning area Science Published 21/10/2015 TLF-ID S7154

This comprehensive teacher resource explores different types of heat sources and how heat moves from one object to another, through a series of collaborative inquiry-based learning activities. Primary heat sources (that transform different energy sources to heat) and secondary sources (that transfer heat they have accumulated) are investigated and heat exchange between materials until they reach the same temperature is covered. Seven structured lessons are included, with comprehensive lesson plans, student handouts and additional teaching support material. The unit is based on the 5Es learning model for teaching science, and includes literacy and numeracy focuses to support learning in these areas and assessment strategies relevant to various stages of the teaching unit. The resource is part of a complete series from Foundation to Year 6.

Primary Connections - Benefits & Liabilities

The following pages include sample activities and suggested framework copied directly from Primary Connections

The in-line comments in these documents have been added to suggest some alternative, more useful and more engaging ways to help students develop a scientific understanding of heat.

Primary Connections Concepts & Ativities

On the plus side, the 'Teacher background' sections provide clear, concise and correct explanations of the current scientific understanding of heat. Unfortunately, the actual activities do not reflect, promote or reinforce the same level of scientific understanding evidenced in the 'Teacher background' sections.

Again, on the plus side, Primary Connections stresses the need to identify and correct student misconceptions. On the minus side, there is no recognition of the more fundamental problem of Teacher Misconceptions.

Numerous surveys over the last fifty years consistently agree that as many as seventy-five percent of physics undergraduates and science teacher candidates cannot correctly answer questions about heat and temperature.

Misconceptions in science teaching have been searched for a long time and many solutions have been put forth, however these misconceptions do not lose ground during education continuum. Source Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 15 (2011) 2758–2763

Any teaching program/course, that ignores and/or fails to first correct such misconceptions is doomed to failure.

For the above reasons, some new teaching methods are now required!