Grade Eight Students’ Interpretation of Their Teacher’s Verbal. (c2013)

Abstract

Research about students’ understanding of energy in physics has revealed that students have ideas about the physical world that are different from those accepted in the scientific community. Nowadays, the effect of the language used and the teacher’s verbal input during class instruction have been topics of research in the literature. This research aimed at answering the following three research questions: What are the construals of energy reflected in a grade eight physics teacher’s input during instruction? How do students of grade eight interpret the language use of their physics teacher while learning about energy? What is the relationship between students’ interpretation of their grade eight physics teacher’s verbal input and their conceptual achievement? The sample of this study included a teacher of grade eight and her 27 students in a Lebanese private school. Data was collected through a pretest and posttest, two semi-structured interviews, and audio recordings of the teacher’s verbal input during the explanation of a unit about energy. The results of the study showed that students use material like construals while discussing about energy similar to those used by the teacher. Moreover, students interpreted the language use of their teacher as two construal types: energy as material like or substance, and energy as ability to do work, which defines energy as a conserved quantity, but not necessarily abstract. In addition, results showed that students hold misconceptions about energy transformation.