Make It STC - A Divergent Approach to Applying Cognitive Science in Education

 Jack Dunitz on the Nature of the Chemical Bond by Linus Pauling -

"At the time when I was reading that book I was wondering whether chemistry was really as interesting as I had hoped it was going to be. And I think I was almost ready to give it up and do something else. I didn’t very much care for this chemistry which was full of facts and recipes and very little thought in it, very little intellectual structure. And Pauling’s book gave me a glimpse of what the future of chemistry was going to be and particularly, perhaps, my future."1 

I have been teaching high school chemistry for sixteen years. During the past four years I have been reading and incorporating cognitive science into my classroom and sharing it with colleagues. How the brain works is a critical component of teaching and learning. I have yet to see a more consistent framework to analyze all of education than starting with what we know about the brain. Yet the educational practices emerging from some who use cognitive science are inconsistent with my readings and use within my own classroom. As I have grown in applying cognitive science to my teaching there has been a profound positive impact on my students. I want that same growth to reach as many teachers as possible. 

Teachers who utilize inquiry-based pedagogy must have avenues to explore cognitive science. Currently many teachers are stuck. They have the success of a new pedagogy that can easily expand to include cognitive science, but so many articles stem from philosophies that needlessly contradict with their teaching approaches. 

Undermining phlogiston theory was challenging. Scientists developed nuanced applications of phlogiston theory that made sense individually. But when considered together, conflicts arose. Likewise I propose that we have a growing trend in education of incorrect use of cognitive load theory. Much like phlogiston or the Bohr model, we have revolutionary evidence, but have reached the wrong conclusion from it. This misapplication is revealed through conflicts with other components of learning and cognitive science. Phlogiston theory was replaced with the superior model of oxygen. Oxygen allowed better progress and refinement of chemistry. Likewise it is time to deviate from a path where cognitive load theory is reductively used in place of the many complex and intricate components of cognitive science. The field of education is ready for advanced workings within classrooms via the best teachers in the world. 

How does learning occur? How do we define what learning is? Initially we are going to define learning as a permanent change within the structure of the brain either through acquisition of new knowledge or by connecting multiple ideas. These can occur in tandem. We can sequence learning into sensory memory (student observes something through sensation), short-term memory (STM) (student engages with the observation), and long-term memory (LTM) (student combines the new information with prior knowledge stored in LTM). The learning is tenuous until the information is partially forgotten, reintroduced, and the student has had practice with retrieving the information at these spaced intervals. 

But should we consider all transfer of information to LTM to be equivalent learning? Of course not. You can easily learn the fact that I was born in 1983. This is especially true if you were also born or had a major life experience near that year. If I ask you later in this article when I was born you can reproduce that information. On the other hand, developing a mental model for what an electron configuration represents about an atom is a much more complex transfer of information. I hear too many teachers expressing that novice students are incapable of doing such learning. There is evidence to the contrary. And it is concerning with how readily some teachers and researchers are celebrating the move away from challenging thinking. 

Many articles and books are happy to provide a definition of learning. The permanent change in brain structure. But fewer are willing to digress into the more nuanced analysis required for thinking. Recall a problem or discrepancy that you had to think about. What happened? Thinking involves an interplay between prior knowledge in LTM and the current dilemma in STM. If we observe a discrepant event, the sensory memory transfers observations to STM where we seek commonality, patterns, and information from LTM to help rationalize. The assumptions of what thinking is are where ARTC and STC diverge. 

Abstract reductivist teaching and cognition (ARTC) focuses on the step where short-term memory interacts with long-term memory using a model called cognitive load theory (CLT). Our research shows definitively that our STM can be overwhelmed when tasked with remembering too many pieces of information. There are limits to how quickly new information can be taken in. This can be assisted by developing chunks. Chunks are often defined using simple examples where a chunk of information can be thought of easily as 1 thing. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9 is much easier to remember than 2-7-5-6-4-5-7-8-3 even though both are 9 digits. The first set is just 1-9 in order. I only have to remember that I start with 1, end with 9, and that the numbers go in sequence. I can chunk the digits into 3 pieces of information. As we gain experience with learning about a topic, we find ways to better chunk information both in how we recognize information, and how we structure that information in seeking solutions. In the zone of proximal development model, cognitive overload would be when the material is too advanced for a student. If I try to learn tensor calculus for general relativity models I’m likely to experience cognitive overload and shut down. 

ARTC also addresses that novice students solve problems differently than experts. An expert notices key details while a novice is distracted by surface features. This is established.2 The problem with ARTC is that it definitively states that the solution to this issue is to have students solve only abstract problems with high repetition. Such a solution shows disagreement with several tenets of cognitive science. There is no research showing that students gaining experience by solving novel problems is less effective than students doing abstract reasoning. There is evidence that students who only perform abstract algorithms struggle immensely when tasked with applying these models to novel situations. This is an inherent issue within ARTC as most assessments cited involve reductive assessments. Additionally many critics define inquiry-based instruction using unstructured exploration models only. Guided instruction found in modeling instruction is ignored. 

A comment on a blog post led me to an article in support of traditional teaching (lecture followed by student mimicking an abstract algorithm performed by the instructor) claims that the sequence was more effective when the direct instruction was posited first.3 However, when carefully read, it turns out that the assessment was to mimic the abstract algorithm while varying superficial details (IE the mechanical device). If one were to take the article on face value, the insufficient assessment would not only be omitted, but the article actually describes the variation as transfer when in fact no alternative representations or extensions are utilized. Contradictory claims can be found in this article which has improved assessment, although may also have similar limitations.4 

Strategic teaching and cognition (STC) focuses on providing a student with a challenging problem that requires the student to work between STM and LTM. What do I know, what do I not know yet, and how can I reconcile the unknown with the tools at my disposal? This form of learning appears throughout successful cognitive science texts such as in Make it Stick.5 The common term is “desirable difficulties” but in inquiry pedagogy teachers can make these much more specific. During a circle discussion where students are presenting whiteboards of their current mental models, a master teacher can emphasize a desirable difficulty while minimizing uses of vocabulary and mathematics. Recall that cognitive load theory does not state that critical thinking is impossible, rather that there is a limit to how many different things the mind can consider at once. By off-setting algorithms and vocabulary (two abstract features) the teacher can guide students to think deeply about chemistry content. The teacher can later use the new chunks of content to introduce vocabulary as a retrieval cue or mathematical reasoning. 

Evidence for this efficacy can be found in the challenging task of undermining student misconceptions. When students are told they are incorrect and have a misconception, the students are likely to dig in even deeper. Rather when students are guided through questioning, a teacher can undermine the misconception through presentation of novel questions and an opportunity for the student to find patterns, exhibit sense-making, and reflect on their model development. 

Statistical evidence can be found by modeling instructors using high-quality assessments such as the concept inventories. These assessments are designed to root out scientific misconceptions within students and modeling instruction shows far greater gains then traditional instruction. Traditional science instruction led to a Hake gain of 0.23 while modeling instruction led to Hake gain of 0.48.6

When students are provided a problem that they’ve never seen before is an optimal chance for students to stress their limits of cognition. In science this is a tremendous opportunity for teachers to assess what a student truly believes if they have the tools (IE talk moves) to elicit authentic ideas from a student.7 While numerous roadblocks exist, the talk from ARTC is disheartening in that they do not even utilize such a powerful opportunity for learning on the basis (in my view) of flawed assessment. 

In the book The Inner Game of Tennis Timothy Gallwey describes how he utilizes cognitive science to teach sports.8 If we consider applying the ARTC methodologies to sports or driving they would be laughably rejected. Imagine learning to drive a car without ever being put into a situation where you actually drive a car. The idea that we would have students articulate abstract ideologies about driving to the point of overlearning as a means of instruction would never happen. Likewise we would also not coach a team by having them work abstract problems about trajectories of a baseball in order for them to optimally learn how to play baseball. The lack of transfer of ARTC to other fields should give us cautious skepticism. 

Evaluating teaching is incredibly difficult. The assessment used has a tremendous impact on what results will be seen. Quality assessments in education are difficult to produce and large groups of teachers have functioned without meaningful assessment. Additionally, there is variety among both teachers and learners. While it is my belief that all learning occurs in the same manner, students bring a variety of prior knowledge, motivation, and emotional engagement to the classroom. Teachers set different cultures, shape how students approach learning, and offer their own varying levels of pedagogical and content knowledge. Cognitive science should open doors for us to evaluate which approaches to teaching and learning cause the biggest shifts from middle to top, and we should be working to determine which teaching methods are most impactful on our top students and our top teachers. 

Far too many teachers lack trust in educational research because any intervention can produce favorable results when compared to marginal instruction and/or assessment. Moving forward research should make an effort to distinguish instruction into groups. Methods should be compared for a various levels of students and teachers. Assessments should be scrutinized. Anecdotal evidence of student thinking should be included. I remain skeptical of those who claim that teaching and cognition are simple. We have seen for centuries how experience is critical for success in teaching. This suggests that we embrace the complexity of the dynamics within a classroom. I believe that STC is a better path forward to embracing all of what we know about cognitive science and applying that complexity to our classrooms. 

Abbreviations and terms used:

STM - short-term memory

LTM - long-term memory

Sensory memory

ARTC - Abstract Reductivist Teaching and Cognition

STC - Strategic Teaching and Cognition

System 1 - A representation of automated memory processing from the book Thinking Fast and Slow

System 2 - A representation of deep thinking from the book Thinking Fast and Slow

Chunking - The representation of multiple pieces of information using a single retrieval cue.

Retrieval practice - Retrieving information directly from your brain without the use of an external source

Spaced practice - The repetition of retrieval for a particular piece of knowledge. The repetition causes the neural structure to lock in more permanently as the brain realizes this must be relevant since it has been repeated. 

Emotion - Evolved traits that help us survive. Emotions for learning can include curiosity, obedience, spite, anxiety, competitiveness, and others that vary in levels of toxicity, effectiveness, and balance. 

Mindfulness - A model of observation. Mindfulness research shows that using a component of an observation for a task is more effective than focusing on the object itself. 

Concrete examples - Observations that can be sensed or experienced. 

Abstract - Underlying concepts or ideas that are shared between multiple concrete examples. 

How I use cognitive science within my own classroom:

The pedagogy that structures my classroom is modeling instruction.9 Modeling instruction advances current student mental models. Traditional instruction states the teacher’s mental model and repeats as students approach. Traditional instruction is flawed in this sequence as students bring a variety of models and thus the only way for this to progress is with narrow definitions that do not challenge misconceptions or even work to build concepts at all. 

A typical sequence of events in modeling instruction would start with a phenomenon. The students would gather data and make observations. Then they are tasked with organizing their data and observations into a whiteboard. This whiteboard might include their data, particle representations of the chemicals involved, graphs, line of best fit equations, and macroscopic images. These are intentionally chosen to be a variety of concrete and abstract components. Students can then be directed to focus on 1-2 of each at a time. This offsets issues with cognitive overload while providing students a roadmap into complex thinking. Here we see the interplay between STM and LTM as they take the new sensory information (phenomena) into STM where they seek patterns/alignment with prior knowledge (LTM). 

The teacher utilizes talk moves to encourage students to express their current working models of how they explain patterns, data, and observations. The teacher then pushes students into more advanced components to enhance those models. A small example of utilizing cognitive science during discussions is when a student asks a question the teacher avoids responding immediately with a solution. When a student is thinking we are best off not interrupting that thinking. The student should search their LTM for information that might apply to finding resolution with the conflict they are exploring in STM. “Wait time” is a powerful tool. Thinking takes time and we must provide opportunities within learning for that thinking to occur. 

After we reach a consensus of a model, we then deploy that model. We might develop an understanding of gas pressure, and now we want to determine if we can predict how gas pressure might fluctuate as volume, amount of gas, and temperature are altered. Students are tasked with making predictions about a new pressure and explaining the changes via the particle level using collisions. 

Or students might have determined that there is a pattern where chemicals react in defined proportions. The teacher may use a BCA organizational tool to help students express these recipes. Students then use this model to predict the amount of chemical formed from a given amount of reactant. They can evaluate the percent yield, or predict the limiting and excess reagents. 

Often these initial deployments involve no sample calculation from the teacher. This is based on interleaving which shows that when students must select the appropriate procedures to solve a problem that their learning is enhanced. The danger here is if students experience cognitive overload. Since this is rare in my classroom, my students obtain substantial benefits over those who are mimicking and abstract algorithm that they don’t understand (IE dimensional analysis allowing students to use units to solve something that they don’t have a conceptual development of). 

When there are issues of novice students having an incomplete repertoire to evaluate the relevant mechanics of a problem scaffolding is implemented. Sometimes this involves having all students work on an identical problem in groups. In others this could involve scaffolding the sequence into smaller steps. However, most introductory chemical phenomena only involves the use of proportional reasoning as far as mathematics goes. 

After an initial deployment, students reconvene with their analysis to discuss how the model help up. Were there issues with confusion or issues that require alteration to the model? This cycle is repeated until we reach an assessment. The assessments in my course are standards-based with the opportunity to reassess. This allows for spaced retrieval practice, but also sets an appropriate emotional framework for students to focus on learning. We are not limited by a fixed mindset approach that overemphasizes extrinsic motivators. 

Feedback focuses on learning, is delivered in a timely manner, and is directed toward the class and not individual students. Highlights of powerful student thinking are displayed for students to emulate the metacognitive processes. Multiple representations are shown to highlight abstract ideas. Color coding can reinforce those overlaps. 

Feedback works in both directions. By centering the classroom around student perception, this enable the teacher to be more effective. In “Understanding How We Learn” Weinstein, Sumeracki, and Caviglioli explore a section entitled “Is Intuition the Enemy of Teaching and Learning?”10 When the teacher can get students to authentically express their mental models, they are not going to fall victim to the curse of knowledge that many teachers suffer in traditional models of instruction.11 Instead the teacher is receiving ample feedback of what students do and do not yet understand. When this can be used to guide sequencing of instruction through standards-based grading, a powerful framework for instruction is built. 

At the start of the class period a powerful tool I use is to have a student do a recap of the previous day’s lesson. They do this without resources which gives me an assessment of what they remember the most. Two years ago my students were overemphasizing the general form of reaction types. This year we made substitutions to emphasize the charge model within single replacement and double replacement reactions. This year students produced better samples and better identification of the smaller structure. These recaps utilize spacing, retrieval, and emphasize the students’ models. 

Vocabulary is utilized as a retrieval cue and not as an abstract association. We avoid circular reasoning. For example, a student who does not know what a cello is might have the cello described as a large violent. If the student inquires as to what a violin is, they might be told it’s like a small cello. The student leaves without knowledge of a violin or a cello. But they do maintain an abstract association between the two. This is how most scientific vocabulary is treated within traditional instruction. A full treatment of concept first, vocabulary last is described here.12 

Current improvements I’m working toward:

Currently I am working on having the students articulate the models being used. This is based off of the work of Brenda Royce who is assisting me on doing lesson plans where I articulate what scientific and conceptual models I expect students to be familiar with.13 These are produced during circle discussions where we analyze our whiteboards. Students will next articulate the models they are utilizing when they construct future whiteboards. Currently we are using particle level models and conceptual models which includes features such as equations, graphs, numerical patterns, and other abstract components. 

How should a teacher learn more about implementing cognitive science in their classroom?

Teachers should read books about cognitive science, try new strategies/frameworks in their classroom, and network with other teachers who are working to utilize these methods. I know that I have learned a lot from Blake Harvard who writes about several creative applications of cognitive science within his AP psychology classroom. However, you might find these not to apply successfully to a middle school science classroom and that adjustments must be made. 

The Learning Scientists have a substantial amount of free resources. I also appreciate the cognitive scientists who are hesitant to assign their conclusions to classroom practices as many of them are not teachers. I am immediately skeptical of anyone claiming that teachers only need to do 1-2 simple things in order to be highly effective teachers. Teaching is a complex skill that involves expertise in content, psychology, sociology, emotional engagement, attention, motivation, culture, and much more. When someone reduces that to a single component I doubt their expertise and/or motives. 

Within your classroom you should instruct students on retrieval practice, spaced practice, and more. When students can articulate the distinctions between system 1 and system 2 learning via Kahneman they will have a better range of strategies to tackle learning. I find the Veritasium video on The Science of Thinking14 to be particularly helpful for students to distinguish system 1 and system 2. The video Kahn Academy and The Effectiveness of Science Videos15 is particularly helpful to show students how discrepant the feelings of comfort and learning can be. 

As you improve your instructional methods and behaviors, it is critical to work toward better assessment simultaneously. Good instruction can be spoiled by review or assessment that undermines the teaching. The best resource I’ve found for healthy grading practices is “Grading For Equity” by Joe Feldman. 

Quotes from Readings:

Make it Stick - Peter Brown, Henry L. Roediger III, Mark A. McDaniel

1. How Effort Helps (pg. 82)

The more effort that is required to recall a memory or execute a skill, provided that the effort succeeds, the more the act of recalling or executing benefits the learning. 

2. Mental models (pg. 83)

Mental models are forms of deeply entrenched and highly efficient skills (seeing and unloading on a curve ball) or knowledge structures (a memorized sequence of chess moves) that, like habits, can be adapted and applied in varied circumstances.

3. Priming the mind for learning (pg. 86)

When you’re asked to struggle with solving a problem before being shown how to solve it, the subsequent solution is better learned and more durably remembered. 

The act of trying to answer a question or attempting to solve a problem rather than being presented with the information or the solution is known as generation. Even if you’re being quizzed on material you’re familiar with, the simple act of filling in a blank has the effect of strengthening your memory of the material and your ability to recall it later. Overcoming these mild difficulties is a form of active learning, where students engage in higher-order thinking tasks rather than passively receiving knowledge conferred by others. 

Out of the Labyrinth - Robert Kaplan & Ellen Kaplan

1. "If it looks like this, do that to it. Decorated with the elevated name of algorithm, but commonly called cookbook math, it relieves the student from any need for thinking and substitutes Truth by Authority for what could be dangerous encounters with reason." (pg. 117)

2. "Students may have a strong desire for immediate comprehension, which may ultimately be debilitating. If I don't get it right away, then I never will, and I say to hell with it." (pg. 196)

Culturally Responsive Teaching & The Brain - Zaretta Hammond

1. Our ability to process, store, and use information dictates whether we are able to do more complex and complicated thinking in the future because they are the very things that stimulate brain growth. It is precisely explicit information processing that is too often left off the equity agenda for low performing independent learners. (pg. 124)

2. We learn best when we are able to talk through our cognitive routine. Talking to learn, also called dialogic talk, is deeply rooted in oral cultural tradition. This kind of talk gives us the opportunity to organize our thinking into coherent utterances, hear how our thinking sounds out loud, listen to how others respond, and often, hear others add to or expand on our thinking. Tharp and Gallimore (1991) call this instructional conversation, the kind of talk that acts like a mental blender, mixing together new material with existing knowledge in a student’s schema. (pg. 134)

***Note how this quote compares with the information provided in Chatter by Ethan Kross where he describes how internal chatter moves at such a high rate that processing errors and reasoning can lead to ineffective model development!

The Inner Game of Tennis - Timothy Gallwey

I too admit to overteaching as a new pro, but one day when I was in a relaxed mood, I began saying less and noticing more. To my surprise, errors that I saw but didn’t mention were correcting themselves without the student ever knowing he had made them. (pg. 5)

Neuroteach - Glenn Whitman and Ian Kelleher

1. The upshot is, just because the common usage of the word “attention” is happening in your class, with lots of respectful and polite behavior, it doesn’t automatically follow that the neuroscience usage of the word “attention,” which is crucial for enduring learning, is happening throughout the room. (pg. 93)

2. Denise Pope, senior lecturer at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education, highlights a problem that she calls “doing school.”

These students explain that they are busy at what they call “doing school.” They realize they are caught in a system where achievement depends more on “doing” - going through the correct motions - than on learning and engaging with the curriculum. Instead of thinking deeply about the content of their courses and delving into projects and assignments, the students focus on managing the workload and honing strategies that will help them to achieve high grades. (p. 127)

Understanding How We Learn - Yana Weinstein, Megan Sumeracki, Oliver Caviglioli

There are two major problems that arise from a reliance on intuition. The first is that our intuitions can lead us to pick the wrong learning strategies. Second, once we land on a learning strategy, we tend to seek out “evidence” that favors the strategy we have picked, while ignoring evidence that refutes our intuitions. (pg. 23)

Citations

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpQnRwVjhDk&list=PL3F629F73640F831D&index=37 @44:38 accessed 2/20/22

2. Mestre, J. P., & Docktor, J. L. (2021). The Science of Learning Physics: Cognitive Strategies for improving instruction. World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd. 

3. Problem-solving or explicit instruction: Which should go ... (n.d.). Retrieved February 20, 2022, from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334982114_Problem-solving_or_Explicit_Instruction_Which_Should_Go_First_When_Element_Interactivity_Is_High 

4. Scientists, L. (2021, February 18). The impact of Guided Discovery vs. didactic instruction on learning. The Learning Scientists. Retrieved February 20, 2022, from https://www.learningscientists.org/blog/2020/2/14-1 

5. BROWN, P. E. T. E. R. C. (2018). Make it stick: The science of successful learning. BELKNAP HARVARD. 

6. Modeling instruction: An effective model for science ... - ed. (n.d.). Retrieved February 20, 2022, from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ851867.pdf 

7. Cartier, J. L., Smith, M. S., Stein, M. K., & Ross, D. K. (2013). 5 Practices for orchestrating productive task-based discussions in science. National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. 

8. Gallwey, W. T. (1974). The inner game of tennis. Random House. 

9. *Dukerich, L. (2015). Applying modeling instruction to high school chemistry to improve students' conceptual understanding20. ACS Publications. Retrieved February 20, 2022, from https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ed500909w 

10. Weinstein, Y., Sumeracki, M., & Caviglioli, O. (2019). Understanding how we learn: A visual guide. Routledge. 

11. Harvard, B. (2022, January 26). Psychology in the classroom #2 - Curse of knowledge. The Effortful Educator. Retrieved February 20, 2022, from https://theeffortfuleducator.com/2022/01/11/cofk/ 

12. Milam, S. (2022, January 1). How strategic teaching with cognition (STC) shows why you should teach concepts first and vocabulary last. How Strategic Teaching with Cognition (STC) shows why you should teach concepts first and vocabulary last. Retrieved February 20, 2022, from http://ibchemmilam.blogspot.com/2022/02/how-strategic-teaching-with-cognition.html 

13. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3aTDHXi97w accessed 2/20/22

14. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBVV8pch1dM accessed 2/20/22

15. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVtCO84MDj8& accessed 2/20/22

Five Good Reasons To Go Into Teaching

When I ask students I am surprised at how thoroughly students would be able to explain to me why teaching was not an option for them. It is not a decision that they have made lightly. They know the projections of pay, the direction of legislation and the costs that they would need to input. But there are also good reasons to go into teaching that they are not aware of. 

Unsettled research

The access teachers have had to cognitive science research and how learning works has been limited until recently. As we continue to improve our understanding of learning, the research connecting that cognitive research to teaching is stuck. Teaching must be complex enough to cause permanent change in the brain structure. Teaching must also be simple enough to not overwhelm the short term memory capacity. Many teachers and researchers embrace one of those ideals but not both. Thus a large conflict prevents us from pushing education research ahead. That will change in the near future and you would be able to be a part of that. Other fields have research that is so advanced and settled. Our knowledge of medicine, economics, philosophy, science and mathematics are advanced to a point where the specifics are so advanced that they contribute little. But education has so much room for growth and improvement. Soon our abilities to teach and learn those other fields will be limited to how quickly we can educate people to the point where they can understand the new research needs of them. 

Autonomy 

The most important factors in a career is not money. Study after study shows that having autonomy in your job is one of the biggest keys to being happy and feeling impactful. Next week I will be teaching about chemical reactions. The number of approaches and methods that I could use to do that is unlimited. I have so much control over what I choose to do. I can experiment and try something new. I can take ideas from other teachers. I can do what I did last time with minor changes. On Tuesday I will be doing a new lesson that I got the idea from a book that I am currently reading. At any given moment when inspiration hits I am able to put that idea into action. What other job has that at this level? 

Ability to learn with an audience to keep you accountable

There was a reading teacher next door to me who would put up posters where she would put the book covers of books she read. I started to do so and quickly found myself reading more and more books. I am currently reading my 54th book this year and I love it. But being a teacher is a huge reason why I love it. I get to share what I read and learn with my students. If I read an interesting book about rust, I am able to use that in a lesson with my class. Everything that I learn about I have an audience to reinforce my own learning as I share it. I’m not convinced that if I went into work and was restricted from sharing my learning that it would not carry the same meaning to me. Whether the topic is history, chemistry, geography, environmental science, cognition or something else; I can always connect those topics to my teaching. It enhances my teaching. 

The most difficult job

Teaching is the most difficult job that exists. The sheer volume of decisions that teachers make during a lesson is enormous. No matter how well you teach something there is always a way to improve your lesson because there are so many different options you have. Having the ability to deal with managing children in a way that optimizes their learning involves decisions about their cognition, their prior knowledge, their emotional health, the physical arrangement of the room and the lesson medium. Because of the overwhelming number of students (150-250) you must have plans for an incredible number of disruptions and adjustments to make. You have to introduce a new idea in a way that maximizes learning, provide practice that maximizes learning and give assessments that measure the learning that took place. All of that must be done to a large group of students with wildly different experiences and prior knowledge. Whether the goal is to maximize learning or to maximize homogeneity in knowledge is inconsistent depending on the objective, course and content piece. Behind all of these pieces is the content itself. I must understand all of the chemistry I am presenting which includes all of the chemistry that students perceive. I must understand and be prepared to respond to every conception that a student brings to the classroom along with what evidence and theory can advance those conceptions to better models. It is an unending journey towards a perfection that doesn’t exist even in theory. No other profession comes close to the combination of skills needed to maximize success. And that challenge is welcome. Teachers seek challenge. They want to be pushed to the limits of human ability. 

Online networks

When I was in high school teachers were isolated. They would seek community in lounges, but the atmosphere was potentially toxic. With social media teachers are able to connect with other teachers. We have access to the best of the best and can use each other to further our own abilities. The sharing and cooperation that results from social media has opened new doors to teachers from mentorship opportunities, to highlighting creativity, to challenging our own conceptions and ideas about teaching. These networks incentivize teachers to push beyond the typical boundaries of teaching that have existed in the past. Teachers can share improved models, dual coding and concrete examples for content. Teachers can share research, new pedagogy and more advanced curriculum. Teachers can learn from others about organization, technology, and creativity in lessons.

Cognitive Science of Energy in Science Education

The cognitive science behind teaching science shows that abstract ideas should be connected to concrete examples to maximize understanding. Energy is an abstract concept, yet little analysis of how to best connect energy to concrete examples exists. The experiences of teaching both chemistry and physics have provided me some insights into what teachers should do to help students understand scenarios that have traditionally been analyzed using energy. 

Motion, position and force are more concrete (less abstract) than energy. Whenever possible energy should be removed from the explanation or discussion and replaced with these. When students use energy with regards to kinetic or gravitational potential energy they have an easier time processing new information. Asking students which has a larger kinetic energy when comparing an object at different speeds is easily transferable between the abstract energy and the concrete speed. The other two forms of energy that are easily visible for students are spring energy and gravitational potential energy. 

Showing students a relaxed spring and a compressed spring allows them to easily identify that the compressed spring has more energy. Holding a marker a meter off the ground and two meters off the ground easily allows them to identify that the two meter mark has more potential energy. The reason why this is easily analyzed by students is that they easily connect to the concrete. The students can see that upon release, more motion results from the compressed spring and the elevated marker. Note that for both instances the concrete image of fast moving objects is easily accessible. In Figure 1 below, it is obvious that when released object B will be moving faster right before it hits the ground than object A.

Figure 1: Two objects where object B is twice the distance from the ground that object A is

When is it not clear?

Energy remains obscure with charged particles and electrical energy. A simple explanation is that charged particles have two competing abstract ideas visible to students. When a proton and electron are close together the students understand that there is a larger force between them than when they have a large separation. But these particles have less energy than particles that are separated. To reconcile these two competing ideas it can be helpful to track the relative speeds. If an electron and proton are separated by a distance and released, they will move towards each other and collide (ignoring quantum physics). If the electron and proton are now separated to twice the distance, they will approach and collide, but at a higher speed than before. When they reach the original separation they will have that kinetic energy gained plus the same potential energy as before. 

Figure 2: Top two charges start separated by a distance d. Middle two charges start separated by a distance 2d. Bottom two charges started at a distance 2d but have moved to a distance of d and are now moving with a relative speed. 

It takes time for students to connect the ideas present in Figure 1 above. Often in chemistry we exacerbate this by labeling the potential energy without specifying whether it is potential or kinetic. The middle set of charges has more energy than the top set of charges. This is difficult for students because they see the forces as being larger for the top set and have experienced the stronger attraction when playing with magnets. 

This is not as problematic with gravitational potential energy because the force of gravity is relatively constant because of the small change in distance relative to the large separation from the center of the earth. Students also have substantially more sensory experience with gravitational interactions then electric. 

Energy by definition should be linked to a force. Energy and work have circular definitions, but the mathematical origins of energy are an integral of a force over a pathway. For example, gravitational potential energy (mgh) is derived from the integration of weight (mg) for the pathway of separation between the two objects. This conflicts with the presentation of energy in science classrooms frequently. Chemical energy, sound energy, “heat” energy and many other forms of energy are not directly linked to a fundamental force. Chemical energy for example is based on electrical forces. “Heat” energy or thermal energy is based on kinetic energies of particles. 

By introducing energy in terms of conservation of these forms that do not have a direct link to a force, we obfuscate the underlying abstract definition of what energy is. This conflict allows students (and teachers) to maintain a wide variety of mental models of what energy is. The current push for developing models of energy in the NGSS is insufficient to undermine and may actually reinforce the problem. 

Figure 3: NGSS that deal with energy, taken from https://www.nextgenscience.org/topic-arrangement/4energy on 1/9/2020

In Figure 3 we see the idea of conservation as fundamental to 4-PS3-2, 4-PS3-4 and 4-ESS3-1. 4-PS3-1 shows some promise but also undercuts that potential by making this a mathematical connection instead of dealing with the conflicts discussed above. None of these set up for students to challenge the underlying struggle of unpacking why electrical energy increases as separation between charges gets larger. 

How should teachers attack this misconception?

An abstract idea is understood better when multiple concrete examples are used. A strategy that I have found helpful for this is to limit energy in education. Every scenario that is explained using energy can also be explained using force, position and motion instead. By eliminating energy from the explanation you require a concrete connection to be the impetus for understanding. This is challenging and often unique. Could you explain how digestion works without using energy in your explanation? Could you talk about how light and electrons interact without using energy? Can we differentiate a nuclear power plant and a coal one without energy? The answer to this is always yes, but it requires practice. 

Chemical Reactions 

Energy in chemical reactions can be presented in many formats. One common format is using reaction energy diagrams. A reaction energy diagram is extremely abstract. The abstraction can be reduced using simple diagrams for a reaction. With a very generic reaction energy diagram teachers can communicate simple abstract ideas to students without the student being forced to develop a concrete example. Teachers can highlight that the potential energy of the chemical system has increased as the reaction proceeds in Figure 4. 

Figure 4: A generic endothermic reaction energy diagram.

Figure 5 is an improvement because it allows students to develop the idea that transition states are unstable. This makes some intuitive sense to the student that the more common representation of a bond is stable. But in order to really advance the model for students one must address the underlying potential misconceptions. This is to be done by marking down how the forces, positions and motions all relate to one another.

Figure 5: Particle representations that show the reaction transitional state where bonds have broken but not yet reformed. 

From the initial reactant state to the transition state, B moves away from A. A and B are attracted to each other so the forces are inwards while the motion of A and B is outward. In order for A and B to move apart while forces pull them together, they have to slow down. If you are moving left, and being pulled right, your speed lessens. What we’re describing here is a transition from kinetic to potential energy. When a collision occurs that causes a large relative motion between A and B, A and B can separate. But to do so they slow down. If a small collision occurs, A and B will start to separate but will revert back to their bonded state before completing the separation. 

When C and B approach each other the force is again inwards. But now B and C are approaching each other. Their motion and their forces are aligned and so their speeds increase. As the bond forms their speeds increase and later that increase in motion could be transferred back to the surroundings through collisions (heat). Note how by analyzing this without energy the student is not going to develop the biology misconception that breaking bonds releases energy. Students often see the transition from ATP to ADP as a bond breaking that releases energy and retain this idea in chemistry and physics. When ATP turns into ADP it is not a single bond change that occurs. Here the students can logically process that the particles are going to slow down as bonds break and speed up as bonds form. Now when a reaction is endothermic they can infer that the bonds were harder to break. When a reaction is exothermic the initial bonds were easier to break and the particles sped up more than they slowed down. A video breakdown of this schematic can be found here. 

Digestion

Why do you eat food? Because it gives you energy. How does photosynthesis work? Plants turn light into energy. The questions and answers that surround digestion are filled with abstract hand waving. I am not a biology expert so if my explanations are flawed, please try and focus on the development rather than the specifics. 

When you consume food your body changes that food into smaller pieces and distributes those pieces throughout your body. Much of that food turns into a sugar called glucose. Cells use glucose by burning it. The glucose reacts with oxygen and as this happens the products of the reaction move faster than the initial speeds of the glucose and oxygen. That motion is used to push other chemicals together in a way that forms something called ATP from ADP. The ATP and ADP can be used to cause muscle contraction because the charges of the ATP and ADP cause muscle fibers to grab hold, pull on muscle fibers, release and reset. These actions results from the changes in charge distribution within the ADP and ATP that result from the reactions of the glucose changing. 

If the initial warning wasn’t sufficient, the preceding paragraph makes clear that I have a limited understanding of the cycles used as well as the chemicals involved as intermediates. But in reading this many questions that could undermine my ignorance become clear. How does the burning of glucose in cells differ from the combustion that occurs in air? When the conversion forms an unstable intermediate, how does charge distribution play a role? How does the cell distribute these unstable intermediates without a reversion to a more stable set of chemicals? What in the structure of myosin and actin leads to a binding interaction and how is that interaction disrupted? What about its structure makes ATP so effective at distributing charge that causes other molecules to move? Many of these questions have an underlying theme. Charge is being used to push or pull and motion is being used to initiate those pushes and pulls. A biochemistry expert should be able to detail how the chemicals at each stage of digestion leads to the desired result and they should be able to do so without using energy. 

Photosynthesis is very similar but light presents a new struggle. How do we describe light without using energy? Light originates when charged particles change. The exact changes are difficult to describe because charged particles are too small to observe in the same way we view macroscopic objects. We could say that when charged particles change how they move light is produced, but that is probably not completely true and not completely false either. Light originates from a charged particle (electron, nucleus, etc.) and terminates when the light causes a different charged particle to change its state. 

When light hits a chemical, the light can interact with the electrons in that chemical. The resulting changes for the electron that absorbs the light can result in new positions and motions for the electron that change the attractive forces within the molecule. This can lead to attractions being disrupted. The resulting unstable intermediates and transition states can lead to collisions where other molecules are pulled on. Photosynthesis is where light hits a chlorophyll pigment that causes changes to the electronic structure. The changes to the chlorophyll have various pathways that end up using that change to pull particles where the eventual result is combining carbon dioxide and water into sugars. Sometimes the chlorophyll can remove electrons from water molecules that then turn into protons and oxygen. The protons (H+ ions) can build up forming a charge gradient along a wall. Again the details are bit beyond my expertise level but hopefully you can begin to see how an expert would be able to replace the term energy within each of these steps with the result in terms of charge distribution, motion and position. 

Power Plants

When we say that we have an energy crisis, what do we actually mean? What specific things do we mean that we could replace the term energy with? The often mean electricity. We could also be talking about fuels or stuff that burns. 

Nearly all power plants function with the same underlying principles. You have to make a turbine spin fast. When the spinning is connected with a magnet inside a coil of wires you get electricity. The big differences in how the spinning is produced is the primary difference between electricity production. Fossil fuels (coal, oil, methane) are burned underneath a vessel filled with water. As the water turns into steam, the steam particles collide with the blades of a turbine causing it to spin. A nuclear power plant functions in the exact same manner but instead the uranium rods are inserted into the water to heat the water instead of burning fuel. Hydroelectricity uses water to push on turbine blades. Wind turbines are arranged where wind is likely to push more in one direction than another. 

Note how whenever we eliminate the word energy from explanations the details become more concrete. The uranium fuel rods provide energy that heats the water. The uranium particles in the fuel rods split into pieces that move fast. As they fly through the water they drag water particles causing the water to speed up. Fossil fuels provide energy to heat the water. Fossil fuels react with oxygen and after the reaction the products move at higher speeds. When these fast moving particles collide with the vessel containing the water the collisions tend to transfer motion to the water particles. 

Conclusions

Energy allows us a lot of mental and mathematical shortcuts in science that are valuable. Explaining and understanding quantum mechanics without energy is a burden that would exclude many from the field. But there is a cost to using energy. Using energy as an explanation results in less understanding and that cost is too great in science education. Strategies to make energy less abstract include:

1. Explain processes without using the term energy. Use force, motion and position to help guide the explanations.

2. When using energy, it should tie directly to a force (gravity, electric, magnetic, nuclear). Avoid terms like sound energy, heat energy and chemical energy.

3. When something is too complicated to explain without energy, try and split the process into fragments. What do I have at the beginning, middle and end. Can I explain any of these transitions without energy? 

4. Explanations in chemistry must address the misconception that forces and energy are interchangeable for charged particles. Large separations have small forces and high energies.5. Particle level representations can help expose incomplete details.

6. Anticipate having students that ask “How do you know that the energy changes that way?” prior to the lesson and work on answering that question.

7. Be wary of changing forms of energy. Changing forms is useful for calculation simplification but is highly disruptive to student understanding. 

8. When avoiding energy, it is critical to reduce the number of tier 2 and tier 3 vocabulary terms to avoid cognitive overload. Keep everything else simple. 

9. Biology is the hardest subject to do this in. Sometimes though the energy components do not contribute anything of value. ATP changing to ADP allows muscles to contract. Do I need to use energy in that observation? Does it enhance the understanding?

Practice is required to improve at avoiding energy in science education. When teachers feel inadequate to continue they should write down questions they have to see if there is a potential resolution. Teachers should be wary of science education techniques that organize energy into models. This often takes the abstract concept of energy and avoids the ability to make it concrete.