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Learning progression-based design: advancing the synergetic development of energy understanding and scientific explanation

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Abstract

The “Integrated Development of Key Competences” has been identified as the core idea in education to face competition in the 21st century. Similarly, reform efforts in science education emphasize the importance of integrating scientific practices and disciplinary core ideas. The learning progression (LP) is viewed as a robust tool to facilitate this integrated development. In this study, we integrated learning progressions of energy understanding and scientific explanation into an LP-based intervention to facilitate the instructional design of a middle school energy unit. A quasi-experiment was conducted with 3 teachers and their 184 students to examine the effects of the LP-based intervention on teacher instructional actions and student learning outcomes when compared to traditional instruction. Synthesizing video analysis and pre/posttests, the following results were obtained. (1) LP-based intervention influenced the treatment group’s instructions. (2) The performance of both the treatment and comparison groups of students improved, but students in the treatment group demonstrated a better understanding of energy and were more competent in constructing scientific explanation. The article concludes by discussing implications for the future curriculum design and professional development of teachers.

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Data availability

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The first author would also like to thank Ms. Pei-Ying Chen for her help with this study and Prof. Knut Neumann, Prof. David Fortus, and Prof. Martin Schwichow for their valuable contributions to this study. An earlier version of this article was presented at the 100th Annual Meeting of American Educational Research Association (AERA) in Washington D.C., USA. We thank all the anonymous reviewers for their suggestions for improving our manuscript. The first author of this article wants to deliver his special appreciation to Ms. Yuan-Yuan Fang. Our research received support from the project: Research on the development of students’ scientific thinking from the perspective of learning progressions (BECA21112), which is a Planning Project for Young Scholars of Bei**g educational sciences.

Funding

Bei**g Educational Sciences Planning Project for Young Scholars, No. BECA21112: Research on the development of students’ scientific thinking from the perspective of learning progressions. Our study is also funded by the International Joint Research Project of Faculty of Education, Bei**g Normal University.

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  1. Department of Physics, Bei**g Normal University, Bei**g, 100875, People’s Republic of China

    Jian-**n Yao, Yi-Xuan Liu & Yu-Ying Guo

  2. Research Institute of Science Education, Bei**g Normal University, Bei**g, 100875, People’s Republic of China

    Jian-**n Yao

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Yao, JX., Liu, YX. & Guo, YY. Learning progression-based design: advancing the synergetic development of energy understanding and scientific explanation. Instr Sci 51, 397–421 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11251-023-09620-0

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