K-12 Teacher Understanding of Energy Conservation: Conceptual Metaphor, Dissipation, and Degradation

In K-12 educational settings, conservation of energy is typically presented in two ways: the conservation of energy principle (energy is neither created nor destroyed) and the sociopolitical need to conserve energy (we guard against energy being used up). These two meanings of conservation typically remain disconnected from each other and can appear contradictory, even after instruction. In an effort to support teachers in building robust understandings of energy from their existing knowledge, I designed a study to investigate the productive ideas in K-12 teachers' conversations about energy. A micro-analysis of discourse, gestures, and artifacts of professional development courses revealed teachers' productive ideas about three aspects of energy: conceptual metaphor, dissipation and degradation. In learning about energy, K-12 teachers come to use conceptual metaphors in their own language and value attending to students' metaphorical language as a means of formative assessment. Teachers' conversations about dissipation suggest that apparent difficulties with energy conservation may have their roots in a strong association between forms of energy (thermal) and their perceptible indicators (warmth). Teachers address this challenge by employing an exaggeration strategy to locate the dissipated thermal energy, making the energy indicator perceptible.;Finally, teachers' unprompted statements about sociopolitical aspects of energy are related to both statements from the NGSS and aspects of energy degradation. I conclude that energy conservation can be better taught and learned in K-12 Education by: 1) understanding and applying conceptual metaphors about energy in K-12 settings, 2) using prior experiences to better understand dissipative energy processes involving imperceptible thermal energy, thereby understanding how energy conservation applies in all situations, and 3) connecting productive ideas about sociopolitical aspects of energy to canonical physics.;Keywords: energy conservation, K-12 teachers, dissipation, degradation, conceptual metaphor.