A Framework to Understand Students' Differentiation Between Heat Energy and Temperature and its Educational Implications

The main objective of this article is to investigate whether students' understanding of heat energy and temperature forms part of a 'hard-core' (Lakatos, 1970) of epistemological beliefs and the degree to which it affects their ability to learn thermodynamics in the classroom. Results obtained based on science major freshman students (n = 99) show that even after having responded correctly in one context that approximates the kinetic view of heat energy students fall back on the caloric theory of heat in a different context. It was also found that there is little relationship between the ability to differentiate between heat energy and temperature and performance on a problem of thermodynamics. Students in this study had been exposed to the kinetic theory in the previous semester and yet some of them had no problem in consistently using the caloric theory, while others switched between the two conceptualizations. It is concluded that an epistemological belief in the caloric theory of heat forms part of the hard-core of students' framework and that the conceptual shift to the kinetic theory requires radical restructuring (Chinn & Brewer, 1993). The question we need to ask is not only what are the students' prior epistemological beliefs, but as to what are the conditions under which the hard-core could crumble. A framework that could facilitate conceptual shifts is formulated.

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