Overview
 Contents
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The nature of the innovations
The first innovation studied is the introduction in 1989 into the National
Curriculum for England and Wales of the concept of energy transfer. Until
this time most syllabuses and textbooks used the concept of energy transformation.
The implication was that there should be a move away from thinking about
energy as ‘changing from one form to another’ and to think of it as staying
‘the same kind of thing’, with the focus on where it is stored and how
it goes from one place to another.
The second innovation studied was the small scale curriculum development
project ‘Energy and Change’. The aim of this material was to introduce
in the 11-16 science curriculum ideas about the causes of change. The key
idea is to pay attention to the differences that drive change (for example,
temperature differences and concentration differences). To support pupils
in understanding the ideas, an abstract picture language to represent change
was developed.
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