Fani Stylianidou and Jon Ogborn
 

Abstract

It is our starting point that teachers’ interpretation of a proposed teaching sequence may result in transformations of the original didactic intentions. This report discusses two different kinds of curriculum innovations and their transformations by the teachers. One is the change from ‘transforming’ to ‘transferring’ energy which first appeared in the recommendations concerning the teaching of energy of the 1989 Science National Curriculum for England and Wales. The other is the smaller scale innovation introduced by the curriculum materials developed by the ‘Energy and Change’ project. This project aimed to provide novel ways of teaching about the nature and direction of changes and energy introducing ideas related to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. For each of these two curriculum innovations we first identified the types of actions that ensue from the didactic intentions of the innovations and then we looked for their existence, absence or transformation through teacher case studies.

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