Investigating high school students' understanding of the concept of energy

The concept of energy is fundamental to Science teaching because it allows the prediction of scientific phenomena, while at the same time fundamental issues of Physics and Chemistry rely on it, such as electricity, heat engines, atomic structure, the chemical bond etc. However, great difficulty is observed regarding students" understanding of such concepts, due to alternative perceptions, thus, making the effectiveness of learning a difficult process. The present paper aims at the detection of High school learners" different perceptions using a questionnaire and a focus group as research tools. The results indicate problems of the energy concept identification with other physics concepts. A key conclusion of this research is that students confuse the concept of energy with other concepts of physics, and despite the fact that this problem has been reported in numerous studies over the years it has remained the same over the decades.