An inservice energy education program for elementary schoolteachers

A National Science Foundation-sponsored energy education inservice project was conducted during thirty, weekly sessions for twenty-seven elementary school teachers throughout the 1979–1980 school year. Time was devoted to studying energy sources, demand for energy, and energy policy and decision making. Energy education curriculum materials were examined for each of these content areas, and an energy education unit was taught by each participant in his or her own classroom. The Energy Inventory, developed by The Biological Sciences Curriculum Study, was used with a pretest-post-test control group design to determine if the participants gained a significant amount of knowledge about energy and significantly changed their opinions about energy. Analysis of covariance indicates that significant changes in knowledge possessed and opinions held about energy were achieved during the thirty weekly sessions. Since most current energy education materials require a considerable amount of teacher knowledge about energy and modeling of good energy practices, it is assumed that teachers participating in this project will do a better job of teaching energy education materials than they might otherwise have done.