Background/Purpose According to constructivists, new content learning is based on learners' prior knowledge. Because this principle holds true in physical education, it is critical for physical educators to map students' understandings, described by cognitive scientists as naïve concepts or theories, embedded in their prior knowledge. At times, teachers assume students' prior knowledge is accurate and scientific. However, a mismatch between students' actual cognitive structure and teachers' assumed prior knowledge can lead to unsatisfactory results. The study's purpose was to examine elementary school students' understanding of the concept of “energy” in relation to health, fitness, and physical activity.
Method Researchers interviewed 107 students in grades 3 to 5 to examine their current understandings of this concept. The students' conceptions were gathered through semi-structured interviews using scenarios and open-ended questions. Open and axial coding identified emerging themes.
Analysis/Results Results indicated that students' conceptualizations were informed by naïve theories based primarily on their subjective feelings. Naïve theories were characterized by (a) legitimating their subjective feeling through science; (b) drawing mechanistic analogies across different scientific concepts; and (c) incorporating social discourse, such as that found in medical and commercial contexts, into their scientific conceptual schemes.
Conclusions Students' information originates from different sources and competes for legitimacy in their conceptual world. To form a consistent epistemology, elementary students appear to strategically accommodate these competing ideas and concepts within their evolving conceptual structure of science, still dominated and heavily influenced by subjective feelings.
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