Construction of a Sophisticated Model of Energy in Pre-service Secondary School Physics Teachers

center dot In this research we have focused on analyzing the level of sophistication and the type of model of energy that pre-service secondary school physics teachers build through a teaching and learning sequence focused on modeling. In order to do this, we analyzed the written productions of pre-service secondary school physics teachers at an initial and final moment of their training in order to identify which ideas related to energy experienced greater sophistication in terms of the targeted model of energy. The results exhibit that most of the pre-service teachers build a balanced model of energy regarding the ideas of nature of energy, energy transfer and energy degradation, with a good command of these ideas. Nonetheless, difficulties are detected in the understanding of the idea of conservation of energy. These results allow us to reflect on how to overcome these difficulties in both teacher education and school energy teaching.