Particular issues arising and decisions to be made when teaching Electric Circuits

Getting the physics straight

• current is charge flow - and charge can be positive or negative
• circuits must be dealt with as systems
• remote working in electrical loops

Representing the topic effectively

• analysis in terms of loops
• a focus on remote working
• consistent and helpful conventions for drawing circuits and the elements
• the rope loop teaching model

Particular teaching challenges

• it happens inside the wires
• unhelpful models that lead children off down the wrong tracks
• there is a significant gap between pupils' physical experience and formal models
• developing a model that children can reason with (confidently)
• trying to jump to shortcut solutions
• many interlocking quantities
• a lack of belief that circuits are intelligible 
• a conclusion of ill-rooted terms

Dealing with existing ideas

• sequential reasoning about energy in circuits
• the battery is a source of charge
• current runs out
• the battery is a constant-current source
• current measures the speed of the charges
• sequential reasoning about current and voltage in circuits

Selected teaching principles

• systematic use of a teaching model
• avoidance of ad-hoc rules
• analysing circuits as systems
• circuits are intelligible; you can reason about them from simple principles
• explicit development of a model
• establishing reasoned drawing conventions