How do you keep a house warm in winter and cool in summer?

Exploratory recording of preconceptions on the subject of building and living

Abstract

The purpose of residential buildings is: a. protection from heat and cold in spring, summer, autumn and winter. But how do you keep such a residential building warm in winter and cool in summer? The technical measures and the complexity of the underlying heating concept should by no means be underestimated for teaching practice in technology. The assumption that there are individually shaped pre-lesson ideas on the part of the learners that do not or only partially agree with the technical perspective is therefore reasonable. The present contribution focuses on an initial exploration of pupils’ ideas in general technology lessons within the problem and action field of building and living specifically on ideas about the heating concept and the thematically related aspect of thermal insulation. Existing pre-lesson ideas of students (N = 319) in secondary level 1 are determined in the context of an exploratory study using context-specific vignettes and evaluated using qualitative content analysis.