Abstract:

Water and energy are interrelated but their influence on each other is rarely considered (Perrone et al., 2011). There are critical relationships between Water, Energy and Sustainability (Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, 2002).
Preliminary works of the authors (Barbot et al., (2010); Barbot et al. (2011)) led to orientating guidelines to the specific themes reported. It is important to work these relationships in a classroom environment where teacher’s mediation is a central aspect (Lopes, 2008). It was used Multimodal Narratives as an instrument of data collection (Lopes et al., 2010b).
Research Problem (RP): the need of research made in classroom to promote more comprehensive and grounded teaching and learning practices about Energy, Water and relationships between them.
Research Questions (RQ) of the study: How can these relationships between Water and Energy be approached to promote teachers interest and understanding, in a way that they can deal this subject in their own teaching practices? Which specific aspects of the used resources can be improved to promote teachers interest and understanding when studying those specific relationships?
We describe the resources, the activities and the educational outcomes of the use by the first author, in classes of an initial training course of teachers for age levels 6-12, of: (i) two experimental physical resources, about the Urban water cycle and the Desalination of sea water; (ii) a computer based simulation related to Archimedes’ law and its interpretation in terms of gravitational potential energy.
We have looked for answers with the following characteristics: (i) theoretically grounded; (ii) evidences from open code content analyses of multimodal narratives from classes of initial training teachers for the 6 - 12 year age range; (iii) requiring only common and not expensive material resources; (iv) methodologically feasible in natural classroom environments.
We present and discuss answers to the RQ and contributions to solve the RP.

References
Barbot, A., Lopes, J. B., & Soares, A. (2010). Água, Energia, Sustentabilidade e Educação Sustentada. Proceedings of the Encontro Ibérico para o Ensino da Física 2010, Vila Real, Portugal. pp. 311-312.
Barbot, A., Lopes, J. B., Soares A. A. (2011). Relating Water, Energy and Sustainability to improve Teaching and Learning in physical and environmental sciences in Teacher Education for classes of 6 – 12 age levels. Proceedings of the International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation 2011, Madrid, Spain. pp. 1254–1261.
Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, 2002. United Nations Proclamation of the Education for Sustainable Development Decade. Consulted in 20 of August, 2009 at: http://www.oei.es/decada/resonu.htm.
Lopes, J. B., Cravino, J. P., Branco, M., Saraiva, E., Silva A.A (2008). Mediation of student learning: dimensions and evidences in science teaching. PEC 2008 - Problems of Education in the 21st Century, 9(9), 42-52.
Lopes, J. B., Cravino, J.P., Silva A.A (2010). Effective Teaching for Intended Learning Outcomes in Science and Technology (Metilost). New York: Nova Science Publishers.
Perrone, D., Murphy, J., Hornberger, G. M. (2011). Gaining Perspective on the Water−Energy Nexus at the Community Scale. Environmental Science & Technology; 45, 4228-4234.

Keywords:

Water, Energy, Teacher Education, Teaching and learning physical and environmental sciences.