StR’ Dr. Astrid Brinkmann, Prof. Dr. Klaus Brinkmann

EnviPro Environmental Process Engineering
Prof. Dr. Klaus Brinkmann
Leckingser Str. 149, D-58640 Iserlohn / Germany
e-mail: astrid. brinkmann@math — edu. de

One of the most effective methods to achieve a sustainable change of our momentary existing power supply system to a system mainly based on renewable energy conversion is the education of our children. For this purpose the compulsory school subject mathematics appears to be suitable. In order to promote renewable energy issues in mathematics classrooms, the authors have developed a special didactical concept to open this field for students, as well as for their teachers.

The aim of this paper is to present firstly an overview of our concept and secondly examples of problems to the special topic of solar thermal energy, developed on the basis of our concept.

1. Motivation

Especially the young generation would be more conflicted with the environmental consequences of the extensive usage of fossil fuels. The education of our children should bring up consciousness for the resulting problems. This would be one of the most effective methods to achieve a sustainable change of our momentary existing power supply system to a system mainly based on renewable energy conversion. Moreover, for our children it is indispensable to become familiar with renewable energies, because the decentralised character of this future kind of energy supply requires surely more personal effort of everyone.

In comparison to the parental education, the public schools give the possibility of a successful and especially easier controllable contribution to this theme. This can even be done advantageously for classroom teaching, as realistic and attractive contents have a particular motivating effect on students. In addition to that, a contribution to interdisciplinary teaching would be given, which is a significant educational method demanded by school curricula [1]. Regarding the fact, that not all students participate at technical orientated lessons in a comparable proportion, it seems to be especially suited to treat this topic in mathematics education for this purpose.

In addition this would be quite profitable for mathematics education itself, as "the application of mathematics in contexts which have relevance and interest is an important means of developing students’ understanding and appreciation of the subject and of those contexts” [2, para F1.4]. Such contexts might be environmental issues, that are of general interest for everyone. Hudson [3] states that "it seems quite clear that the consideration of environmental issues is desirable, necessary and also very relevant to the motivation of effective learning in the mathematics classroom”. One of the most important environmental impacts is that of energy conversion systems.

However, although mathematics curricula demand application-oriented mathematics education, this not only in Germany [4, p. 110], there is a great lack of mathematical problems suitable for school lessons [5, p.251]. Especially there is a need of mathematical problems concerning environmental issues that are strongly connected with future energy issues.[45] An added problem is, that the development of such mathematical problems affords the co-operation of experts in future energy matters with their specialist knowledge and mathematics educators with their pedagogical content knowledge. In such a co­operation the authors created several series of problems for the secondary mathematics classroom, based on a specially developed didactical concept.