A study of change in students' conceptual frameworks in astronomy

Development of educational CD-ROMs in astronomy: Information on a collaborative project

“…Prior knowledge about planetary motions is, for instance, that the rotation of a planet is dependent of its distance to the Sun and also that the rotation rate has an influence on the gravitational force (Treagust and Smith, 1989). Concerning the Earth in the Universe, it was shown (Finegold and Pundak, 1990) that students had pre-scientific knowledge (flat-Earth in a fixed Universe), geocentric knowledge (Earth centered), heliocentric (Sun centered) before acquiring the sideral viewpoint (the system solar is in a larger Universe). Concerning the Big bang, the main misconception reported by Prather et al (2002) is that it consisted of an explosion of pre-existing matter (62% of middle school and 70% of high school students gave that answer).…”

Design and development of a learning progression about stellar structure and evolution

“…Most of the results emerge from more general studies about students' conceptions in astronomy. Earlier studies [17] showed that students (i) do not distinguish between stars and planet, (ii) think that the Milky Way is composed by stars that are very close each other, (iii) struggle in estimating distances between stars and Earth, and (iv) think that stars are motionless celestial objects.…”

“…However, while it may be a culturally fruitful and motivating context with the potential of increasing interest in science, research into students' understanding has been rather limited so far. The few studies in astronomy education research [15][16][17][18] show that most common misconceptions concern processes of stars' formation, the difference between stars and planets, and the distance between near stars and the Earth. Amongst these studies, only one [15] broadly deals with how different educational backgrounds affect students' knowledge about SSE.…”

Evaluating Stars Temperature Through the B-V Index Using a Virtual Real Experiment from Distance: A Case Scenario for Secondary Education.

“…Studying the literature on astronomy education we found that most studies have been focused on Earth, day/night cycle, Earth-Sun-Moon system, seasons and Moon phases [1], [2] while fewer studies were referring to stars. More specifically, the great majority of studies which are focused on stars deal with the motion, the position and the origin of stars' light [3]- [6]. Furthermore, there are very few studies to approach stars temperature in secondary (or elementary) education.…”