A Study on Perception Survey of Preservice Elementary Teachers on Teaching Methods in Astronomy — A Secondary Publication

Abstract

This study was conducted on 115 students from four classes of 2nd-year intensive courses at B University of Education. Preservice elementary teachers were surveyed on what teaching methods they were aware of regarding the subject of elementary science astronomy. Recognition data of 80 people from whom the questionnaire was collected were analyzed. For this study, a 5-day survey was conducted. Preservice elementary teachers complained of difficulties in teaching methods in the astronomy area of the science department. The purpose of this study was to find out what difficulties preservice elementary teachers have in teaching elementary science astronomy topics and to explore more efficient teaching methods for teaching astronomy topics. The topic of the survey was set by discussing with the preservice elementary teachers about what kind of survey to use in teaching the subject of elementary science astronomy. There are many topics for elementary science astronomy, but two questionnaires were prepared focusing on the unit on the Earth and the moon: “What does the Earth look like?” in Unit 4 (1/10) of the 3rd year, 1st semester; in Unit 2 (1/11) of the 1st semester of the 6th grade, it was set as “What does the moon look like?” The surveys candidly described how to teach the subject of astronomy to elementary school students by mobilizing all the background knowledge of preservice elementary teachers. The results of these surveys were visualized and displayed using NetMiner as a language analysis method, and the contents of the responses to the actual surveys by preservice elementary teachers were described and interpreted. Based on these results, preservice elementary teachers tried to suggest a more efficient teaching method for the subject of elementary science astronomy. In addition, basic procedures and methods for lecturing on the subject of elementary science astronomy were presented. A more efficient teaching method for teaching elementary science astronomy subjects to preservice elementary teachers was suggested.