• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.29-39
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• 2020

In this study, to find out the learning effects and difficulties of role play activities to learn the earth's rotation and the sun's apparent motion, the degree of concept understanding through role play activities, difficulties arising from activities collected by interview, and eye movement during activities are analyzed. 22 fifth graders participated in this study and collected and analyzed experimental behaviors, post-interviews, and eye movement data during the role play of the students. The study found that students could explain the rotation and direction of the Earth through role play activities, but it was difficult to explain the apparent motion of the sun. Since it is difficult to perceive the sun's apparent motion through role play activities, the learning effect of the earth rotation role play activity is low.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.664-678
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• 2013

This study aims to investigate gifted students' explanations for daily celestial motion from the Earth-based and heliocentric frames of reference. Eleven sixth-grade elementary school students were chosen for this study and data was collected through a questionnaire and an in-depth interview. The collected data was analyzed into celestial objects which are the Sun, the moon and the stars and analyzed based on the Earth-based and heliocentric perspectives again. As a result of the research, most gifted students were able to connect the Earth-based and heliocentric frames of reference with the Sun's daily apparent motion. However, they understood the daily apparent motion of the moon and the stars far less frequently compared to the Sun's motion and could not explain the Earth's rotation clearly. The result of the interview showed that the lack of understanding about the daily celestial motion was caused by inaccurate understanding of the Earth's rotation such as using memorized knowledge learned in school and guessing the answer.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.309-322
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• 2018

There is no doubt that science -and, therefore, science education- is central to the lives of all (NGSS, 2013). This manuscript focuses on ideas in astronomy that are at the foundation of elementary students' understanding of the discipline: the apparent motion of the sun explaining the day / night cycle on Earth. According to prior research demonstrating that neither children nor adults hold a scientific understanding of the big ideas of astronomy (NRC, 1996), understanding of concepts may base students' progress towards more advanced understanding in the domain of astronomy. We have analyzed the logic of the domain and synthesized prior research assessing children's spatial representation from an earth- and a space based perspective to develop a set of learning trajectories that describe how students' initial ideas about apparent celestial motion as they take school science can be build upon. In this study elementary students' representations were compared by their resident context including urban and rural. This study may present a first look at the use of a learning progression framework in analyzing the structure of astronomy education. We discuss how this work may eventually lead towards the development and empirical testing of how children learn to describe and explain apparent patterns of celestial motion.