Primary school children 's ideas about Earth and space

Abstract

Studies conducted within various domains in science have confirmed how children hold ideas of their own about various phenomena, in many occasions contradicting the scientific view. In particular, research to identify children's ideas in astronomy has found out that certain preconceived notions are common across different countries and that there seems to be a developmental sequence of ideas, related to age. Within this perspective, this research has set out to investigate what types of ideas local school children hold, and how these ideas vary across different ages along the primary years. For this purpose, a sample of questions developed by the SPACE Project (Osborne et al., 1994) was used in the interviews conducted with the children across all primary years. Three key concepts were examined: knowledge of the Earth as a planet, knowledge of the Earth, sun, and moon systems, and day and night phenomenon. It has emerged that all the children have their own explanations for these three concepts, and these ideas tend to be refined and close to the scientific view with the elder children. On the basis of this research, suggestions are given to enable the children to develop and embrace the scientific explanations for astronomical phenomena.