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The Earth's shape concept develops as consecutive cognitive problems (e.g., the location of people and trees on the spherical Earth) are gradually resolved. Establishing the order of problem solving may be important for the organisation of teaching situations. This study attempted to determine the sequence of problems to be resolved based on tasks included in the EARTH2 test. The study covered a group of 444 children between 5 and 10 years of age. It captured the order in which children solve cognitive problems on the way to constructing a science-like concept. The test results were compared with previous studies. The importance of cultural influences connected to significant differences (24%) in test results was emphasised. Attention was drawn to the problem of the consistency of the mental model approach highlighted in the literature. The analysis of the individual sets of answers provided a high level of consistency of indications referring to the same model (36%), emphasising the importance of the concept of mental models.

Science and technology advancement in the 21st Century requires several life skills that everyone must learn; critical thinking is one of them. Critical thinking is often defined as a process of metacognition that increases the chances of solving a problem. This research attempted to implement NASA Science as Interactive Multimedia to enhance students' critical thinking in learning Solar System. Interactive Multimedia is student-centered, allowing students to play an active role in learning to promote students' critical thinking skills. This study used a pre-experimental method with one group pretest-posttest design. The sampling used was convenience sampling, which participated in 42 7th grade students of a private school in Bandung. The Objective Test was used as a research instrument for both pretest and posttest. These test items were designed according to Facione's indicators of Critical Thinking Skills. Based on the analysis result, the value of is 0.48. According to the Wilcoxon test, the hypothesis in this research is accepted. The value of Asymp. sig. (2-tailed) is 0.00, with a sig. [alpha] = 0.05. Thus, this research shows that: There is an enhancement of students' critical thinking after using NASA Science in learning Solar System.

In this commentary, summarized from a recent interview, the author reminisces about a career dedicated to critical exploration in the classroom. She discusses the formation of the Moon Group, a group of teachers who met over a period of 25 years to study the behaviour of the moon. Duckworth later describes an exercise in which her students experimented with the positioning of a small mirror in the classroom in order to be able to predict where to place it on a wall so one student can see another in a different part of the room. In another exercise, she had university students observe the learning of children by having them solve spatial problems without any advice or prompts from an adult. She concludes by providing guidance for classroom teachers, emphasizing the importance of making sure, "what you want them to learn is worth learning about."

Flexibility, opportunities for exploration, and a focus on 21st century skills make out-of-school time (OST) programs an ideal environment for authentic learning in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM; Committee on STEM Education, 2013; Noam & Shah, 2014). In addition, because OST programs serve significant populations of young people who are underrepresented in STEM, they may be able to reduce the opportunity gap for these youth and help to enhance youth learning and engagement. This article presents one approach to the design and development of professional learning resources for OST educators as they implement a high-quality STEM curriculum. The resources were developed as a team, based on research into the STEM professional development needs of OST practitioners, and they constitute a form of self-driven professional learning. The tiered system of professional development resources developed may guide other OST STEM programs toward providing the professional learning resources OST educators need to facilitate quality instruction.

This study aims to introduce inquiry-based play activities and to examine their effectiveness on young children's conceptual understanding of the shape of the Earth and the day-night cycle. The inquiry-based play activities for preschool children were designed to support children to learn the concepts of the shape of the Earth and the day-night cycle. The activities were designed based on the Preschool Learning Cycle (Play, Explore, and Discuss). The study sample consisted of 80 children, 33 of whom are girls and 47 are boys. The children's ages ranged from 54 to 70 months. To measure children's conceptual understanding, Earth-2 (EArth Representation Test for cHildren-2) developed by Straatemeier et al. (2008) was used. Science journals were used to promote children's reflective thinking and to evaluate their learning. The results revealed that the inquiry-based play activities positively affected young children's conceptual understanding of the shape of the Earth and the day-night cycle.

Many people with strong religious beliefs in the United States struggle with trusting the pronouncements of scientists. This is primarily because they have come to believe that science offers a perspective on ultimate questions such as origins and life after death that conflicts with their own. Education and public outreach efforts by scientists can go a long way towards persuading religious believers that they can trust the results of the scientific process, especially if that outreach is led by scientists who share their beliefs. In this article, I discuss how astronomy and space science can be an ideal entry point for religious believers to understand how science works, why it can be trusted to yield true information about the world, and to engage in critical thinking about how to understand their faith in light of scientific discoveries, and vice-versa.

This research examined articles about models and modelling in the context of science education in Turkey by using content analysis method. Two specific academic databases; one of which was Dergipark, a platform including the academic journals published in Turkey, and Scholar Google were examined in detail so that totally 71 articles on models and modelling in science education were identified. The "article analysis form" developed by the researchers considering into the relevant literature was used to examine these articles. The findings were presented in tables and charts to show the frequency and percentile values regarding the articles examined. As a result, it was found that the purpose of most of the articles is to examine the effect of model/modelling-based teaching method. Concerning the discipline related in the articles, physics was seen to be on the top of the list, more specifically astronomy subject. As another result, qualitative research method appeared to be the most commonly used research method in the articles at hand. Lastly, it was found out that the most frequently examined variable was the mental model of the participants, and the most preferred data collection instrument was conceptual understanding test.

For years, the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) in New Mexico has led an outreach effort called "Mission to Mars" to engage fifth grade students in applying science and mathematics concepts related to building a colony on Mars. Many organizations across the US canceled similar events due to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. This design case details the original program and the pivot made to continue the program. We share successes--including reaching more rural learners--insights, and challenges, and how these have shaped a more inclusive vision for future programs.

At Play in the Cosmos is a game for University-level Astronomy courses. Designed as a collaboration between the Games + Learning + Society Center, an academic center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Norton & Company, Cosmos is intended to support a "game-first" model of curriculum in which students play the game before engaging in other activities. Cosmos includes about 4 hours of game play and spans the entirety of course. It includes over 25 embedded simulations that are also used for homework, lectures, and demonstrations. The design process and resulting artifact was colored by institutional constraints, specifically a lengthy pre-production that demanded extensive documentation. The subsequent development process followed a relatively linear, waterfall process and resulted in linear game. Designers attempted to mediate this linearity through a crafting system that enabled players to explore the Universe and mine celestial bodies for resources. As a game intended to compete in the market, Cosmos included a relatively high production quality led by a team experienced in AAA development processes, and the chapter focuses on the development of art styles, interfaces, and fitting voice overs in on a constrained budget and timeline.

To support the development of more robust conceptual knowledge, it is crucial to understand the alternative conceptions that students bring to the classroom, and how these can be considered and dealt with through instruction. In this study, we report the alternative conceptions of 498 students enrolled in secondary education in Ireland. A quasi-experimental design elicited student ideas about gravity, seasons, and the Big Bang. Our results show 15 alternative ideas held by students across all years, which are analysed with resource framework theory to identify conceptual resources used to explain each topic. Identification of these conceptual resources provided rich information about modes of hybrid understanding where students blended formal physics concepts with daily experiences. These results could support teachers in finding new instructional approaches to address preconceived knowledge held by students, given that even senior students held the same alternative ideas as first years.

Multidisciplinarity and the enrichment of science and mathematics education toward the so-called STEAM-approach where the A stands for art, has raised a lot of academic interest in the past decade. In this study, 5th and 6th graders from the greater Helsinki area (N = 390) participated in a several months long, Mars-colonization themed STEAM-learning intervention. Testing the students' science knowledge using pre- and post-tests, their learning outcomes were compared to those of 5th and 6th graders from a control school (N = 119), who during the same period studied STEM-subjects in a more traditional manner. The main factors that were taken into account during the comparisons were gender and academic achievement level. Based on only whether there was any improvement between the pre- and post-test scores, girls were found to have benefitted from the Mars-module more than boys did. While also considering the magnitude of the said improvement, no significant difference in the effectiveness of the learning module was found between genders. The group of academically highest-achieving students improved their test scores the most after participating in the STEAM-learning module. This is an important, somewhat surprising finding, as often informal, outside of school learning has been found to benefit especially students with lower grade point averages.

Planetary motion in physics learning is an abstract concept and requires high reasoning. This article is one of the augmented realities (AR)-based pocketbook development on the planetary motion, focusing on student learning achievement. The study used the ADDIE model : "Analysis-Design-Development-Implementation-Evaluation". In the Spring Semester 2020, researchers took these steps in producing an AR-based pocketbook on planetary motion materials. The trial carried out on 30 students (57% girls and 43% boys, with age 16-17) at a public high school in Surabaya, Indonesia. Evaluation parameters included the quality of the AR-based pocketbook, students' learning achievement, and research outputs. Data analysis techniques used descriptive statistics, N-gain score, and independent t-test. The results showed that: (1) the process of developing an AR-based pocketbook on planetary motion fulfilled the product quality criteria: validity, practicality, and effectiveness; (2) students' learning achievement increase as seen from the results of the pretest-posttest scores with the average Gain score was 0.63 in the moderate category in which the boys perform better than the girls; (3) through the development of an AR-based pocketbook, it resulted in some articles in journals and pocketbook media based on Augmented reality. Therefore, this study's recommendation is to use AR as a media for learning in other abstract physics concepts.

In this study, a bibliometric evaluation of the articles published between 1975 and 2020 in astronomy education in the Web of Science database is aimed to reveal the trend in this field and to compare the articles from Turkey with other countries. During the article search process, the keyword "astronomy" was scanned both in the title and content of the articles. A total of 284 articles were reviewed under the Education/Educational Research category. VOSviewer (V1.6.15) package program was used to create and visualize bibliometric network maps of the articles examined within the scope of the study. In the findings, it was seen that approximately four-fifths of the articles published in the field of astronomy education have been published in the last ten years. It was determined that the most effective country in which publications are made on astronomy education is the USA, and Turkey is in the second place with 25 articles. It is noteworthy that while the average number of citations per publication for all the articles examined is 14.62, the average number of citations for articles originating from Turkey is 3.56. Based on such findings, Turkey's academic publication performance in astronomy education has been tried to be revealed.

Discussion forums are important components of online courses because of the collaboration and community they foster, and the language used within the discussion forums may be influential in this development. In particular, studying the gendered language patterns of discussion forums can help gain insight into students' state of mind and propensity to form a community and thus ultimately may help explain men and women's differential success in online courses. This study describes the state of gendered language use in two online science courses. The results reveal that women and men do not differ in their language use along traditionally gendered lines, which holds promise for women in online courses. This means that the language that women use does not overtly mark them as female, which has the potential to help subvert the typical result of the negative outcomes associated with the female marker in science courses.

Even though the educational researchers have developed and implemented various educational strategies to teach the concepts of the phases of the Moon and the formation of the lunar eclipse more effectively, many studies conducted by them in recent years reveal that the teachers still do not understand the causes and scientific processes related to the phases of the Moon phases and lunar eclipse. In addition, this situation shows that there are deep problems in teaching the subjects of Moon phases and lunar eclipse to students. Examining the main causes of learning difficulties in the phases of the Moon and lunar eclipse, this study is designed on the basis of development and implementation of a project supported by STRCT (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey) in order to discuss the possible solutions. A 5-day activity program including basic astronomy education was applied to science teachers by using the model developed within the scope of the project, and the changes in mental models of the teachers in the subjects of Moon phases and lunar eclipse were examined. This research was carried out with 29 teachers voluntarily participating in the project in the field of Science. In this study in which qualitative and quantitative data collection methods were applied together, as a result of the evaluation of the obtained data, it was observed that the project was very successful in understanding the phases of the Moon and the causes of the lunar eclipse. The obtained results were interpreted by comparing them with the literature.

This study compares three pre-collegiate teacher professional learning and development (PLD) integrated science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) experiences framed in astronomy. The study is set in the western United States (USA) and involves 60 pre-collegiate teachers (in the USA these are K-12 teachers) over the course of three years (June 2014-May 2017). During the PLDs, astronomy acted as a vehicle for pre-collegiate STEM teachers to increase their STEM content knowledge as well as create and implement integrated STEM classroom lessons. The authors collected quantitative and qualitative data to address five research questions and embraced social constructionism as the theoretical framework. Findings show that STEM pre-collegiate teachers are largely engaged with integrated STEM PLD content and embrace astronomy content and authentic science. Importantly, they need time to practice, interpret, translate, and use the integrated STEM content in classroom lessons. Recommendations for PLD STEM teacher support are provided. Implications of this study are vast, as gaps in authentic science, utilizing astronomy, PLD structure, and STEM integration are ripe for exploration.

This article addresses a unique program involving international collaboration between gifted students from Israel and Croatia. The COVID-19 pandemic opened an opportunity for effective synchronous communication that enabled an unmediated connection between the participants. During the program the children researched the moon from various aspects: scientific, emotional-behavioral and artistic, via theater and creative writing. There were 35 gifted students, 20 from Israel and 15 from Croatia. Five teachers of gifted students, an educational counselor, an educational psychologist and the writers of this article participated in the program and provided the students with academic accompaniment in giftedness and creativity.

Course revision is often challenging, and instructional partnerships between Learning Assistants (LAs; peer mentors) and course instructors can be leveraged to create novel learning spaces, through an ongoing, iterative revision process coupled with an open sharing of ideas between the LA and instructor. We describe the specifics of an instructional partnership between LA and instructor in the context of an online general education course in astronomy and cosmology, focusing both on the partnership and the activities generated through the partnership.

This paper reports a mapping of the astronomy content knowledge held by a sample of 171 Chilean in-service teachers, both from primary and secondary education, using a multiple-choice test. The responses were analysed by total achievement, and the proportion of alternative conceptions for each item was identified. Moreover, the test items were divided by Big Ideas in Astronomy and curricular topics to analyse teachers' performance by subject, and the effect of some demographic factors was calculated. The results show a relatively low level of astronomy content knowledge and a considerable presence of alternative conceptions amongst Chilean in-service teachers, especially in day-to-day topics like diurnal motion, seasons, and Moon phases. Furthermore, we detected a significant effect on secondary teachers' performance depending on their teaching degree and on primary teachers' performance concerning their gender and previous participation in astronomy professional development programmes. Our outcomes offer evidence to improve astronomy teacher training, especially in the Chilean context, and contribute to the still scarce astronomy education research from the country.

In this article, I traverse Maori positionality informing Maori worldviews, alongside geohistorical navigational trajectories of knowledge. Drawing on ancestral travel which utilized sophisticated readings of stars, currents, winds, clouds, contexts and colours of the biodiversity to navigate, the concept of wayfinding as methodology and method is used to recentre matauranga Maori (Maori knowledge). Matauranga Maori accumulates in the continuum of time, past, present and future. There are many ways to capture knowledge. This article draws on 'wayfinding' through a critical analysis of matauranga Maori and its denigration through imperialism. It is argued that unless educationalists lead a collective challenge, the masculinist, materialist, secular, individualistic, extractive western colonial project will continue to inflict harmful discourses on Indigenous peoples and lands. Decolonizing western epistemologies and ontologies challenge both this ongoing damage as well as the histories of denigration by seeking to restore and re-centre Maori ways of being, knowing, doing and relating.

In 2017 the University of Utah experienced a tragedy which catalyzed already active changes in the department. In the aftermath, admissions to the graduate program was paused while new policies were developed and implemented. This article outlines this change process through the perspectives and accounts of those involved. Through in-depth interviews with students, staff, faculty, and administrators the process of change was found to be a complex path that involved robust practices of gathering input. This input was considered by a centralized group (the executive committee) advising the department chair and administrators. Findings indicated that the collective desire to reopen the program inspired most faculty to work together to find solutions, while some stakeholders did not fully buy in to large-scale programmatic changes. Further, interviews revealed the persistence of deep cultural challenges after the development and implementation of new policies. A new metaphor for this change is suggested to be a bonfire, as a tragedy sparked the fire of change structures which had already been built, and continual fuel is needed to sustain these changes. Moving forward the department is extending their graduate reform into undergraduate initiatives and normalizing evidence-based teaching practices. Content warning: This paper discusses the death by suicide of a graduate student.

Cosmology concepts encompass complex spatial and temporal relations that are counterintuitive. Cosmology findings, because of their intrinsic interest, are often reported in the public domain with enthusiasm, and students come to cosmology with a range of conceptions some aligned and some at variance with the current science. This makes cosmology concepts challenging to teach, and also challenging to evaluate students' conceptual understanding. This study builds on previous research of the authors investigating the methodological challenges for characterising students' cosmology conceptions and the reasoning underlying these. Insights from student responses in two iterations of an open-ended instrument were used to develop a concept inventory that combined cosmological conceptions with reasoning levels based on the SOLO taxonomy. This paper reports on the development and validation of the Cosmology Concept Inventory (CosmoCI) for high school. CosmoCI is a 28-item multiple-choice instrument that was implemented with grade 10 and 11 school students (n = 234) in Australia and Sweden. Using Rasch analysis in the form of a partial credit model (PCM), the paper describes a validated progression in student reasoning in cosmology across four conceptual dimensions, supporting the utility of CosmoCI as an assessment tool which can also instigate rich discussions in the science classroom.

In this study, we propose to analyse students' drawings using the Semiotic Cultural Psychological Theory (SCPT), a socio-cultural psychological model that integrates semiotics with dynamic systems theory. According to the SCPT framework, students-generated drawings can be analysed in terms of generalised meanings, i.e., implicit assumptions about the represented content. We applied SCPT to identify a set of generalised meanings about seasonal changes and to investigate whether they depend on students' grade level. We used a draw-and-explain task to collect drawings and written explanations about seasonal changes produced by 495 Italian 8th grade (N = 196) and 9th grade (N = 299) students. The analysis was based on Multiple Correspondence Analysis and Cluster Analysis. Five generalised meanings about seasonal changes were identified: (1) Climate; (2) Static Earth -- Sun; (3) Moving Earth -- Sun; (4) Rays -- Earth; and (5) Moving Earth--Orbit-- Sun. The emerging generalised meanings were significantly associated with students' written explanations and grade level. Moreover, generalised meanings were informed by the cultural conventions adopted in textbook representations about seasonal changes. Findings suggest that the SCPT framework can be productively used to analyse students-generated drawings about natural phenomena and to detect specific features of textbook representations that can impair the development of appropriate scientific knowledge.

While recent reform-based efforts have shifted the emphasis towards engaging children in science practices, little research has considered how preschool-age children take first steps towards engagement in evidence-based explanations or modelling practices nor the role museum-settings might provide. Using a theoretical perspective that science emerges through interaction as it is practiced, we analysed videos of four [approximately]30-min programs for 3-to-5-year-old children at a small children's science museum. Findings suggest that the children's explanations, which were co-constructed with the museum educator, ranged in sophistication from an implicit use of evidence to an explicit use of evidence and use of reasoning. We also found that the children used modelling practices to support their development of evidence-based explanations both as a method to generate evidence and to communicate their explanations. An important factor in how we interpreted children's explanations and modelling practices was through their use of gestures, which they often used to indicate their evidence or other elements of meaning while communicating during the investigations. Our findings provide evidence for young children's initial entry point for co-constructed, evidence-based explanations as they were produced through interactions with the educator and peers.

The present study examined demographic and academic predictors of astronomy performance among a cohort of N=1909 community college students enrolled in astronomy courses in a large suburban community college during a four-year time frame, 2015-2019. The theoretical framework was based upon a deconstructive approach for predicting community college performance, whereby students' academic pathways through higher education institutions are examined to understand their dynamic interaction with institutional integration and progress toward academic goals. Transcript data analysis was employed to elicit student demographics and longitudinal academic coursework and performance. A logistic regression model was generated to identify significant predictors of astronomy performance, which included mathematics achievement, enrollment in remedial mathematics, and enrollment in multiple astronomy courses. The results imply a greater focus on mathematics preparation and performance may mediate astronomy outcomes for community college students. Notably, demographic variables including ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender, and age were not significant predictors of astronomy performance in the multivariable model, suggesting the course is a potential gateway for diversifying science, technology, engineering, and mathematics access. Also, astronomy interest, as measured by enrollment in multiple astronomy courses, was related to performance. Further implications for practice are discussed.

This article reports on a trace-based assessment of approaches to learning used by middle school aged children who interacted with NASA Mars Mission science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) games in "Whyville," an online game environment with 8 million registered young learners. The learning objectives of two games included awareness and knowledge of NASA missions, developing knowledge and skills of measurement and scaling, applying measurement for planetary comparisons in the solar system. Trace data from 1361 interactions were analysed with nonparametric multidimensional scaling methods, which permitted visual examination and statistical validation, and provided an example and proof of concept for the multidimensional scaling approach to analysis of time-based behavioural data from a game or simulation. Differences in approach to learning were found illustrating the potential value of the methodology to curriculum and game-based learning designers as well as other creators of online STEM content for pre-college youth. The theoretical framework of the method and analysis makes use of the Epistemic Network Analysis toolkit as a post hoc data exploration platform, and the discussion centres on issues of semantic interpretation of interaction end-states and the application of evidence centred design in post hoc analysis.

This research focuses on the experiences of six undergraduate white women who are physics and astronomy majors. Specifically we conducted semistructured, empathetic interviews that reveal how uncomfortable physics environments inside and outside of the classroom, which were often propagated by male instructors and peers, excluded undergraduate women. The women give accounts of the behaviors of their male peers and instructors that influenced the physics culture. We use standpoint theory to focus on the experiences of undergraduate women to provide a holistic perspective of physics as well as identify key issues that these women faced in their undergraduate physics program. We also share the suggested strategies, provided by the undergraduate women, to implement in the future to support current and future undergraduate women in physics and astronomy. Their suggestions are divided between individual and departmental actions. Some of the departmental actions include providing mentoring for women, training sessions, and establishing a code of conduct.

Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) have been shown to provide students with a variety of learning benefits including better conceptual understanding, improved critical thinking and data literacy skills, and increased interest in pursuing scientific careers. Additionally, CUREs provide students with opportunities to participate in authentic research experiences that have a broader impact outside of the classroom. Despite the numerous benefits, the field of astronomy has lagged behind disciplines like biology and chemistry when it comes to including CUREs in the curriculum. Not limited to astronomy, however, is the lack of research opportunities and courses offered to students enrolled in undergraduate degree programs online. In the Fall of 2020, Arizona State University (ASU) introduced the nation's first online bachelor's degree program in astronomy and planetary sciences (APS). To make research accessible to a more diverse population of learners, it is imperative that students in this program have access to the same opportunities to participate in authentic research as those in the parallel in-person program. In this work, we describe the development, implementation, and assessment of a fully online CURE for astronomy majors as part of the APS program. We conducted a mixed methods analysis consisting of a Likert style survey administered pre- and postcourse as well as student interviews at the conclusion of the semester. Survey results from the course's first two offerings (N=24) indicated that students' research self-efficacy and science identity both improved. An exoplanet-specific multiple-choice assessment (N=26) showed statistically significant improvements in conceptual understanding postcourse. Additionally, student interview (N=11) responses relayed that students felt a stronger sense of belonging to both ASU and the larger astronomy community after participation in the course. The results from this study are encouraging and suggest that student participation in this online CURE led to similar improvements across a variety of outcomes previously identified in studies of in-person CUREs spanning multiple disciplines.

The aim of this research study was to explore learning, i.e., changes in the knowledge structures of three in-service science teachers for the subject of active galaxies, through group activity conducted as part of a teacher training program. Qualitative methods were used in this study consisting of creating visual representations of the teachers' knowledge structures by analyzing texts, drawings, and data obtained through observations of and interviews with the teachers. The results show that new information acquired through conversations was incorporated into the teachers' preexisting knowledge structures through elaboration and organization. In the case of a teacher with a cognitive conflict, acceptance of the new information depended on the teacher's level of satisfaction with the explanations given. The main influence factor for the modification of knowledge structures was the teachers' orientation to science teaching. These findings suggest that in-service teacher training based on group activities can effectively enhance teachers' confidence in content knowledge (CK) of recent updates in scientific research. However, some format modifications are needed to guarantee efficient learning, such as the addition of a CK representation stage and discussion items based on the preactivity knowledge structure selected through expert review.

Research in astronomy education has uncovered that many learners possess limited and fragmented understanding of stars. The corresponding misconceptions manifest in various areas such as star formation, size, the relationship between stars and planets, and their position in space and have been shown to persist across different age groups and educational settings, highlighting the need for further investigation. This paper presents the findings of an empirical study that examines secondary students' views of stars and their evolution throughout their secondary school education. We designed and evaluated an instrument for assessing students' views of stars in five domains (stars and the solar system, formation and evolution of stars, general properties and motion of stars, (sub-)stellar objects, as well as color and brightness). The instrument creation process involved several steps, including literature-based item development, an expert survey with faculty members, and a quantitative pilot study with a sample of N=390 secondary school and college students. This process led to a final version of the instrument that exhibits good psychometric properties. We used this new instrument in a cross-age study to investigate the alignment of secondary students' ideas about stars with scientific views across different stages of secondary education. The sample of this main study comprised a total of N=366 learners, including 148 lower (aged 13-14 years), 151 middle (aged 15-16 years), and 67 upper (aged 17-18 years) secondary school students. Our study findings reveal a progressive development of students' perspectives on star-related topics throughout their school education: Using analyses of variance and conducting pairwise post hoc comparisons, we observed a statistically significant increase in the proportion of responses aligning with scientific views across all aspects of stars examined in this study, as students progressed from lower secondary to upper secondary levels. We further report on widely held views of stars among our study participants that do not align with the scientific views and discuss the implications of our findings for both educational research and practice.

This paper presents the results of a confirmatory factor analysis on two self-efficacy scales designed to probe the self-efficacy of college-level introductory astronomy (Astro-101) students (n ¼ 15181) from 22 institutions across the United States of America and Canada. The students undertook a course based on similar curriculum materials, which involved students using robotic telescopes to support their learning of astronomical concepts covered in the "traditional" Astro-101 courses. Previous research by the authors using these self-efficacy scales within a pre-/post-test approach showed both high reliabilities and very high construct validities. However, the scale purporting to measure students' self-efficacy in relation to their use of the astronomical instrumentation associated with online robotic telescopes was particularly skewed and required further investigation. This current study builds on the previous work and shows how a slight adjustment of the survey items presents an improved and robust scale for measuring self-efficacy.

The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of virtual reality (VR) enhanced learning environment on the 7th-grade students' academic achievements in reading and writing in English. Within the scope of the experimental application of the research, the "planets" unit topic was selected from the 7th-grade syllabus of the 2018 Turkish English Language Teaching (ELT) curriculum for primary and secondary schools and a VR application about planets was developed for the research. In this study, a quasi-experimental research design was used. The achievement test, which was developed by the researchers before the experiment, was applied to both 15 experimental group and 11 control group students, who were volunteers and who were selected randomly in the seventh grade of a public secondary school in Izmir, Turkey. Before the study, the students in the experimental group were informed how to use VR headset and components. After a total of 3 weeks of implementation, the achievement test was applied to the students in the experimental and control groups. It is found that the experimental implementation has a positive effect on the academic achievement of the experimental group students regarding the reading and writing in English. In addition, the findings reveal that immersive VR is superior to frontal teaching by teachers and all other classical materials especially textbooks by delivering students sensory information in three dimensions. This study is based on quantitative research. For that reason, further studies based on qualitative research design can provide extra insights to get more educational evidence on the use of VR-Applications in English teaching.

The purpose of the study was to diagnose students' misconceptions of a number of basic astronomy concepts, namely, the Universe, the Sun, Comets and Constellations. The study was designed as a mixed method research and the sample was composed of a total of 110 seventh grade students. Data were collected through concept cartoons and interviews. In the concept cartoons prepared for each concept, there were four expressions, one of which is a scientific judgment, while the others were misconceptions. Students were asked to choose one of these expressions and explain why s/he thinks in that way. After the analysis of concept cartoons, semi-structured interviews were conducted with five of the students who were found to hold misconceptions. Findings of the study showed that students held several misconceptions on the concepts being studied. Students had misconceptions mostly about comets and they had limited understanding about constellations. Defining a comet as an image of a dying star falling from the sky was quite common among the students, and the number of students who defined constellations as a group of stars connected by lines among them was considerable. The findings of the study also showed that concept cartoons are functional tools for detecting misconceptions.

Teachers face many difficulties in the motivation, engagement, and improvement of learning outcomes for students in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). In this paper, we present a research study on the learning experience of a new interactive educational 3D video game called Final Frontier, designed for primary school students. This game supports student knowledge acquisition on two Solar System planets Mercury and Venus, and a satellite - Moon through direct experience, interactive challenges and fun. This article compares the learning impact of the computer game-based learning approach with a classic teacher-based learning approach. User experience with the game and game usability are also evaluated. A case study that involved 53 children was conducted for the evaluation. Among the most important findings, include the facts that the experimental group that used the game in their learning activity have performed much better than the control group and the students had a great learning experience when using the Final Frontier game.

Over the last 100 years since the planetarium was invented and began to spread across the planet, discipline-based planetarium education researchers have worked diligently to catalog what concepts are taught in the planetarium and what audiences learn when attending a planetarium show. What is not clearly known is precisely 'who' it is that are teaching astronomy in planetaria. Numerous small-scale studies give hints about who plantarians are, but the existing participant demographics provided shed precious little insight about them as broad field of professional experts. Knowing "who planetarians are" is critical to education researchers who need to know when they are studying planetarium educators who are more or less typical of most people in the field and when, instead, they are studying people who are unusual outliers and far less representative of the broader population. As a first step toward obtaining a glimpse of who planetarium educators are, a brief survey was broadly distributed through contemporary social media networks frequented by planetarium educators posing the question, "who are you?" The results from 61 respondents showed that 90% had undergraduate degrees, half of which were in physics or astronomy, and 38% hold graduate degrees. Additionally, only 8% have amateur astronomy or hobbyist backgrounds or any substantive K-12 classroom teaching experience. Perhaps unique to planetarium-based astronomy educators, 38% report having extensive backgrounds in theater and performance, These findings suggest that planetarium educators are a fundamentally different sort of individual than those who teach K-12 astronomy or do outreach as an amateur astronomer and, as such, perhaps have very different professional development requirements and expectations from those other astronomy-education related professional development consumers.

The connections between astronomy and timekeeping are longstanding. One approach to the teaching of Astronomy is it can serve as a unique platform to illustrate the advancement of science from ancient times along with the strong interrelation between science and religion. Here we chose to describe the influence of astronomical measurements that led to the determination of calendars with emphasis on the Islamic epoch: During the second century the Ethiopian Church placed the world's year of creation (YOC) at exactly 5500 years before the Incarnation, thus expressing the view that it is related to the first day of the second half of the sixth millennium since their believed to be the YOC. The Ethiopian Church also believed that the astronomical visualization of the sky in the YOC which placed the vernal equinox and the newmoon in the same day, repeated itself in the year 5500. In a previous work we showed that "Astronomical coincidence" is a notion originated from Jews who believed that the YOC, Exodus, and the building of the Temple were mystically connected by similar rare newmoon events relative to the vernal equinox. Here we show that the founders of Islam believed in a similar mystical coincidence, explicitly that the 16th of July, 622 AD,-- the epoch of the Islamic calendar--, is exactly the day in which the 6000th lunar year started after the biblical creation based on the number of solar years from creation as determined by Eusebius. We show that our astronomical calculations are in accordance with a tradition mentioned by Abu al-Fa?l and Badauni.

Many concepts in astrophysics research can be difficult for a lay individual to understand or to comprehend their importance. One such example concept is the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, which detects high-energy neutrinos at the South Pole in Antarctica. The observatory uses information from detected neutrinos originating deep in outer space to better understand astrophysical phenomena like black holes or exploding stars. Unfortunately, it is often difficult for the public to understand how these pieces fit together towards creating a more complete understanding of our universe. To promote public understanding of IceCube, an interactive exhibit was created which used large multi-touch screen and Virtual Reality (VR) equipment. The exhibit, placed in a public environment, was evaluated both formally and informally around its effectiveness of providing STEM learning opportunities. The results show that the system not only provided an effective means of conveying content, but also provided a means of sparking the curiosity of users to learn more about the presented subject matter. Further results show that outcomes demonstrated significant differences between subject responses depending upon which of the two deployed devices they used. Findings also provide evidence that retrospective survey designs have the same rigor in data collection as traditional pre-and posttest designs when investigating exhibits. Based on these findings, guidelines are offered for others who aim to deploy similar systems in publicly accessible spaces.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of astronomy activities in science education with preschool children through semi-structured interviews. The interviews were conducted with the children before and after the implementation of the activities. Five activities about astronomy were conducted for five weeks in practice. A total of 15 preschool children (seven boys and eight girls) in the age range from 60 to 72 months participated in the study. Semi-structured interviews were individually conducted, digitally recorded, transcribed, and analyzed by the researchers of the study. The related data were collected by semi-structured interviews prepared by the researchers of the study. It was revealed that the preschool children were curious about the "Discovery of the Sky" subject. They were interested and enthusiastic to learn the subject matter, and they were positively affected by the practices. It has been concluded that new concepts related to the subject of "Discovery of the Sky" have developed by using different methods and techniques.

This research aims to analyse the process of grasping the Solar System by the students during their learning activities in which we used an animation film and other educational means (geographic globe, schematic drawings, 3D model, etc.), as well as the results obtained. In order to achieve this goal, we organized an action-research within Mathematics and Environmental Exploration subject, to the first-grade class, during the lesson "The Solar System". We sought to identify the criteria based on which the teacher chooses an animated film for a lesson, the ways to effectively use it in learning activities to facilitate the learning process. An experimental group and a control group took part within this action. We conducted three tests, an initial test, a post-watching test, and a test after the formative intervention from the experimental class. During the training experiment, we observed the students' behaviour and analysed the process of teaching, learning, assessment, and the students' results. The volume of students' knowledge about the Solar System increased when the most suitable animation film was used for the given topic and the students were involved in an active learning activity in which they discussed with the teacher the plot of the film, using also other visual materials. We have come to the conclusion that a learning activity making use of animated films and being mediated by the teacher has a greater efficiency in forming representations about the structure of the Solar System and its functioning than an individual viewing of an animated film about the Solar System. The results showed that the students had accurate representations about the Solar System, improved their thinking skills, in terms of scientific understanding, knowledge-implementation, and reasoning ability. The fact that the students watched the animated film about the Solar System and were involved in an active learning activity under their teacher's guidance can explain the positive results obtained by the students of the experimental group.

Astronomy concept is regarded as one difficult topic in both teachers' and students' perspective even though it strongly appeals to the human mind. This concept requires imagination and the ability to use various skills and knowledge, for example, actual motion, relative position, and coordination of views from several points on the Earth to generate an explanation. As mentioned in the literature, the teacher plays a vital role in the teaching and learning process. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate 45 in-service science teachers' understanding of astronomy concepts in a professional development program and to diagnose the misconceptions regarding astronomy concepts. A two-tier test, open-ended questions, and a semi-structured interview were used to gather information on the understanding and misconceptions, particularly on celestial motion concepts. The data were analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. The results pointed out that after the four-day professional development program, inservice science teachers gained significantly higher two-tier test scores. The highest progression was in the topic of the Sun's apparent motion. However, most in-service science teachers still held some misconceptions relating to the concept of the seasons. The obstacles in teaching astronomy were also discussed. The study's findings lead to the improvement of the professional development program for in-service science teachers required to teach astronomy concepts nationwide.

Literature review shows that many primary school teachers have poor understanding of basic astronomy contents. Therefore, the aim of the study was to introduce specific astronomical content to in-service primary school teachers through two didactic games, to evaluate the didactic games and the teachers' knowledge and understanding before and after the implementation of the didactic games. The research included 24 in-service primary school teachers. The data were collected through the knowledge test (pre-post design) and questionnaires for each didactic game. The results showed that the teachers evaluated the didactic games as suitable for use in the classroom as they emphasized that they are educational, explicit and interesting. The implementation was identified as effective because the median for fractional gains was 0.54 and showed the medium gain in teachers' knowledge and understanding of selected astronomy contents. It was recognized that in-service primary school teachers do not feel competent for introducing complex astronomical contents to their students. However, the presented approach could encourage in-service primary school teachers to deepen their knowledge and to teach astronomy contents with a method that is closer to their students. University teachers could point out the advantages and disadvantages of didactic games in astronomy content and discuss them with pre-service primary school teachers.

The aim of this research is to investigate the effects of outdoor learning environments such as space camp on the perceptions of secondary school students about astronomy, career choices, and development of 21st century skills. Izmir space camp trip was organized in 2019. Qualitative study was conducted with secondary school 5th grade students attending the space camp (N = 24). Semi-structured interview form, focus group interview, space camp evaluation form and researcher observation notes were used as data collection tools. Data analysis was evaluated with content analysis and open coding. Students participated in the program of stars and planets adventure. In this program, the participants had the opportunity to use astronaut training simulators that give the feeling of living and working in space, to perform simulated shuttle missions, to learn new information from experts in the field and to get more detailed information about the professions. At the end of the study, it was revealed that out of school learning environments such as space camps had a positive effect on students. As a result of the study, it has been observed that the students perform their duties in a team collaboration in shuttle mission and develop their critical, questioning and thinking skills by experiencing the discussions about the subject with the experts. In addition, the misconception about Pluto was also determined.

The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City implemented a science-based curriculum pairing augmented reality (AR) with a student-designed escape room experience to support astronomy learning. AR has the potential to simplify complex systems into digestible concepts. Designing an escape room experience provided students with an exciting opportunity to apply their understanding of astronomy concepts. This paper (1) presents a background of the curriculum, our development process, and describes the student-design framework, (2) describes the design of the escape room and the activities to facilitate science learning, (3) discusses how we utilized augmented reality in the course (4) presents design issues and revelations, and (5) proposes future changes.

The aim of this research on an astronomy course is to examine the situations that arose when WhatsApp, a social media application, was used as a tool for cooperation and interaction. In this work, a case study design was adopted. The WhatsApp group created for the research was composed of 87 participants and the messages exchanged in the WhatsApp group were used as research documents. Data were analyzed through descriptive and content analysis methods. The sharing in the WhatsApp group and the topics of the messages were revealed in the content analysis. The research results showed that the students used the WhatsApp group as an interaction tool in an extracurricular environment. It was also determined that they used this platform in order to inform each other about daily events and share and discuss information.

The paper discusses a certain type of competitions based on distance interaction of a participant with simulation models of concepts from discrete mathematics and computer science. One of them is the "Construct, Test, Explore" (CTE) competition, developed by the authors, the other is the Olympiad in Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Informatics (DM&TI). The tasks presented in this paper are generally devoted to the concept of a graph isomorphism. Most of the tasks are verified automatically.