Situational diagnosis for preservice elementary teachers on some basic astronomical phenomena

TL;DR

This study assesses preservice elementary teachers' understanding of basic astronomical phenomena to identify misconceptions and develop effective didactic tools, addressing a gap in the research on astronomy education in our country.

Contribution

It provides a situational diagnosis of preservice teachers' astronomy knowledge and introduces preliminary results for developing targeted educational tools.

Findings

Identified common misconceptions among preservice teachers.

Assessed the effectiveness of the questionnaire as a diagnostic tool.

Highlighted areas needing improved astronomy education.

Abstract

The present situation of the teaching-learning relationship in astronomy is rarely investigated in our country. This is so, even when it is widely recognized that astronomy is an integral discipline, at the crossroads of advances in physics, geology, chemistry, etc. In this project we aim at contributing with the situational diagnosis in topics of astronomy of preservice elementary teachers, and to try and develop didactic tools that better collaborate with their formal education. We work with an open written questionnaire, designed to put in evidence some of the most frequently used models on a few basic astronomical notions. We here describe the main questions included in the test, and show our first results and some conclusions after having addressed the questionnaire to a number of preservice elementary teachers.