Pub Date : 2022-11-03DOI: 10.19030/jaese.v7i1.10355
Sara K. Schultz, T. Slater
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.
{"title":"Who Are The Planetarians? A Demographic Survey Of Planetarium - Based Astronomy Educators","authors":"Sara K. Schultz, T. Slater","doi":"10.19030/jaese.v7i1.10355","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.19030/jaese.v7i1.10355","url":null,"abstract":"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.","PeriodicalId":52014,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Astronomy and Earth Sciences Education","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-11-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77623322","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-01DOI: 10.19030/jaese.v9i2.10415
Ariel E. Cohen
In teaching the history of astronomy, mosaics found at ancient synagogues in the Middle East are invaluable. The ancient Zodiac signs forming such mosaics are related to the seasons indicating the fact that the precession of the Earth axis had been neglected or even unknown. We demonstrate that the sage’s derivations of the patriarch’s ages in the chronology of the Septuagint version of the bible correspond to the signs of the zodiac, an assumption supported, for example, by the inscription found in the ruins of the Jewish synagogue in Ein-Gedi. Through our astronomical calculations we solve the sun-moon conjunctions occurring at the beginning of the zodiac signs – at the Vernal Equinox - considering the real sun's orbit. Since the Septuagint version of the bible is assumed to have been translated into Greek in the 3rd century BC from an earlier existing Hebrew source, the fact that the ages of the patriarchs correspond to the observations of the real sun's motion, leads to the conclusion that the Septuagint version is an important book of the history of science. As a result of our findings, the bible can, thus, be regarded as one of the most ancient detailed scientific teaching sources leading to improved astronomical models which determined the planetary orbits.
{"title":"Teaching The Astronomical Visualization Used For The Explanation Of The Ancient Ein-Gedi Archaeological Zodiac And Its Related Inscription","authors":"Ariel E. Cohen","doi":"10.19030/jaese.v9i2.10415","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.19030/jaese.v9i2.10415","url":null,"abstract":"In teaching the history of astronomy, mosaics found at ancient synagogues in the Middle East are invaluable. The ancient Zodiac signs forming such mosaics are related to the seasons indicating the fact that the precession of the Earth axis had been neglected or even unknown. We demonstrate that the sage’s derivations of the patriarch’s ages in the chronology of the Septuagint version of the bible correspond to the signs of the zodiac, an assumption supported, for example, by the inscription found in the ruins of the Jewish synagogue in Ein-Gedi. Through our astronomical calculations we solve the sun-moon conjunctions occurring at the beginning of the zodiac signs – at the Vernal Equinox - considering the real sun's orbit. Since the Septuagint version of the bible is assumed to have been translated into Greek in the 3rd century BC from an earlier existing Hebrew source, the fact that the ages of the patriarchs correspond to the observations of the real sun's motion, leads to the conclusion that the Septuagint version is an important book of the history of science. As a result of our findings, the bible can, thus, be regarded as one of the most ancient detailed scientific teaching sources leading to improved astronomical models which determined the planetary orbits.","PeriodicalId":52014,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Astronomy and Earth Sciences Education","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85666256","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-01DOI: 10.19030/jaese.v9i1.10404
J. Trump, M. J. Lawler
Many planetariums are situated at institutions of higher learning, but there is little documentation about how these facilities are being used. We present an analysis of a survey designed to explore planetarium use in introductory astronomy courses taught to undergraduates. The survey asked about 11 learning objectives, which were chosen through an investigation of online course descriptions at 10 universities in the United States. Planetarium users answered questions about what they are teaching, how long they are teaching it, and what media they are using to teach it. We distributed the survey to approximately 289 institutions around the United States which were categorized as institutions of learning in the online Worldwide Planetariums Database. There were 85 responses to the survey with 78 providing enough information to be useful. Results show that college and university planetariums are primarily being used to teach the night sky and that planetarium users at these institutions prefer to teach through unscripted use rather than scripted shows. We discuss potential implications to content development and further research in instructional methodology.
{"title":"Planetarium Use In Introductory Astronomy Courses","authors":"J. Trump, M. J. Lawler","doi":"10.19030/jaese.v9i1.10404","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.19030/jaese.v9i1.10404","url":null,"abstract":"Many planetariums are situated at institutions of higher learning, but there is little documentation about how these facilities are being used. We present an analysis of a survey designed to explore planetarium use in introductory astronomy courses taught to undergraduates. The survey asked about 11 learning objectives, which were chosen through an investigation of online course descriptions at 10 universities in the United States. Planetarium users answered questions about what they are teaching, how long they are teaching it, and what media they are using to teach it. We distributed the survey to approximately 289 institutions around the United States which were categorized as institutions of learning in the online Worldwide Planetariums Database. There were 85 responses to the survey with 78 providing enough information to be useful. Results show that college and university planetariums are primarily being used to teach the night sky and that planetarium users at these institutions prefer to teach through unscripted use rather than scripted shows. We discuss potential implications to content development and further research in instructional methodology.","PeriodicalId":52014,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Astronomy and Earth Sciences Education","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80610056","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-11DOI: 10.19030/jaese.v9i2.10414
Jian Li
The ancient Greek astronomer Aristarchus was the first astronomer to make a reasonable estimate of the distances of the sun and moon from the earth. In his treatise, “On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and the Moon”, he proposed the “hypothesis 5” saying, "That the breadth of the shadow is two moons" in a lunar eclipse, without any argument. It may be estimated by measuring the size of the arc of Earth’s shadow (umbra) projecting on the lunar surface or other means. By studying how students interact with these concepts, we now present a new method to do the evaluation, showing that according to the time of the first contact and the third contact as well as the positions of the two contact points on lunar surface, the ratio of the breadth of Earth’s shadow to lunar diameter can be found to have a consistent value of around 2.85. The procedure can be designed to be a middle school science experiment to help students understand the motions of the Earth and Moon.
{"title":"On the Breadth of Earth’s Shadow Of Lunar Eclipse - A New Approach To Students’ Understanding Of Aristarchus’s “Hypothesis 5”","authors":"Jian Li","doi":"10.19030/jaese.v9i2.10414","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.19030/jaese.v9i2.10414","url":null,"abstract":"The ancient Greek astronomer Aristarchus was the first astronomer to make a reasonable estimate of the distances of the sun and moon from the earth. In his treatise, “On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and the Moon”, he proposed the “hypothesis 5” saying, \"That the breadth of the shadow is two moons\" in a lunar eclipse, without any argument. It may be estimated by measuring the size of the arc of Earth’s shadow (umbra) projecting on the lunar surface or other means. By studying how students interact with these concepts, we now present a new method to do the evaluation, showing that according to the time of the first contact and the third contact as well as the positions of the two contact points on lunar surface, the ratio of the breadth of Earth’s shadow to lunar diameter can be found to have a consistent value of around 2.85. The procedure can be designed to be a middle school science experiment to help students understand the motions of the Earth and Moon.","PeriodicalId":52014,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Astronomy and Earth Sciences Education","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83116186","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-12-01DOI: 10.19030/jaese.v8i2.10405
T. Slater, Richard Sanchez
Increasing the number of students interested in pursuing careers in STEM, computer science, and technology is of widespread interest to education stakeholders. Yet, despite the tremendous amount of human and fiscal resources directed at increasing the STEM, CS, and CTE career pipelines, numbers are less than satisfying. In a purposeful effort to create a more rapid onramp to high tech careers, the project team implemented a series of competitive, quadcopter drone races for students. In these races, student drone pilots race through a timed obstacle course to determine which pilots navigate the challenge in the shortest amount of time. These events that served as a focal point for motivating students to learn about drone technology, encouraging students to develop precision flight skills, and providing educators both inside and outside of formal classrooms with a foundational structure to increase the quantity and quality of technology education. Assessment of students’ and educators’ perceptions suggest that the developed program provided a low barrier to entry and engagement pathway for students to become more deeply engaged in technology.
{"title":"Evaluating K-16 Student Engagement In STEM-based Drone Racing","authors":"T. Slater, Richard Sanchez","doi":"10.19030/jaese.v8i2.10405","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.19030/jaese.v8i2.10405","url":null,"abstract":"Increasing the number of students interested in pursuing careers in STEM, computer science, and technology is of widespread interest to education stakeholders. Yet, despite the tremendous amount of human and fiscal resources directed at increasing the STEM, CS, and CTE career pipelines, numbers are less than satisfying. In a purposeful effort to create a more rapid onramp to high tech careers, the project team implemented a series of competitive, quadcopter drone races for students. In these races, student drone pilots race through a timed obstacle course to determine which pilots navigate the challenge in the shortest amount of time. These events that served as a focal point for motivating students to learn about drone technology, encouraging students to develop precision flight skills, and providing educators both inside and outside of formal classrooms with a foundational structure to increase the quantity and quality of technology education. Assessment of students’ and educators’ perceptions suggest that the developed program provided a low barrier to entry and engagement pathway for students to become more deeply engaged in technology.","PeriodicalId":52014,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Astronomy and Earth Sciences Education","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85433462","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-12-01DOI: 10.19030/jaese.v8i2.10409
T. Slater, Curtis N. Biggs, Richard L. Sanchez
While enhancing the STEM career pipeline through improved quality and quantity of STEM teaching available to an ever-widening diversity is K-12 students is garnering significant attention across the U.S., there lacks widely adopted implementation and support models that efficiently make full advantage of the vast human and fiscal resources available. A wide swath of STEM education stake-holding partners—schools, businesses, government agencies, non-profit organizations, and institutions of higher education—frequently are compelled to provide support and guidance but lack easy to follow pathways in order to do so. This research study describes and documents a unique vehicle to bring often disparate partners to a unified effort under the banner of drone education designed to improve STEM and technology-oriented career pathways. Identified barriers that the collaborative partnership helped overcome to ensure success include providing: modest start-up costs for modern high-tech equipment for participating schools (drones); an infrastructure for leveraging the consistently successful approach to providing regional and statewide competitive events (precision drone flight and knowledge competitions); large-scale buildings and facilities to host competitive festivals and events (e.g., indoor sports stadiums); and K-12 teacher professional development programs along with classroom-ready instructional materials needed to nurture and sustain student drone education programs.
{"title":"Positive Influence Of Education Partnerships For Teaching Integrated STEM Through Drone Competition","authors":"T. Slater, Curtis N. Biggs, Richard L. Sanchez","doi":"10.19030/jaese.v8i2.10409","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.19030/jaese.v8i2.10409","url":null,"abstract":"While enhancing the STEM career pipeline through improved quality and quantity of STEM teaching available to an ever-widening diversity is K-12 students is garnering significant attention across the U.S., there lacks widely adopted implementation and support models that efficiently make full advantage of the vast human and fiscal resources available. A wide swath of STEM education stake-holding partners—schools, businesses, government agencies, non-profit organizations, and institutions of higher education—frequently are compelled to provide support and guidance but lack easy to follow pathways in order to do so. This research study describes and documents a unique vehicle to bring often disparate partners to a unified effort under the banner of drone education designed to improve STEM and technology-oriented career pathways. Identified barriers that the collaborative partnership helped overcome to ensure success include providing: modest start-up costs for modern high-tech equipment for participating schools (drones); an infrastructure for leveraging the consistently successful approach to providing regional and statewide competitive events (precision drone flight and knowledge competitions); large-scale buildings and facilities to host competitive festivals and events (e.g., indoor sports stadiums); and K-12 teacher professional development programs along with classroom-ready instructional materials needed to nurture and sustain student drone education programs.","PeriodicalId":52014,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Astronomy and Earth Sciences Education","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83832190","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-12-01DOI: 10.19030/jaese.v8i2.10408
Sarah K. Guffey
An important practice of science teachers and science teacher educators is identifying standards and learning objectives before developing curriculum, instructional materials, and assessments. In the Earth sciences, determining a consensus of learning targets from the multiple national reform documents to provide direction to Earth science educators at the K-12 and post-secondary level has proven to be ambiguous. In this study, the purpose was to identify the core ideas that are taught in an introductory geology course and that students would know. Using a simple random sampling scheme, 134 geology educators, which we refer to as content experts, working at the collegiate level across the United States were surveyed to review and provide feedback on the following current national standards reform documents: 1) Next Generation Science Standards; 2) Earth Science Literacy Principles; 3) National Science Education Standards; and 4) Benchmarks for Scientific Literacy. With a 29.9% response rate, 11 core ideas of geology were identified by the geology educators. Additionally, national reform documents and the top reviewed state science standards were used to verify the 11 core ideas. The final product is a consensus document that provides the 11 core ideas proposed by a consensus of four national reform standards documents, content experts (geologists and geology educators), and the top state science standards.
{"title":"Establishing A Consensus Of Geology Concepts Using U.S. National Science Education Reform Documents","authors":"Sarah K. Guffey","doi":"10.19030/jaese.v8i2.10408","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.19030/jaese.v8i2.10408","url":null,"abstract":"An important practice of science teachers and science teacher educators is identifying standards and learning objectives before developing curriculum, instructional materials, and assessments. In the Earth sciences, determining a consensus of learning targets from the multiple national reform documents to provide direction to Earth science educators at the K-12 and post-secondary level has proven to be ambiguous. In this study, the purpose was to identify the core ideas that are taught in an introductory geology course and that students would know. Using a simple random sampling scheme, 134 geology educators, which we refer to as content experts, working at the collegiate level across the United States were surveyed to review and provide feedback on the following current national standards reform documents: 1) Next Generation Science Standards; 2) Earth Science Literacy Principles; 3) National Science Education Standards; and 4) Benchmarks for Scientific Literacy. With a 29.9% response rate, 11 core ideas of geology were identified by the geology educators. Additionally, national reform documents and the top reviewed state science standards were used to verify the 11 core ideas. The final product is a consensus document that provides the 11 core ideas proposed by a consensus of four national reform standards documents, content experts (geologists and geology educators), and the top state science standards.","PeriodicalId":52014,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Astronomy and Earth Sciences Education","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88276194","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-06-01DOI: 10.19030/jaese.v8i1.10392
T. Slater
Discipline-based science education research studies face many limitations. One is that study-participants are human beings and apt to be inconsistent in how they respond to educational interventions—even high quality and highly effective ones. The second is that researchers themselves are human and well poised to use study designs and data analysis approaches that yield the most desired results. In the end, simply having “too small a sample size” is a short-sighted limitation. It is author’s intellectually pursuing the full range of possible limitations of a study that new insights and new experimental designs can be intellectually created. The discussion of limitations should bring forth ideas and next steps pathways for researchers to follow, making articles more of a conversation and intellectual stimulation of a research trajectory rather than an abrupt ending to a study.
{"title":"EDITOR’S NOTE: Identifying An Education Research Study’s Limitations","authors":"T. Slater","doi":"10.19030/jaese.v8i1.10392","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.19030/jaese.v8i1.10392","url":null,"abstract":"Discipline-based science education research studies face many limitations. One is that study-participants are human beings and apt to be inconsistent in how they respond to educational interventions—even high quality and highly effective ones. The second is that researchers themselves are human and well poised to use study designs and data analysis approaches that yield the most desired results. In the end, simply having “too small a sample size” is a short-sighted limitation. It is author’s intellectually pursuing the full range of possible limitations of a study that new insights and new experimental designs can be intellectually created. The discussion of limitations should bring forth ideas and next steps pathways for researchers to follow, making articles more of a conversation and intellectual stimulation of a research trajectory rather than an abrupt ending to a study.","PeriodicalId":52014,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Astronomy and Earth Sciences Education","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89482651","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-06-01DOI: 10.19030/jaese.v8i1.10388
J. Lundqvist, K. Svensson, K. Ljung, Urban Eriksson, Moa Eriksson
Geological time is by many geoscience instructors considered a threshold concept for geoscience students, being a central concept for how we experience geosceince phenomena that takes place on a spatio-temporal scale ranging from micro (e.g. cloud formation) to macro (e.g. plate tectonics). If one wishes to understand geoscience phenomena that goes beyond human perception, one must move from the concrete toward the abstract—from experiencing a phenomenon with one’s senses toward an experience of the phenomenon that is based on an mind construct; we refer to such competency as disciplinary spatio-temporal competency (DSTC). The purpose of this study is to gain an understanding of how first-year students in a geoscience program in Sweden experience and represent the phenomenon of geological time, i.e. to capture their DSTC. Analyazing data from three semi-structured group interviews using a phenomenographic approach revealed how the students express geological time through their language, their gestures, and their visualizations. From the result in this study, including four qualitatively different themes, or categories of description, it is possible to conclude that the students' way of expressing geological time give rise to exciting interpretations and we believe that these expressions can provide information also about how students experience (and learn about) geological time. We report that through students’ illustrations and discussions, students experience geological time as something more than a static one-dimensional straight line. The data analysis shows that students connect geological time with spatio-temporal aspects from various geosientific phenomena, one example of such an dynamic description of geological time is “One simply fills it with more information” indicating that the students experience geological time as two-dimensional (space and time).
{"title":"A Phenomenographic Analysis Of Students’ Experience Of Geological Time","authors":"J. Lundqvist, K. Svensson, K. Ljung, Urban Eriksson, Moa Eriksson","doi":"10.19030/jaese.v8i1.10388","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.19030/jaese.v8i1.10388","url":null,"abstract":"Geological time is by many geoscience instructors considered a threshold concept for geoscience students, being a central concept for how we experience geosceince phenomena that takes place on a spatio-temporal scale ranging from micro (e.g. cloud formation) to macro (e.g. plate tectonics). If one wishes to understand geoscience phenomena that goes beyond human perception, one must move from the concrete toward the abstract—from experiencing a phenomenon with one’s senses toward an experience of the phenomenon that is based on an mind construct; we refer to such competency as disciplinary spatio-temporal competency (DSTC). The purpose of this study is to gain an understanding of how first-year students in a geoscience program in Sweden experience and represent the phenomenon of geological time, i.e. to capture their DSTC. Analyazing data from three semi-structured group interviews using a phenomenographic approach revealed how the students express geological time through their language, their gestures, and their visualizations. From the result in this study, including four qualitatively different themes, or categories of description, it is possible to conclude that the students' way of expressing geological time give rise to exciting interpretations and we believe that these expressions can provide information also about how students experience (and learn about) geological time. We report that through students’ illustrations and discussions, students experience geological time as something more than a static one-dimensional straight line. The data analysis shows that students connect geological time with spatio-temporal aspects from various geosientific phenomena, one example of such an dynamic description of geological time is “One simply fills it with more information” indicating that the students experience geological time as two-dimensional (space and time).","PeriodicalId":52014,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Astronomy and Earth Sciences Education","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86097004","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-06-01DOI: 10.19030/jaese.v8i1.10390
D. Everding, J. Keller
A mixed-methods study exploring the undergraduate planetarium learning environment was conducted during the 2019--2020 academic year at a western American university. Survey responses from university faculty, observational data using the Classroom Observation Protocol for Undergraduate STEM (COPUS), and faculty interview responses were collected and analyzed to investigate how and why collegiate undergraduates were being instructed in a planetarium environment and how this environment compared to a traditional classroom counterpart. Results suggest that planetarium use is viewed by instructors as an integrated learning experience with the classroom environment, with affective learning outcomes in the planetarium complemented by cognitive learning outcomes in the classroom. COPUS observations of planetarium instruction show broad similarity to classroom instruction; however, reductionsin active-learning behavior archetypes measured in the planetarium environment suggest a trade-off between interactive learning strategies and visually immersive content presentation. Implications concerning the collegiate planetarium environment and future work are discussed.
{"title":"Study Of Faculty Instructors In Undergraduate Classroom And Planetarium Learning Environments","authors":"D. Everding, J. Keller","doi":"10.19030/jaese.v8i1.10390","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.19030/jaese.v8i1.10390","url":null,"abstract":"A mixed-methods study exploring the undergraduate planetarium learning environment was conducted during the 2019--2020 academic year at a western American university. Survey responses from university faculty, observational data using the Classroom Observation Protocol for Undergraduate STEM (COPUS), and faculty interview responses were collected and analyzed to investigate how and why collegiate undergraduates were being instructed in a planetarium environment and how this environment compared to a traditional classroom counterpart. Results suggest that planetarium use is viewed by instructors as an integrated learning experience with the classroom environment, with affective learning outcomes in the planetarium complemented by cognitive learning outcomes in the classroom. COPUS observations of planetarium instruction show broad similarity to classroom instruction; however, reductionsin active-learning behavior archetypes measured in the planetarium environment suggest a trade-off between interactive learning strategies and visually immersive content presentation. Implications concerning the collegiate planetarium environment and future work are discussed.","PeriodicalId":52014,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Astronomy and Earth Sciences Education","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75479335","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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