iStarDB (The Astronomy Education Research Repository)
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Design and development of a learning progression about stellar structure and evolution
No full text[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Astronomy Education Research.] In this paper we discuss the design and development of a learning progression (LP) to describe and interpret students’ understanding about stellar structure and evolution (SSE). The LP is built upon three content dimensions: hydrostatic equilibrium; composition and aggregation state; functioning and evolution. The data to build up the levels of the hypothetical LP (LP1) came from a 45-minute, seven-question interview, with 33 high school students previously taught about the topic. The questions were adapted from an existing multiple-choice instrument. Data were analyzed using Minstrell’s “facets” approach. To assess the validity of LP1, we designed a twelve-hour teaching module featuring paper-and-pencil tasks and practical activities to estimate the stellar structure and evolution parameters. Twenty high school students were interviewed before and after the activities using the same interview protocol. Results informed a revision of LP1 (LP2) and, in parallel, of the module. The revised module included supplementary activities corresponding to changes made to LP1. We then assessed LP2 with 30 high school students through the same interview, submitted before and after the teaching intervention. A final version of the LP (LP3) was then developed drawing on students’ emerging reasoning strategies. This paper contributes to research in science education by providing an example of the iterative development of the instruction required to support the student thinking that LPs’ levels describe. Concerning astronomy education research, our findings can inform suitable instructional activities more responsive to students’ reasoning strategies about stellar structure and evolution
Astronomy And Science Student Attitudes (ASSA): A Short Review And Validation Of A New Instrument
No full textA new survey for measuring students’ astronomy and science attitudes that has been validated for use with high school students (with a future intent to expand to middle school and university) is presented. We initially present a short review of instruments in the literature that attempt to measure attitudes in astronomy together with the difficulties encountered in measuring these by researchers in the subsequent analyses of results. To illustrate this, we present an example from an Astro101-level university course to display the problems with the current, most commonly used, astronomy attitude instrument. We then present the initial design and the Factor Analysis of a new instrument designed to address the deficiencies of this existing instrument from a sample of students in a high school-level astronomy education project. The factors identified by this instrument include: Interest in Astronomy, Interest in Science Outside of School, Practical Work in Science, Teacher’s Actions in science, Perceptions of Ability in Science, Future Aspirations in Science, Benefits of Science, and Personal Relevance of School Science, all of which possess high internal response consistency and construct validity
Epistemic belief structures within introductory astronomy
No full textThe reliability and validity of inventories should be verified in multiple ways. Although the epistemological beliefs about the physical science survey (EBAPS) has been deemed to be reliable and valid by the authors, the axes or factor structure proposed by the authors has not been independently checked. Using data from a study sample we discussed in previous publications, we performed exploratory factor analysis on 1,258 post-test EBAPS surveys. The students in the sample were from an introductory Astronomy course at a mid-sized western university. Inspection suggested the use of either a three-factor model or a five-factor model. Each of the factors is interpreted and discussed, and the factors are compared to the axes proposed by the authors of the EBAPS. We find that the five-factor model extrapolated from our data partially overlaps with the model put forth by the authors of the EBAPS, and that many of the questions did not load onto any factors
Real-time processing of the imaging data from the network of Las Cumbres Observatory Telescopes using BANZAI
No full textWork in time-domain astronomy necessitates robust, automated data processing pipelines that operate in real time. We present the BANZAI pipeline which processes the thousands of science images produced across the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope (LCOGT) network of robotic telescopes each night. BANZAI is designed to perform near real-time preview and end-of-night final processing for four types of optical CCD imagers on the three LCOGT telescope classes. It performs instrumental signature removal (bad pixel masking, bias and dark removal, flat-field correction), astrometric fitting and source catalog extraction. We discuss the design considerations for BANZAI, including testing, performance, and extensibility. BANZAI is integrated into the observatory infrastructure and fulfills two critical functions: (1) real-time data processing that delivers data to users quickly and (2) derive metrics from those data products to monitor the health of the telescope network. In the era of time-domain astronomy, to get from these observations to scientific results, we must be able to automatically reduce data with minimal human interaction, but still have insight into the data stream for quality control
Making ‘real astronomy’ visible to the public
No full textThe National Astronomical Observatory of Japan has been working to increase public familiarity with astronomy. Here we introduce our outreach activities, including the development of interactive tools that make NAOJ data visible to the public
Developing the use of visual representations to explain basic astronomy phenomena
No full textSeveral decades of research have contributed to our understanding of students’ reasoning about astronomical phenomena. Some authors have pointed out the difficulty in reading and interpreting images used in school textbooks as factors that may justify the persistence of misconceptions. However, only a few studies have investigated to what extent usual textbook images influence students’ understanding of such phenomena. This study examines this issue, exploring 13–14 year old students’ explanations, drawings, and conceptions about three familiar phenomena: change of seasons, Moon phases, and solar or lunar eclipses. The research questions that guided the study were (RQ1) how are students’ explanations and visual representations about familiar astronomical phenomena affected by different image-support conditions? (RQ2) How are students’ conceptions about familiar astronomical phenomena affected by different image-support conditions? (RQ3) Which features of the used images most affected the
students’ visual representations and explanations of familiar astronomical phenomena? To answer our research questions, we designed three instructional contexts under increasing support conditions: textbook images and text, teaching booklets with specially designed images and text, only text. To analyze students’ drawings, we used exploratory factor analysis to deconstruct drawings into their most salient elements. To analyze students’ explanations, we adopted a constant comparison method
identifying different levels of increasing knowledge. To investigate students’ conceptions, we used a mixed multiple-choice and true false baseline questionnaire. For RQ1, results show that the specially designed images condition was effective in helping students producing informed drawings in comparison to text-only condition for all phenomena, and more effective than textbook images
condition when one considers seasonal change drawings. Concerning RQ2, the specially designed images condition was the most effective for all phenomena. Concerning RQ3, prevalent elements of astronomy images that affected students’ explanations and visual representations were Earth’s elliptical orbit; the position of the Sun with respect to the Moon orbit; and Sun, Moon, and Earth alignment. Our findings confirm concerns about textbook astronomy images, whose features may interfere with the
identification of the relevant factors underlying the phenomena. Moreover, findings of this study suggest that affordances of the specially designed images may play an essential role in scaffolding meaningful understanding of the targeted phenomena. Implications for teaching through and learning from visual representations in astronomy education are briefly discussed
Factors to Consider In Making Evaluation Work for You
No full textMany projects involving robotic telescope education programs do not have published peerreview evaluations (Gomez and Fitzgerald, 2017). Most evaluations in this discipline area tend to be unreliable with questionable methodology and published in non-peer-reviewed conference proceedings or in the grey literature. It is not the case that evaluations are required to be peer-reviewed to be useful to the people running the project, but it is likely that grant funding bodies and other researchers will largely only trust peer-reviewed studies. It is also not the case that evaluations have to be public, they can be done privately for the interest of project personnel and project development alone. Either way, there are many things that need to be considered when planning a project evaluation
The Charles Sturt University Remote Telescope Project
No full textThis paper briefly documents: the history of the Charles Sturt University Remote Telescope Project, from its inception in 1994; its achievements through its impact on students and participating teachers both nationally and internationally; and, its production of research papers in an environment designed to encourage the engagement of students. Its development was based on problem solving processes at a time when both the hardware and software were lacking and teachers more generally were afraid of getting involved. Collaborative problem solving amongst hardware, software and networking engineers working with science-education specialists occurred in a cooperative environment, where the latter was driven by the desire to improve science education more broadly than just solely in the astronomical domain
Authentic Research in the Classroom for Teachers and Students
No full textWith the advent of research-grade robotic telescopes (and professional archives) coupled with the wide availability of the Internet in schools, getting high-quality data in the classroom has become much easier than ever before. Robotic telescopes (and archives) have revolutionized what is possible to accomplish in the confines of a high school classroom. Especially in the context of new science standards in the US, schools need to be moving towards more project-based learning and incorporating more authentic scientific inquiry, so demand for programs such as this is only expected to grow. This contribution highlights a few of the programs that incorporate authentic research in the classroom, via teachers and/or students. I also point out some recurring themes among these programs and suggest a funnel as a way to think about the ‘ecosystem’ of projects getting astronomical data into the hands of teachers, students, and the public
A 3D Universe? Students’ and professors’ perception of multidimensionality
No full textRecently in the astronomy education research literature, the competency to be able to extrapolate three-dimensionality in ones’ mind from 1D and 2D representations has been identified as an important factor for success in learning astronomy and understanding the Universe. However, only little research has been done in investigating this competency (Eriksson et al. 2014; Heyer et al. 2013), while at the same time there is a growing interest for what and how 3D representations can contribute to learning astronomy (Cole et al. 2018). This paper discusses the competency to extrapolate threedimensionality in one’s mind and reports on the preliminary findings from an investigation concerning students’ and professors’ perception of threedimensionality when looking at 2D representations (images and simulations) of a sample of nebulae