The most recent data on stars orbiting Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, have been used in an experiment undertaken by second-year university students to determine the distance R[theta] to the center of the galaxy. Students applied each of Kepler's 17th-century laws, in turn, to 21st-century data. The…

Aboriginal children learn a two-way pedagogy and most Aboriginal learners have to engage in bicultural and bilingual education to succeed in the dominant educational setting. Aboriginal Australians pride themselves on being Aboriginal, however Aboriginal epistemology and ontology are never considered as true methodologies within a dominant…

Offers an account of the accumulation of evidence that has led scientists to have confidence in the big bang theory of the creation of the universe. Discusses the early work of Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton, noting the rise of astrophysics, and highlighting the birth of the big bang model (the cosmic microwave background theory…

This school year begins with no planets visible in the evenings, and it will remain this way until November when Mercury returns to the evening skies. For a period of several days, starting on September 8, you can follow the waning crescent Moon in the early morning as it passes Saturn, Venus, the bright star Regulus, and Mercury. On the morning…

Common forms of testing of student understanding of science content can be misleading about their understanding of the nature of scientific thinking. Observational astronomy integrated with related ideas of force and motion is a rich context to explore the correlation between student content knowledge and student understanding of the scientific…

In the exciting, "out of this world" activity described here, students measure the Earth using meter sticks while measuring their shadows in two distant locations. To obtain the size of the Earth, students discover the connection between the measurements of the shadows and a model of the spherical Earth following the method developed by…

This article describes research on conceptions of preservice science teachers in their fourth year of undergraduate studies relating to: whether Earth is the center of the Universe; whether the sky is a literal vault or dome; whether Earth is flat or round; the timeline of the formation of the Universe; and the age of the Earth. The results, which…

This article presents the mathematics involved in finding and tracking celestial objects with an electronically controlled telescope. The essential idea in solving this problem is to choose several different coordinate systems that simplify the various motions of the earth and other celestial objects. These coordinate systems are then related by…

Increasingly widespread agreement exists that the nature of science (NOS) must be an integral element of the K-12 science curriculum with emerging consensus on what specific NOS elements should be the focus of such instruction. In this study reported, eight recent trade books written by NOS experts addressing the nature of science for the general…

In this study, prospective science teachers' misconceptions about the seasons and the phases of the Moon were determined, and then the effects of 3D computer modelling on their conceptual changes were investigated. The topics were covered in two classes with a total of 76 students using a predict-observe-explain strategy supported by 3D computer…

This study examined the reliability, factorial validity, and measurement equivalence of the Noctcaelador Inventory (NI) among three ethnic groups of college students. Participants included 200 Whites, 200 African Americans, and 200 Latino/Hispanics. The results indicated that although the African American sample scored slightly lower than the…

Research indicates that people more easily understand abstractions when they are preceded by concrete representations (Lawson 2002). This article describes how educators can use science representations to help students form lasting understandings of abstract concepts. A spectrum illustrating some commonly used representation types and their level…

This paper investigates the developing pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) of nine experienced science teachers in their first few years of teaching a new science syllabus in the Dutch secondary education system. We aimed to identify the content and structure of the PCK for a specific topic in the new syllabus, "Models of the Solar System and…

This article describes the principles and investigation of a small-group laboratory activity based on refutational modeling to teach the concept of seasons to preservice elementary teachers. The results show that these teachers improved significantly when they had to refute their initial misconceptions practically. (Contains 8 figures and 1 table.)

Professional development for astronomy instructors largely focuses on enhancing their understanding of the limitations of professor-centered lectures while also increasing awareness and better implementation of learning strategies that promote a learner-centered classroom environment. Given how difficult it is to get instructors to implement…