The U.S. has experienced a sharp increase in the number of bachelor astronomy degrees awarded in recent years with about twice as many degrees now being awarded than a decade ago. There were 385 astronomy bachelor's degrees awarded in the 2011-12 academic year. The number of astronomy PhDs awarded in recent years is up about 50% from a decade…

Relationships between sixth grade students' moon journaling and students' spatial-scientific reasoning after implementation of an Earth/Space unit were examined. Teachers used the project-based Realistic Explorations in Astronomical Learning curriculum. We used a regression model to analyze the relationship between the students' Lunar Phases…

"Great Explorations in Math and Science[R] (GEMS[R]) Space Science" is an instructional sequence for grades 3-5 that covers fundamental concepts, including planetary sizes and distance, the Earth's shape and movement, gravity, and moon phases and eclipses. Part of the "GEMS"[R] core curriculum, "GEMS[R] Space Science"…

In the present study, students' ideas concerning some basic astronomy concepts are investigated. One hundred and sixty-two Turkish students at different grades (from primary and secondary school levels) participated in this study. Data of the study were gathered using a test, which required participants to present their answers by both writing and…

Spotting the Moon in the sky is like finding a treasure--unexpected and beautiful. When children look for the Moon in the sky, they don't know where to look. The Moon is far away and most easily observed at a time when most young children are sleeping. Because direct contact isn't possible, adults have to be creative in how they help children…

Network for Astronomy School Education, NASE, is a project that is organizing courses for teachers throughout the entire world. The main objective of the project is to prepare secondary and primary school teachers in astronomy. Students love to know more about astronomy and teachers have the opportunity to observe the sky that every school has…

The rotational speeds of stars in the disc of a spiral galaxy are virtually independent of the distances of the stars from the centre of the galaxy. In common parlance, the stellar speed versus distance plot known as a galactic rotation curve is by observation typically nearly flat. This observation provides strong evidence that most galactic…

Previous empirical studies using multiple-choice procedures have suggested that there are misconceptions about the scale of astronomical distances. The present study provides a quantitative estimate of the nature of this misconception among US university students by asking them, in an open-ended response format, to make estimates of the distances…

This article introduces a set of distance education astronomy laboratory exercises for use by college students and instructors and discusses first usage results. This General Astronomy Education Source exercise set contains eight two-week projects designed to guide students through both core content and mathematical applications of general…

Continuing our work from a previous study (Coble et al. 2013), we examine undergraduates' ideas on the composition of the Universe as they progress through a general education astronomy integrated lecture and laboratory course with a focus on active learning. The study was conducted over five semesters at an urban minority-serving institution. The…

The increasing use of interactive learning [IL] strategies in Astro 101 classrooms has led some instructors to consider the usefulness of a textbook in such classes. These strategies provide students a learning modality very different from the traditional lecture supplemented by reading a textbook and homework and raise the question of whether the…

Studies show that it is hard to change students' attitudes toward science. This study specifically explored if media affect preservice science teachers' attitudes toward astronomy and their astronomy achievement. The sample for the pilot study consisted of 196 preservice science and mathematics teachers for attitude assessment and 230 preservice…

The topic of Newtonian gravity offers a unique vantage point from which to investigate and encourage conceptual change because it is something with which everyone has daily experience, and because it is taught in two courses that reach a wide variety of students--introductory-level college astronomy ("Astro 101") and physics ("Phys…

The importance of nonvisible wavelengths for the study of astronomy suggests that student understanding of nonvisible light is an important consideration in astronomy classrooms. Questionnaires, interviews, and panel discussions were used to investigate 6-12 student and teacher conceptions of ultraviolet (UV) and infrared (IR). Alternative…

We constructed a simple demonstration setup to simulate an extrasolar planet and its star revolving around the system's centre of mass. Periodic dimming of light from the star by the transiting planet and the star's orbital revolution simulate the two major ways of deducing the presence of an exoplanet near a distant star. Apart from being a…