소집단 역할놀이와 토의를 통한 고등학생들의 천문개념 이해

High School Students' Understanding of Astronomical Concepts Using the Role-playing and Discussion in Small Groups

The purpose of this study was to apply the instructional strategies for conceptual change prescribed by Posner et al(1982) to the astronomic content domain taught in the elementary and middle school and to analyze the characteristics of students' knowledge revealed in the test before, during and after the instruction. Also, it was to investigate the intercorrelation of cognitive levels, spatial ability and science achievement. The major findings of this study are as follows: 1. Students had a great variety of misconceptions related to the motion of the moon before the instruction, that is, the phases, the names of phases and the cause of changing phases by the moon's orbit about the earth, the moon's appearance and location at the given time, the relative positions of earth, moon and sun during a lunar eclipse, the cause that a full moon is not at the line of node once a month. In the analysis of students' responses concerning the cause of changing phases of the moon and a lunar eclipse, the results indicate that the great majority of students had rote learning rather than meaningful learning in the middle school. 2. Students' reponses during the instruction concerning the changing phases of the moon and the predictive knowledge about the motions of the earth and the moon were analyzed. 1) According to the results of the test given before and after experiment, after discussion, achievement score of the whole of subjects and groups in both preformal and formal cognitive levels appeared to increase linearly. 2) There was no statistically significant differences of achievement scores before and after experiment, after discussion between preformal group and formal group in cognitive levels. 3. Distribution of achievement scores according to the whole of subjects and groups in preformal and formal cognitive levels shows that there was a statistically significant difference between pretest and posttest. 4. Types of conceptual changes concerning the cause of changing phases of the moon that occurred from pretest to posttest were classified as accommodation, incomplete accommodation, assimilation, no change and no model. Six of the seven students starting instruction with alternative frameworks didn't sustain those alternative models throughout instruction. Five of these six students accommodated completely and the last one partially. Seventy-nine percentage of students taking instruction with fragmental models assimilated correct propositions at the end of the instruction. These results suggest that conceptual change model prescribed by Posner et al(1982) has promised the meaningful learning to students taking with fragmental models, especially in cases where students with misconception enter instruction. 5. High correlation between achievement score of simple-recall items and that of written items in pretest and posttest indicates that the higher students got the score in simple-recall items the better they also performed in written items. However, there was no statistically significant differences among cognitive levels, spatial ability and science achievement in the whole of subjects and groups according to the cognitive levels.