• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.312-323
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• 2022

This study began with the hypothesis of whether "solar radiation" and "terrestrial radiation" can be replaced by "visible radiation" and "infrared radiation", respectively. To this end, we investigated the perceptions of high school students who completed the Earth Science I course through a questionnaire to reveal how they perceived each concept. We also analyzed the descriptions and illustrations of textbooks that may have affected their perceptions. All of the students who participated in the questionnaire recognized solar radiation as radiation emitted only in the visible light region. About 35% of the students recognized convection, conduction, and latent heat as energy transfer by radiation in the Earth's heat budget. By analyzing six types of Earth Science I textbooks in the 2015 revised curriculum, we observed that two types introduced the terms "shortwave radiation" and "longwave radiation" but had no explanation for them, while the other two described solar radiation as "radiation mainly in the visible light region" or "radiation in short wavelengths". Regarding solar and terrestrial radiation in the last two types, there was no explanation for the wavelength regions, or ambiguous terms such as "short wavelength" and "long wavelength" were used. In addition, the two textbooks contained some errors in the illustration of the energy budget. Considering that textbooks described solar and terrestrial radiation without defining the exact terms for shortwave and longwave radiation, learners are likely to recognize solar and terrestrial radiation as visible and infrared radiation, respectively. This finding implies that vague statements or errors in textbooks can cause or reproduce students' misconceptions. The discussion in this study is expected to be used as a helpful reference material for teaching and learning processes regarding the Earth's radiation equilibrium and heat budget, and thereby contribute to proposing reasonable description plans for future textbook writing.