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Asia-Pacific
Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 6, Issue 2, Article 1
(Dec., 2005) Shu-Chiu LIU From geocentric to heliocentric model of the universe, and the alternative perspectives
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Asia-Pacific
Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 6, Issue 2, Article 1
(Dec., 2005) Shu-Chiu LIU From geocentric to heliocentric model of the universe, and the alternative perspectives
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Introduction
It is well acknowledged that students hold various alternative conceptions prior to, during and even after formal science instruction (for an extensive literature see Duit, 2004). These conceptions are, moreover, commonly recognized as a key to students' learning processes. Many research efforts have been made to discovering the characteristics of these alternative conceptions and the mechanism of their development (Wandersee et al., 1994). Especially, the attention has been given to their structure form, such as (mental) models (Vosniadou and Brewer, 1992; Vosniadou and Brewer, 1994; Gilbert, 1998; Harrison and Treagust, 2000).
Along this research line, the author conducted a study (Liu, 2005) in Taiwan and in Germany, which was intended to reveal young students' ideas in the domain of observational astronomy and to find out whether these ideas rest upon a model. The results of the study confirmed that students make sense of the heavenly bodies, the earth and their relations based on a model of the universe, which is often different from the accepted scientific model. It is worth noting that the findings support the use of historical material for assisting students' science learning for there seems to be a common place shared by the students' alternative models and the historical ones. First of all, like the early scientists, young students make sense of the world based on their models of the universe, which yield a small scope of the questions and phenomena as opposed to the modern scientific model. Secondly, students' models of the universe frequently fall into two groups: earth-centred or sun-centred view, and seem to correspondently have a common feature with the pre-scientific models in Europe. However, the data also showed that students actually conceive of the "real" universe as infinite space and only discuss an "observable" universe where the earth and the heavenly bodies reside. Also worth-noting is that this way of inquiring into the sky is well documented in the history of Chinese astronomy: The early Chinese believed that there exists the vast cosmos which lies beyond the "researchable" world - in the Chinese term, "the heavens and the earth (
)". Thus, it is argued that historical models harbour valuable instructional implications for they share some common place with the ideas presented by today's young students.
The present paper first gives an outline of Liu's investigation on German and Taiwanese students' alternative models of the universe (for detailed information on the research design, see Liu, 2005a), and goes on to discuss the main features of the revealed models with a view of the historical ones from the cultural contexts of the two targeted countries. Based on the common features of the two conceptual domains, the conclusion is drawn in connection to science instruction by suggesting the use of historical models in the science classroom that are in line with the students' perspectives: They can be operated as intermediate models in the learning process, assisting students to move from the perspective on the surface of the earth towards beyond, and, moreover, to form a structural view of nature.
Copyright (C) 2005 HKIEd APFSLT. Volume 6, Issue 2, Article 1 (Dec., 2005). All Rights Reserved.
