CTS Guide: Stars and Galaxies, pp 244-245- Section IV Research Summaries

Size

•  It is a common belief among elementary- grade children that stars are smaller than the Moon and located in the solar system or around the Moon (Plummer, Kocareli, and Slagle 2014). Even when provided with instruction about the actual size of stars compared with planets and the Sun, children accept the idea that there are very large stars located very far away from our solar system but still hold on to the idea that there are also very small stars inside our solar system.

Distances and Location in the Night Sky

• Agan (2004) interviewed high school and undergraduate college students to find out their ideas about distances between stars. Four out of eight high school students interviewed who had little astronomy instruction in their Earth science class and one undergraduate student out of five who received no formal astronomy instruction in high school or college described stars as being dispersed within the realm of the solar system.

• Young children’s ideas about the stars may be related to their ideas about the shape of Earth and day and night. Some younger students conceptualize a flat Earth, with the Sun above us and stars below in the daytime and the opposite at night. Even students who have a concept of a spherical Earth may still think in terms of above and below rather than being surrounded by sky (Driver et al. 1994).