“Can There be a Full Moon at Daytime?” Young Students Making Sense of Illustrations of the Lunar Phases

Abstract

Teaching and learning situations nowadays typically build on richly illustrated material or multimodal presentations. Under these circumstances, the transparency of images and models used for explaining various phenomena becomes central. The present study deals with 20 Swedish children, 9-12 years old, discussing an illustration meant to show the cause of the different appearances of the Moon in the sky. The students' task was to place eight numbered moon phases in the lunar orbit in the image. The illustration in question was chosen (a) because it was of a kind frequently used to explain the lunar phases and (b) because the phenomenon is known to be difficult to understand for students of all ages. The analysis leans on historical and sociocultural approaches as well as on multimodal semiotics. The results show that a majority of students were able to make sense of the most central features of the illustration but that very few spontaneously reasoned in a way that could be interpreted as the intended meaning-making of the cause of the lunar phases. The results also indicate that the simultaneous adoption of two perspectives necessary for understanding the phenomenon was a stumbling block for most of the students.

Periodicity and change: Talking about time inside the planetarium dome

“…A similar observation was made in the context of other astronomical concepts (Plummer & Maynard, 2014;Yu et al, 2015). However, considering the difficulties the public have in changing and connecting perspectives (Åberg-Bengtsson et al, 2017;Eriksson et al, 2014;Plummer & Maynard, 2014), adopting strategies that show both geocentric and allocentric points of view can be problematic. Guides need to be trained to pay special attention to the details of the interactions between both perspectives.…”

“…This coheres with research pointing to the existence of a gain in understanding in showing different perspectives when teaching about astronomical phenomena, such as the seasons (Plummer & Maynard, 2014;Yu et al, 2015). Making the connection between perspectives is challenging for students (Åberg-Bengtsson et al, 2017;Plummer & Maynard, 2014), including university students (Eriksson et al, 2014), as it requires the ability "to extrapolate from two-dimensional (2D) representations to appreciate a three-dimensional (3D) reality" (Eriksson et al, 2014, p. 413).…”

Revisión de Investigación Educativa en Astronomía en Educación Infantil y Primaria desde 2009 hasta 2019

“…One of the selected articles focuses on the lunar phases. From a sociocultural perspective, Åberg-Bengtsson et al (2017) investigate how illustrations are used (moon phases), how photos and the models they represent are handled, and what difficulties can be faced. Wells (2008) underlines that all concepts are abstract, but scientific concepts are of an even more abstract kind and learning them requires some kind of instruction.…”

”Men det åker inte upp i himlen!” Förskolebarn resonerar om vattnets kretslopp illustrerat i ett tärningsspel

“…Genom att bildmaterial tolkas på ett icke avsett sätt kan viktig information gå förlorad eller till och med leda till rena missförstånd (t.ex. Åberg-Bengtsson, Karlsson & Ottosson, 2017). Förklarande bilder i ett multimodalt sammanhang kan inte ensamma förväntas vara tillräckliga för ett adekvat meningsskapande, vilket inte heller verbal information ensam kan göra (Martens, Martens, Hassay Doyle, Loomis & Aghalarov, 2012;Martinez Peña & Gil Quilez, 2001;Åberg-Bengtsson, Beach & Ljung-Djärf, 2017).…”