To Teach Or Not To Teach Astronomy, That Is The Question: Results Of A Survey Of Québec’s Elementary Teachers

Abstract

To determine the extent of astronomy teaching in Quebec’s schools, we conducted an online survey of 500 Québec’s elementary (K-6) teachers between January and March 2015. With a 35-items questionnaire, we wanted to find out how these elementary teachers teach astronomy (or not) to their classrooms, what is their background in Science & Technology (S&T), what pre-service education they received, the reasons why they teach astronomy or not to their students, the resources and materials they have at their disposal, their perception of the effectiveness of pre- and in-service training they received, and their perceived needs for in-service training. Results show that the majority of teachers surveyed didn’t study science beyond high school and have had no experience in S&T employment before becoming a teacher. We also found that only half of the teachers surveyed actually teach astronomy to their class, mostly by using reading and writing material, and that 39% of “Astronomy teachers” in our sample teach astronomy to their class between 6 and 10 hours per year. Major hurdles to astronomy teaching perceived by the teachers in our survey are a lack of experience and training in astronomy, a lack of resources and equipment, inadequate classroom arrangement, and their own, self-perceived incompetence in astronomy. Pre-service education in astronomy, in science and in science teaching is also considered mainly unsatisfactory, or non-existent in the case of astronomy; in-service training in astronomy is mainly composed of conversations with colleagues. Most respondents thus consider in-service training in astronomy to be inefficient or inexistent.

A Logistic Regression Model Comparing Astronomy And Non-Astronomy Teachers In Québec’s Elementary Schools

“…The situation described above, based on Rowell and Ebbers (2004) and Banilower et al (2013) results, is quite similar to the situation we find in Québec's elementary schools (see Chastenay, 2018). We now hope to be able to draw a clearer picture of the state of astronomy teaching in Québec's schools by constructing a logistic regression model based on the data collected by our survey instrument, described next.…”

“…In this section, we briefly present the major results of our survey; see Chastenay (2018) for a more in-depth analysis of answers provided by elementary teachers. Our results show that the demographics of our sample is very similar to the general population of elementary school teachers in Québec (29,899 elementary teachers in 2014-2015), as described by Québec's Ministère de l'Éducation, de l'Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche [MÉESR] demographic data (MÉESR, 2015): respondents are mostly female (91%), aged around 40 years old (M = 40.2 years, SD = 8.9), and cumulating about 16 years of experience teaching at the elementary level (M = 15.6, SD = 7.9).…”

“…Since our survey sample contains an almost equal number of Astronomy (N = 244) and Non-astronomy (N = 256) teachers, it offers the opportunity to statistically compare answers from both groups to all questions in our survey, except questions 16 to 25 that were answered by Astronomy teachers only (see Chastenay, 2018). To make this comparison, we chose to build a logistic regression model that will reveal factors that are conducive or hinder the teaching of astronomy at the elementary level in Québec schools.…”

“…These surveys informed the theoretical framework as well as many practical aspects of the construction of our own survey. Then, we will present a brief description of the survey instrument used in the present study, as well as a summary of the major findings of the survey already presented in Chastenay (2018). Finally, we will describe the construction of a logistic regression model comparing Astronomy and Non-astronomy teachers and present the major results.…”

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“…Although reserachers recommended to start teaching about space at early childhood (Spektor-Levy, Kesner-Baruch, & Mevarech, 2011;Eshach, 2006) some teachers are concerned and even avoid teaching of scientific topics in general and astronomy and space issues in particular (Kallery, 2011) because the subject is abstract and difficult to understand (Chastenay, 2018). These difficulties led us to conduct the present study to explore how astronomy can be taught in early age in an effective and enjoyable way that will promote children's ability to recognize and understand abstract concepts in astronomy.…”