Svenska gymnasieelevers uppfattningar om storlek och avstånd i universum

Sammanfattning: This study aims to investigate how students in Swedish upper secondary school conceptualize sizes and distances of some astronomical objects, such as planets and stars, as well as the students’ general knowledge of the objects themselves. The study uses a constructivist framework and explores how well the students’ conceptions match the scientific facts and definitions, and what misconceptions and alternative conceptions they hold. 96 students have answered a questionnaire adapted and translated into Swedish from the Introductory Astronomy Questionnaire (IAQ), created at the University of Cape Town and used in several previous studies. The questions include ranking questions, where the respondents rank objects according to size or distance from the Earth’s surface, as well as free text questions about the definitions of astronomical objects. In addition to this, interviews with three respondents who showed different levels of knowledge in the questionnaire have been conducted. The essential findings of this study regarding common misconceptions and alternative conceptions is in line with previous studies on the subject, but some additional details appear in the text analysis and the interview material. This includes evidence pointing to that students are ranking the ozone layer as further away from the surface of the Earth because of a misconception about the atmosphere’s height, and some cases where clich´e phrases stand in for genuine understanding in the repondents. One factor contibuting to causing these effects may be found in Swedish course materials and syllabi. Some problems with the IAQ and the methods for analysing the data in previous study are discussed. One previous study includes an attempt to quantitatively evealuate the respondents free text definitions of objects, so that comparisons can be made between studies. Due to somewhat unclear criteria and a lack of examples of the practical application of the method, the reliability of the comparsions between this study and the previous ones is questionable. The interview data indicates that the questionnaire fails to pick up on some of the knowledge that the respondents possess. In the questionnaire, very few respondents mention shape in their definitions of the object galaxy. However, all three of the interviewed students, when asked to draw a galaxy, drew a picture of a classical spiral galaxy. From the questions and insights that arose during this work, further studies might explore how Swedish course materials handle astronomy investigating some possible cases of metaphors or simplified illustrations used in ways that may strengthen or create misconceptions, rather than of counteracting them. Due to time constraints, only three interviews were conducted. Further research could carry out more interviews, using a strengthened and expanded interview guide. This could give further insights into the nature of the misconceptions and shed more light on how well the questionnaire is able to accurately reflect the respondents actual knowledge levels.