Determination of 6th grade students' perceptions of the concepts of astronomy

The purpose of the current study is to determine how the participating 6th grade secondary school students describe the concepts of astronomy in their minds and to elicit their related cognitive illustrations before and after conducting activities within the context of the unit "Our World, Moon and The Sun, Source of Our life" and to reveal their opinions about the concepts of astronomy through focus-group interviews. In the study, one of the purposive sampling methods, criterion sampling was used. The study group of the current research is comprised of 6th grade students attending a secondary school located in the Cumra province of the city of Konya in 2015-2016 school year. A total of 31 students participated in the study (19 girls and 12 boys). The study employed the phenomenological design, one of the qualitative research methods. As the data collection tools to elicit the students' opinions, drawings and focus-group interviews were used. A data collection instrument including 12 concepts related to astronomy was developed. This data collection tool was administered to the students before and after studying the unit "Our World, Moon and Sun, Source of Our Life". The participating students were asked to draw a picture to illustrate their opinions about the concepts such as world, sun, moon, star, planet, astronaut, space, universe, astronomy, astrology (pseudoscience). They were also asked to state what they wanted to express in their drawings by writing under the drawing. Nearly four months after the unit was studied, focus-group interviews were conducted with 10 students randomly selected from among the study group students. In the analysis of the data, coding scheme for a phenomenological study and content analysis were used. The data collected from the students through drawings and focus-group interviews were analyzed by classifying them with common codes and together with the excerpts from the students' statements, mind-maps were constructed by using "Inspiration 9" program. In light of the findings of the study, it was concluded that while the 6th grade students participating in the current study had missing or unscientific information about the concepts of astronomy before the application, after studying the unit, most of the students were able to express the concept of astronomy by using more scientific statements and their perceptions of these concepts became more scientific. At the end of the study, it was suggested that similar studies should be conducted with students from different grades and larger samplings.