Lit Review of Primary Teaching of the Earth in Space
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- Date Submitted: 04/07/2014 01:21 PM
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A Literature Review of the current practice, policy and research landscapes with a specified subject domain.
The teaching of Earth in Space in Primary Schools
The spherical Earth concept is a system of several interrelated ideas: The Earth we live on is a ball in space. Our ball-shaped Earth is surrounded by a shell of air, and beyond that is empty space in all directions. The Earth does not need to be supported because there is no absolute "down" direction in space. People live all around the Earth, and are held there by a force called "gravity." Gravity pulls everything toward the centre of the Earth, including everything on its surface and objects that fall into tunnels below Earth’s surface. None of this is self-evident to a child. Without instruction Earth appears flat, spreading infinitely sideways. The sky and space are then horizontally above the Earth. If Earth is flat then all objects that fall towards the Earth must fall in parallel lines.
The first person to write about the exploring children’s learning of Earth in space was Jean Piaget in his 1929 book ‘The Child’s Conception of the World.’ He observed that when questioned, children readily invent their own theories of the world, and that these theories go through stages as children mature. When he asked children ages 6, 7, and 8 where the Sun and Moon came from, most indicated their belief that these bodies were alive, and that they were born and grow like people and animals. Older children, ages 10 and 11, thought that the Sun and Moon arose from natural causes, while those in between revealed a mixture of both animate and natural causes. Piaget noted that some children aged 9 and 10, on having been taught that America is on the other side of a globe to where they lived, had concluded that: ‘America is like a lower story [sic] compared with Europe and that to reach America the Sun had to cross the sea by a tunnel which pierced what formed the floor of Europe and the roof of America’ (p. 296)....
The teaching of Earth in Space in Primary Schools
The spherical Earth concept is a system of several interrelated ideas: The Earth we live on is a ball in space. Our ball-shaped Earth is surrounded by a shell of air, and beyond that is empty space in all directions. The Earth does not need to be supported because there is no absolute "down" direction in space. People live all around the Earth, and are held there by a force called "gravity." Gravity pulls everything toward the centre of the Earth, including everything on its surface and objects that fall into tunnels below Earth’s surface. None of this is self-evident to a child. Without instruction Earth appears flat, spreading infinitely sideways. The sky and space are then horizontally above the Earth. If Earth is flat then all objects that fall towards the Earth must fall in parallel lines.
The first person to write about the exploring children’s learning of Earth in space was Jean Piaget in his 1929 book ‘The Child’s Conception of the World.’ He observed that when questioned, children readily invent their own theories of the world, and that these theories go through stages as children mature. When he asked children ages 6, 7, and 8 where the Sun and Moon came from, most indicated their belief that these bodies were alive, and that they were born and grow like people and animals. Older children, ages 10 and 11, thought that the Sun and Moon arose from natural causes, while those in between revealed a mixture of both animate and natural causes. Piaget noted that some children aged 9 and 10, on having been taught that America is on the other side of a globe to where they lived, had concluded that: ‘America is like a lower story [sic] compared with Europe and that to reach America the Sun had to cross the sea by a tunnel which pierced what formed the floor of Europe and the roof of America’ (p. 296)....