2022 Volume 74 Issue 3-4 Pages 141-149
To investigate whether the students who aim to become elementary school teachers can understand the seasonal changes in the direction of sunrise using their own perception, we assessed the direction of the sunrise on the summer solstice at Ise Jingu, famous Japanese shrine in Mie Prefecture. At Ise Jingu, the sun rises from the center of the torii gate in front of Uji Bridge on the winter solstice; this phenomenon is familiar to residents of Mie Prefecture. The survey was conducted on 98 second- to fourth-year students of the Faculty of Education at Mie University. Sixty-three percent of the students understood the reasons for the seasonal change in the sunrise direction. Conversely, 14% of the respondents answered that the direction of the sunrise did not change seasonally and 11% answered that the sun rose from further south on the summer solstice than on the winter solstice. This result was similar to the survey results for junior high school students, which suggests that respondents’ understanding of solar diurnal motion and its seasonal change had not improved since they graduated from junior high school.
