Analysis of Lower Secondary School Students' Understanding of the Earth's Shape

Abstract

The main purpose of this study is to clarify how lower secondary school students in Japan understand the shape of the earth by using a questionnaire to ask why the shape of the earth is spherical, but the ground looks like flat. The findings of this study are as follows: 1) less than 30% of the students had a scientifically correct understanding of the shape of the earth; and 2) the students' preconceptions, including scientific conceptions, about the shape of the earth could be classified into thirty categories.