Understanding the seasonal diurnal motion of the sun is difficult. Previous research has suggested that students have learned incorrect concepts and that these were not corrected even after studying. This study aims to help students comprehend the diurnal motion of the sun using a 360° panoramic video, based on the body motion, which traces the motion of the sun. In Practice 1, the effect of the embodied cognition was confirmed using the 360° panoramic video. It was observed that those students who had problems in drawing a celestial sphere model showed an improvement in their ability to do so. However, there were problems in assimilating the azimuths of sunrise and sunset. Practice 2 involved actions with a 360° panoramic video having grid lines and actions of filming and overlooking one’s body motion. The gridline class demonstrated an improvement in understanding sunrise and sunset. The filming class, however, exhibited limited efficacy. It is presumed that one of the causes of the results is the necessity of advanced cognition in order to comprehend the diurnal motion viewed from the ground based on overlooking one’s own posture.

Among science education areas at junior high school, astronomy learning is difficult because it requires learners to understand phenomena from both a ground-level perspective and a space perspective. In this study, we first developed a software to help learners understand the sun’s diurnal motion from the ground-level perspective. A practice with the software showed that it could improve the understanding of the transparent hemisphere, but it did not significantly improve the understanding of the sun’s diurnal motion. We focused on the possibility that the learners were not conscious of important phenomena such as sunrise, sunset, and culmination. Thus, in the next phase, we developed a software through which learners intentionally learn this information using gamification. As a result, the understanding of the sun’s diurnal motion in each season was significantly improved. Also, from the result of the delayed test, we confirmed the importance of understanding the ground-level perspective correctly before learning the space perspective, and that our software is effective for this purpose.

中学生の日周運動学習において，多くの生徒は地上視点の日周運動に対して強固な誤概念を抱えており，地上視点を正しく理解させた上で，地軸など宇宙視点での学習を行う必要がある．これまでの研究では，まず地上視点の学習を支援するソフトウェアで地上視点を正しく理解させた．具体的には，ゲーミフィケーションを通して地上視点の日周運動学習を支援するシューティングゲームソフトウェアを開発し，中学生を対象として教育実践を行ったところ，一定の効果が認められた．本研究では，その学習後に宇宙視点を併せた学習を促進するソフトウェアを通して効果的に天文分野を理解させることを目指した．次の段階として，地上視点の日周運動，年周運動と，宇宙視点の自転，公転を関連付けて観察できるソフトウェアを開発した．今後，中学生を対象とした実践を通してその教育効果を検証する予定である．