College Students’ Preinstructional Ideas About Stars and Star Formation

Abstract

This study (Note 1) investigated the beliefs about stars that students hold when they enter an undergraduate introductory astronomy course for nonscience majors. Students’ preinstructional ideas were investigated through the use of several student-supplied-response (SSR) surveys, which asked students to describe their ideas about topics such as what is a star, how is starlight created, how are stars formed, are all stars the same, and more. The results from more than 2,200 responses suggest that although students often have some initial knowledge about stars, their knowledge is often incomplete or incorrect in important ways that could negatively impact instructional objectives.