Improving Astronomy Achievement and Attitude through Astronomy Summer Project: A Design, Implementation and Assessment

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of an astronomy summer project implemented in different learning activities on elementary school students, pre-service elementary teachers and in-service teachers' astronomy achievement and their attitudes to astronomy field. This study is the result of a five-day, three-stage, science school, "I Learn the Planet I Live on". The first stage involved astronomy science schools with 30 elementary school teachers, the second stage involved 30 pre-service elementary school teachers and the last stage involved 30 primary school pupils (aged 14). Within this scope, 30 elementary school teachers from different cities who volunteered to participate in the project, one seventh grade class of each of these teachers from their own schools, and 30 pre-service teachers attending elementary department of education faculties of universities in Turkey who participated in the astronomy summer project in Samsun City in 2015 make up the sample of the study. For this purpose, within the scope of a nine-day long project, the participants were presented with hands-on activities, outdoor practices, planetarium and observatory activities to enable them to view astronomy education from different views. The study was designed as one group, pre-test post-test experimental research. Astronomy attitude scale and astronomy achievement test were used as pre-test and post-test. The data obtained were evaluated using the SPSS 20.0 software package program. For the analysis of data, a parametric test, a two-way ANOVA for mixed measures, an experiment model, was used. The results of the study showed that the project was effective in increasing the participants' attitudes towards the astronomy field and their astronomy achievement. A comparison of the data from the teachers and the students produced interesting results, notably that more pupils than teachers answered certain questions correctly.