The paper discusses the mental models formed by elementary school children about the Earth, identifying five common pictures. It also looks at how these models are modified over time. The research was carried out by university-based researchers in the USA.

Learners’ ideas

• The idea that you could walk off the Earth if you travelled far enough.
• The fall from the edge of the Earth would mean you would go down and land on other planets.
• Students could develop a new model, the “flattened sphere” model. A sphere but flattened at the “top” and “bottom” where the people live.

Suggestions

Revision of some assumptions can support the development of models.

Study Structure

Aims

The purpose of the study was:

• To investigate the nature of children’s intuitive knowledge about the shape of the earth and to understand how this knowledge changes as children are exposed to the culturally accepted information that the earth is a sphere.
• Investigate the hypothesis that children develop alternative notions about the shape of the earth and find out whether these notions were well-defined and consistently used by the children.

Evidence collection

The assessment consisted of a 48-item questionnaire including 15 questions about the shape of the Earth. The questionnaire was developed through extensive pilot work and was designed to provide information about children’s knowledge of certain critical concepts in the domain of astronomy. Only the 15 questions about the shape of the earth were discussed in this paper.

The children were interviewed individually for between 30 and 45 min. The experimenter made detailed notes of the children’s responses which were also recorded using a tape recorder.

Details of the sample

A sample of 60 children:

• 20 first graders (6 years, 4 months to 7 years, 5 months)
• 20 third graders (9 years, 3 months to 10 years, 3 months)
• 20 fifth graders (10 years, 3 months to 11 years, 9 months)

The children attended an elementary school in Urbana, Illinois. They came from middle-class backgrounds. Approximately half of the children were girls and half were boys.