How do students experience the universe? An investigation into students' conceptions about the universe beyond the solar system.

Astronomy is a 'gateway science'. It is attractive because of the many beautiful images, it is accessible because everyone can look at the night sky and it is wonderful because of the extreme phenomena, enormous distances and times. Children do come into contact with astronomy several times throughout their childhood, both inside and outside school. Despite all that contact, the literature shows that children (as well as adults) have various misconceptions about astronomy. For example, they think that the distance between the Sun and the Moon is much smaller than it really is or they think that the ellipticity of the Earth's orbit around the Sun is much too great. Many research of students' conceptions is limited to our solar system. The question now arises what ideas students have about the universe beyond our solar system. What do young children already know about the Milky Way Galaxy? Do they know that there are other galaxies beyond the Milky Way? According to the students, what are the relationships and interrelationships between astronomical objects? Where is the Earth and the solar system in their view of the universe? In this project, we'll investigate which ideas secondary school students have about the organization of the universe, how common these ideas are and we will design a learning environment in which learning about the organization of the universe is supported. To this end, we'll gather elements from research into conceptual understanding of astronomical concepts, spatial thinking and the use of 2D and 3D representations.