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The Role Of The Planetarium In Students' Attitudes, Learning, And Thinking About Astronomical Concepts., William Raymond Thornburgh

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of the planetarium on students while learning astronomy. The main goals of this study were to evaluate changes in students’ attitudes towards astronomy, whether students learned and retained more knowledge due to planetarium-enriched instruction, and how the planetarium helped students think about astronomical concepts. The framework that guided this study was the Contextual Model of Learning (CML) (Falk & Dierking, 1992; 2000), which includes three overlapping contexts that contribute to the overall learning experience in informal science venues - the personal, physical, and sociocultural contexts. The planetarium program was successful …