Apprentissage des mouvements de la Terre à l'école élémentaire. D'une vision géocentrique au modèle héliocentrique
MERLE, Hélène, 1999

The first step of this research is a study of elementaty school children's mental representations of the shape of Earth, and of their interpretation of the alternation between day and night , between seasons. The second step analyses various didactic situations set up in fourth and fifth-level forms of the french elementary school system (the nine to eleven years age group). These situations are centered on the use of a mini-planetarium. The conclusions drawn from this series of experiments show that this teaching aid is essential in the conceptualisation of Earth's motions. An analysis of the difficulties experienced by these school children shows that they are due, on the one hand, to the change in the referential system, (the school children must built up the concept of the relativity of the motions), and to the change of space on the other hand (in this second instance, it is the very concept of Earth that is at stake). Model elaboration activities set up within these forms enable an important number of school children to overcome these difficulties and, by so doing, to achieve an effective conceptualization of Earth's motions.