Challenging pre-galilean misconceptions through alternative visualizations

Résumé En

While duly Copernican, a significant part of primary school teachers-in-training fail to see the point of the (Galilean) principle of relativity. Two inquiry based teaching sequences involving the notion of reference frame were designed to challenge the students' robust pre-Galilean misconceptions, without mathematical requirements. The first sequence makes use of an artist view ("Framed Earth", by Manchu, 1989) and literary representations of the Earth as seen from a lunar point of view. The second one deals with the succession of seasons through analogical models of the Earth/Sun system. Both sequences were tested among future primary school teachers. Half the cohort was only exposed to the latter sequence while the other half experimented both. Artist representations appear to be an effective way to challenge misconceptions where direct experimentation is not available, such as in astronomy problems.