Teachers are continually amazed and frustrated by the long list of conceptual difficulties students have when learning concepts of physics and astronomy. In fact, Neil Comins has just released the results of a decade-long study revealing more than 1,600 inaccurate ideas that non-science major undergraduate students bring to the introductory astronomy course (Comins 2001). Comins’s list presents a worthy challenge to astronomy teachers at all levels. Few of us would be surprised to see that students’ alternative
conceptions surrounding seasons, moon phases, and gravity sit atop this exhaustive list, as they have been repeatedly documented and confirmed elsewhere (Adams & Slater 2000). Unfortunately, the degree to which teachers should allocate precious class time to helping students overcome their reasoning difficulties about these topics is the subject of some debate (Pasachoff 2001; Pasachoff 2002). One side of the debate suggests that students should be exposed to more contemporary topics in astronomy rather than devoting the time required to fully teach basic concepts. In contrast, the other side suggests that it is more important for students and teachers to expend the time and mental effort needed to fully understand the most basic of topics. What is clear from both perspectives is that significant instructional time and targeted instructional strategies are required for students to develop a meaningful and deep understanding of complex ideas. We do not attempt to join this important debate here; rather, this article reports on some preliminary findings showing that, just as with basic topics such as moon phases and seasons, students also have alternative and pre-existing conceptions regarding the modern topic of cosmology.
A constructivist approach to instruction requires that teachers be aware of and design instruction around the pre-existing ideas their students bring into the classroom (Prather & Harrington 2001; Slater, Carpenter, & Safko 1996). In an effort to develop curriculum supplements from this perspective, we administered a survey to 177 introductory astronomy, non-science major university students prior to collegiate instruction on cosmology. Our survey directly asked students if they had heard of the Big Bang and, if so, to please describe it. These surveys were then analyzed inductively by organizing responses into themes, often called phenomenological categories, and looking for patterns in student responses. These results are summarized in Table 1.