CONCEPTUAL CHANGE IN ASTRONOMY - MODELS OF THE EARTH AND OF THE DAY NIGHT CYCLE IN AMERICAN-INDIAN CHILDREN/

The purpose of the present study was to examine the models of the eart h and the day/night cycle formed by American-Indian children. Twenty-s ix Lakota/Dakota children in the first, third, and fifth grades were i nterviewed about the shape of the earth and the causes of the day/nigh t cycle. The results indicated that the children used a small range of relatively well-defined models of the earth and the day/night cycle s imilar to those constructed by Euro-American children as well as by In dian, Greek and Samoan children investigated in previous studies. All these models are similar in that they agree with the presuppositions o f a framework theory of physics that appear to constrain them. The Lak ota/Dakota children, however showed a preference for a particular synt hetic model of the earth, the hollow sphere, which comes closest to th e description of the shape of the earth provided in Lakota mythology. In addition, the younger Lakota/Dakota children used some animistic-ps ychological explanations of the day/night cycle that were absent in ou r previous samples. We may therefore conclude that while the process o f knowledge acquisition in astronomy follows a similar path in all chi ldren regardless of cultural variables, cultural cosmology influences both the specific models constructed as well as the modes of explanati on provided for astronomical phenomena.