The State-of-the-art in Cosmology Education research

Abstract

We present the State-of-the-art in research addressing Cosmology Education, based on the analysis of theses, dissertations, articles and proceedings of events in the area. We identified and analyzed 199 documents in the consulted databases, distributed over a period of approximately 40 years. The reports were classified according to Year, Type of publication, Cosmology content, Focus of the study, and School grade addressed. The results showed that most of the investigations are concerned to High School Teaching, explaining questions about General Relativity, Gravitation and other developments related to Restricted Relativity, as well as the Origin of the Universe. The most recurring focus in the study is Content and Method, that is, research related to the teaching and learning processes of certain contents. Gaps are indicated with the intention of contributing to the development of the field.

Keywords
Cosmology; State of knowledge; Astronomy teaching; Systematization of knowledge