Educational Research with Mobile Planetarium: Planetarium Contributions to Science Engaging

Presentation theme: educational advancements in planetariums

This project was developed with a mobile planetarium bought with the support of the brazilian national science agency (CNPq). The project includes astronomy outreachers and educators from different cities in the same state. The planetarium is traveling through the state, spending 3 months in each city. The main team is responsible for training local teams and the city outreachers and educators are responsible for running the planetarium for three months each. During the first year we also conducted a research with a small aleatory sample of the group which corresponds to about 10% of the visitors - 700 kids answered a survey from a population of 7.000 visitors. The survey was adapted from the Relevance of Science Education survey (ROSE). The data is still being collected but preliminary analysis has been performed. The survey has a Cronbach’s alpha equal to 0,9. The first results show planetarium efficiency for science engagement and its relation to gender, color or family income.

Image © Arena Berlin