Superstitious Beliefs’ Influences on Teaching and Learning Astronomy

Abstract

For many decades, scientists and philosophers strived hard to bring to the world the knowledge of things beyond earth and beyond our naked eyes – space science. How interesting it is to know that our planet is not alone in this “solar system” and earth is just one of many planets that revolve around the center of the solar system, our star, the sun. The moon as our planet’s natural satellite and constant companion even has its own characteristics and motion. Thanks to the great people behind all these discoveries, people have the sources of information based on scientific evidences and facts. The fascination that we have right now maybe comparable to that of the earlier generation or even more but with lack of sophisticated instruments and gadgets, one would wonder, how exactly people of the earlier times studied astronomy or the vast night sky just to bring about what we knew today? Superstitious beliefs are beliefs that is not based on human reason and is a non-scientific knowledge, but is connected with old ideas about magic, supernatural, etc. which was held true and acceptable by the earlier generation and was passed on through their ancestors. For instance, the belief that a full moon or Friday the 13th has some negative vibes or bad omen, an eclipse may signify an upcoming deluge and many other beliefs. Surprisingly, different countries and or region have different superstitious beliefs on astronomy or space science. For example, Russian cosmonaut Sergey Prokopyev did something odd before a space flight in Kazakhstan on June 6, 2018, the bus transporting the space crew to the launch would stop, and the male crewmembers will urinate on the back-right tire of their ride. Apparently, female crewmembers splash urine from a cup onto the [1]. Another example showing superstitious beliefs in space science was that of Indian origin, ISRO Chairman K. Radhakrishnan with wife Padmini comes out of Lord Venkateswara at Tirumala in Tirupati after offering prayers for the successful launch of PSLV-C25 India's maiden mission to the Mars [2]. Lastly, the early Filipinos used the stars to determine the best conditions for fishing and seafaring. In Tawi-Tawi, the Big Dipper was more than just a constellation resembling a fish trap. The Sama people turned to this to determine whether fishing will yield bountiful results. [3]. This paper sought to understand and explain the influences of superstitious beliefs to the teaching and learning of astronomy, and suggest the superstitious beliefs about astronomy that students and teachers know and in order to address the misconceptions and or alternative conceptions brought about by superstitious beliefs in astronomy. In order to gather significant data and information this paper applied the descriptive evaluative research design and quantitative approach to investigate on the superstitious beliefs’ influences on the teaching and learning astronomy.

A researcher-made questionnaire was designed and its reliability was tested using the Cronbach’s alpha. A total of 154 respondents, composed of 43 science teachers that were purposively chosen and 111 students from different schools that were randomly selected. The questionnaire has two (2) parts, the first part is a checklist survey table and second part were an open-ended question primarily for teacher’s suggestions or plan of instruction on how to address the misconceptions on astronomy brought by superstitious beliefs. This paper revealed that both the students and teachers were very much familiar with the different superstitious beliefs about space science with an overall percentage of 74.5. However only 25.5% of the total respondents when combined, were not familiar with the given phenomena on space science that are superstitious in nature. Based on the answers of the teachers, their concept of space science was more positively influenced with an overall weighted mean of 3.27 compared to its negative counterpart with only 3.01. Teachers strongly agreed to the fact that, “Learners, although brought with them some misconceptions due to the superstitious beliefs become more eager to know and prove their prior knowledge through research and teacher interaction. (e.g seek teacher’s guidance on addressing misconceptions).” Moreover, teachers strongly agree to the fact that, “Some stories that learners were told at an early age creates misconceptions about how the universe and earth formed. (e.g. bathala).” Concepts on bathala was taught in araling panlipunan and students used this learning as valuable in natural science even though it is not based on scientific evidence. In general, the teachers were positive that they can do something to address the misconceptions in space science brought about by superstitious beliefs and create an avenue for learners to explore, be creative and informative as well as give meaningful learning experiences that are factual and based on scientific evidence. Throughout the tedious research and gathering of information, the researchers were able to find out that there were a lot of superstitious beliefs about astronomy in the Philippines but only a few study and related researches were conducted. Therefore, it is strongly recommended to explore and expand the research local to the entire Philippines, documenting how these superstitious beliefs greatly affect not only our concept of space science but also our way of living; biology, chemistry, environmental science and other branches of natural science.