Research about the adaptation process of Astronomy didactic material – the Diary of Sky – from the context of the Northern Hemisphere to the Southern Hemisphere
Authors: Nardi R , Fernandes TC , Lanciano N 
Published: June 2020

This paper describes one of the phases of a broader research carried out by the Science Education Research Group (SERG) from State of São Paulo (UNESP, Brazil), which has evidenced the distance between the academic production of the area of Astronomy Education and the knowledges and practices of students and teachers in Basic Education. In this text, we seek to investigate the singularities found during the stages of translation and adaptation of a specific didactic material, in the form of a school diary – Il Diario del Cielo (The Diary of the Sky) -, originally created and idealized to the reality of the Northern Hemisphere (Rome, Italy) and adapted to the reality of the tropical belt of the Southern Hemisphere (Bauru, São Paulo, Brazil), as well as discuss the potential of this material, to work with concepts of phenomena related to Astronomy, in a training program of continuing training for in-service teachers in Secondary and High School in the area of sciences. Topics such as: the visible horizon, the time of birth, climax and sunset and the Moon, the duration of the day according to the time of year and the latitude of the place of observation, equinoxes, solstices, seasons, phases of the Moon, among others, are approached from a sequence of didactic activities developed with students, in regular schools, according to the bases of Position Astronomy. Among the results found, the data obtained evidence that teachers were in favor of the proposal, approving the use of the astronomical diary, offering them moments of reflection on what they know about the contents worked, what they learned during the course and the feasibility of an incorporation of the contents discussed to their daily practice, and can be understood as viable and relevant to potentialize and enable the teaching of astronomy concepts in basic education. It also stands out, among the results, that the need to record daily the data from the active and systematic observation of the sky and the environment in a diary, besides to reveal an interdisciplinary character, involving different areas of knowledge, also points to the need to diagnose, discuss and reflect on the student's difficulties in developing the habit of daily written record as well as the teacher in managing the contrast between times of astronomical phenomena (cycle day and night, lunar cycle, seasons of the year, eclipses, among others) and those of the school, between the open spaces for the sky and the confinement of the classrooms in schools, making the task of teaching about astronomical contents more difficult. Also points out the expectations and challenges faced by the teachers in relation to the teaching of astronomical phenomena, considering the relations of similarities and spatio-temporal differences between the realities of the North and South Hemisphere contexts, as well as the initial training of teachers, compromised by the way and the quality, or even by the inexistence of the same, which leads to the incipient domain of the disciplinary and pedagogical knowledges focused on Astronomy and sometimes the feeling of incapacity and insecurity, when working with the theme in schools