The knowledge held by experts can be compared with that of novices, the differences being scrutinized for guidance as to how novices, as students, may be taught; and novices, as teachers, may acquire the knowledge and skill that they require to become effective practitioners. Focusing on science, Bransford et al. (2000) summarize what we know about experts’ knowledge, including the features and patterns which experts notice, but novices do not; the deeper organization and flexibility of expertise, and how its applicability seems to be part of the learning and progressive understanding which some individuals acquire as they become more expert. Bransford et al. reason that students need to develop the ability to teach themselves as part of that successful transition. The research described here relates to astronomy knowledge and scientific reasoning where a longitudinal developmental study, conducted by the authors over nearly two decades, is being extended to investigate the ideas held by senior school pupils, university students, pre-service and practising teachers, astronomers (both professional and amateur) and physicists, looking at their linguistic and schematic perceptions, their conceptions and theorising about everyday (and every-night) phenomena concerning the shape and motion of the Earth, Sun, and Moon, day/night, seasons, eclipses, gravity, and so forth. Previous research by the authors used Piagetian interviews with individual children and adults across a wide age range, incorporating qualitative and quantitative analysis (also with ordinal scales for the main conceptual categories apparent in individuals’ thinking) - see Bryce and Blown, 2006; 2007 and Blown and Bryce, 2006; 2010. The last of these reports analysed the extent of the coherence of people’s ideas when their interview content is compared with their drawings and play-dough model representations. It was published in the International Journal of Science Education (as for the other reports), being developed from a paper presented at ECER2009 in Vienna. The presentation for 2010, in addition to giving a brief overview of the new research with adults, will concentrate on the differences becoming apparent in the survey findings concerning expertise in the two cultures which have been the focus of this work – China and New Zealand, countries with strong, but different, astronomical traditions. The presentation will also explore the sources of individuals’ knowledge and the implications of the findings, overall, for science education, particularly bearing in mind Nersessian’s (1995) hypothesis that “… we will be more successful in training students to think scientifically if they are taught, explicitly, how to engage in the modeling practices of those with an expertise in physics”.

The new research with adults has used a written questionnaire inviting responses in writing and drawing, data being categorised into ordinal scales to allow between-group statistical comparisons. Controls are incorporated into the design to counter the effects of repeated interviewing (see Blown and Bryce, 2010). The participants include 358 school pupils (age 3-18), 94 physics undergraduates, 60 parents, 136 pre-service teachers, 156 teachers, and 74 astronomers and physicists. Prompted by the writing of researchers in the field of expertise (e.g. Didierjean and Gobet, 2008; Ericsson and Smith, 1991; Gobet, 1998; Nersessian, 1995), several research questions were pursued concerning the expression of expertise in various forms, including the use and application of scientific vocabulary; the sophistication of schematic representations and categories used in explanations; responses to How? questions (e.g. How does the Moon move?) probing scientific knowledge, and more open-ended Why? questions (like Why does the Earth move?) exploring scientific reasoning.

Preliminary results show quantitative evidence of all predicted forms of expertise and confirm that these are universal. However, cultural differences are evident at middle school and high school levels in favour of China which underline the need for more time to be devoted to science content education during teacher training and more time allocated to science in the curriculum in New Zealand (and therefore probably other ‘westernised’ systems). In some cases and categories of scientific skill and understanding, students have been found to have more advanced concepts than their teachers (although teachers are a major source of scientific knowledge, they are not the only source). In New Zealand scientific subject matter knowledge is being de-emphasised (to allocate more time to literacy and numeracy) whereas in China it is being given high priority, hence the differences in student attainment. New Zealand does have the advantage of greater access to astronomers (many of whom have portable telescopes) but teachers are not making full use of this valuable resource. The findings also show that the scientific reasoning of many pre-service teachers is similar to that of parents and secondary pupils, whereas that of (experienced) secondary teachers is similar to that of astronomers.