Current status and issues in Japanese education curricula related to the Earth's revolution

Abstract

The orbital revolution of Earth is one of the fundamental concepts that underlies our modern understanding of the universe.
Historically, this motion was confirmed by detecting annual aberration or parallax. However, current Japanese national curriculum guidelines only include this type of evidence in an advanced course, which approximately 1% of high school students take. Although the concept of orbital revolution is introduced in junior high school as a reasonable explanation for various astronomical phenomena, instruction does not extend to its empirical necessity or observational basis. Consequently, most students finish high school without learning about the observations that verified Earth's orbital motion.