The purpose of this study is to analyse elementary preservice teachers' explanation
and confidence levels of the causes of season changes. The results of this
questionnaire survey showed that ninety percent of preservice teachers tried to
explain the causes of season changes through the ‘revolution’ of the earth, sixty
percent ‘solar energy’, fifty percent the earth tilted ‘axis of rotation’, and
fifteen percent ‘the solar altitude’. These results showed preservice teachers'
difficulties in explaining the causes of season changes through the solar altitude and
energy. The most frequencies group, thirty percent of preservice teachers, used the
tilted earth axis and revolution of the earth with the solar energy. The more terms
which are essential in the scientific explanation of the causes of season changes were
used, the higher confidence values they showed in their explanations. Half the
numbers of the preservice teachers used twenty three kinds of irrelevant terms which
distorted scientific explanations, and the most frequent irrelevant term was 'the
distance' between the sun and the earth.