The goal of this paper is have bringing a reflect on the experience of applying a continuing education course in Astronomy Teaching for teachers from two municipal networks, know Laranja da Terra (ES) and Guarapari (ES). Here we are presenting a brief of the course offered by Ifes-Guarapari for these networks as well as analyzes the experience reports, font of collection of data, done by the course participants, which was guided by diagnostic questions that allowed the systematization of the course participants' perceptions in the developed training process. After the systematization and analysis of the texts, the reflection was as follows: a) the existence of a demand for training in the area of astronomical knowledge; b) the potential of Astronomy Teaching as a provider of innovative pedagogical practices in the school context as well as its interdisciplinary potential; and c) notes for improvement in the construction and offer of new training courses in Astronomy for elementary school professionals.
This theoretical paper introduces a new way to view and characterize teaching and learning astronomy. It describes a framework, based on results from empirical data, analyzed through standard qualitative research methodology, in which a theoretical model for vital competencies of learning astronomy is proposed: Reading the Sky. This model takes into account not only disciplinary knowledge but also disciplinary discernment and extrapolating three-dimensionality. Together, these constitute the foundation for the competency referred to as Reading the Sky. In this paper, I describe these concepts …
We report on the initial phase of an ongoing, multi-stage investigation of how to incorporate Virtual Reality (VR) technology in teaching introductory astronomy concepts. Our goal was to compare the efficacy of VR vs. conventional teaching methods using one specific topic, Moon phases and eclipses. After teaching this topic to an ASTRO 101 lecture class, students were placed into three groups to experience one of three additional activities: supplemental lecture, "hands-on" activity, or VR experience. All students were tested before and after their learning activity. Although preliminary, our …
Introductory astronomy is one of the most widely-taken university science courses and a common means of satisfying general education requirements. This course is frequently taught in large sections by a variety of instructors, some with little formal training in astronomy. Thus, instructors often struggle to help students connect with what is typically their last formal science experience. At California State University Fullerton, we have engaged in reform efforts in the teaching of introductory astronomy. We report on the model of reform implementation with several key features that we believ…
Cultural Astronomy is interdisciplinary connecting the arts, humanities, social & physical sciences. Data collection methods and theories are used from many disciplines and meld with methods and theories within cultural astronomy. The burden on the student is that to do cultural astronomy research it is necessary to be widely read within and across disciplines. I developed a series of courses that divided cultural astronomy content into broad regions such as Africa, North America, and the Pacific. The courses were structured to accommodate students from all parts of the university, but had to …
Despite the negative stereotypes still overshadowing community colleges, scores of freshmen nationwide are deliberately beginning their college careers at these institutions, and the numbers are increasing more than twice as fast as those of four-year schools. Approximately 300,000 of these students take introductory astronomy each year as the last formal exposure to science most of them will ever have, and at least one-third of these students do so at a community or two-year college. The importance of investing in and devoting resources and training to serve this population - everyone, demogr…
We present a device, created by us and named Stellector, composed by a laser pointer which is precisely guided by two step motors with the purpose to explore and teach astronomy concepts having the real night sky in the background. The electronic part is made of low cost items and the mechanical part is 3D printed. The controller software was written in HTML/Javascript language in order to run in any portable communication device, such as smartphones and tablets. Communication with the Stellector hardware is via Bluetooth standard. These characteristics ensure the necessary portability and aut…
Visualising the three dimensional distribution of stars within a constellation is highly challenging for both students and educators, but when carried out in an interactive collaborative way it can create an ideal environment to explore common misconceptions about size and scale within astronomy. We present how the common table top activities based upon the Orion constellation miss out on this opportunity. Transformed into a walk-through Orion installation that includes the position of our Solar system, it allows the students to fully immerse themselves within the model and experience parallax…
Everything we know about the environment around us is thanks to light, a kind of electromagnetic radiation. Astronomy takes advantage of it and all the electromagnetic spectrum with the help of many devices to record them and determine from which places in our Universe they come. These signals must be processed to obtain the images that are will be then exposed to the public. Astronomers know that these images will inspire and generate curiosity in each person who sees them. This Science is inclusive and wants to transmit the knowledge and the beautiful events that happen in the universe to al…
We occasionally include projects in our learner-centered introductory astronomy college course to enable non-science major students explore some astronomical concepts in more detail than otherwise. Such projects also highlight ongoing or upcoming astronomical events. We hope that students will feel more interested in astronomy through projects tied to astronomical events. In Spring 2012, we offered short essays focused on eclipses, transits and occultations to promote the rare transit of Venus that occurred on June 5th, 2012. We asked students to write two short essays from three that were off…
We report on research carried out to improve teaching and student engagement in the introductory astronomy course at the University of Cape Town. This course is taken by a diverse range of students, including many from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds. We describe the development of an instrument, the Introductory Astronomy Questionnaire (IAQ), which we administered as pre- and post-tests to students enrolled in the course. The instrument comprised a small number of questions which probed three areas of interest: student motivation and expectations, astronomy content, and worldview. Amo…
Astroaccesible is an outreach project hosted by the Instituto de Astrof\'ısica de Andaluc\'ıa - CSIC aimed at the teaching and popularisation of the astronomy among all publics independently of their capabilities and abilities, paying special attention to the collective of blind and visually impaired (BVI). Among the different strategies and resources using in our project, we have developed new 3D models representing in relief some of the stars, constellations and deep sky objects that can be observed during night from the Northern hemisphere in spring and summer. These models can be used by B…
We shall describe the various activities done by us in Covid Times including outreach and educational workshops in Physics and Astronomy. We shall discuss the caveats in virtual teaching of Astronomy and the lessons learnt in the process.
University courses in conceptual physics and astronomy typically serve as the terminal science experience for non-science majors. Significant work has gone into developing research-verified pedagogical methods for the algebra- and calculus-based physics courses typically populated by natural and physical science majors; however, there is significantly less volume in the literature concerning the non-science population. This is quickly changing, and large, repeatable gains on concept tests are being reported. However, we may be losing sight of what is arguably the most important goal of such a …
Pictorial and Documentary Guide for Research, Teaching, and Education through Astronomy, Physics, and Mathematics Pursued under the Umbrella of the United Nations (1974-2024)
We describe a new inquiry design aimed at teaching advanced high-school to senior college students the basics of stellar populations. The inquiry is designed to have students come up with their own version of the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram as a tool to understand how stars evolve based on their color, mass, and luminosity. The inquiry makes use of pictures and spectra of stars, which the students analyze and interpret to answer the questions they come up with at the beginning. The students undergo a similar experience to real astronomers, using the same tools and methods to figure out the phe…
As recent advancements in physics and astronomy rapidly rewrite textbooks, there is a growing need in keeping abreast of the latest knowledge in these fields. Reading preprints is one of the effective ways to do this. By having journal clubs where people can read and discuss journals together, the benefits of reading journals become more prevalent. We present an investigative study of understanding the factors that affect the success of preprint journal clubs in astronomy, more commonly known as Astro-ph/Astro-Coffee (hereafter called AC). A survey was disseminated to understand how institutio…
In this paper we put forth a model for physics course reform that uniquely uses proven, research-based active learning strategies to help students improve their physics knowledge and problem-solving skills. In this study, we compared the exam performance of students in two sections of the same introductory physics course. One section (the traditional section, N = 258) was taught by an instructor who is highly regarded for his lectures, but did not use any active learning teaching strategies. The other section (the reformed section, N = 217) was taught by an instructor who had never before taug…
This article proposes and discusses qualitatively the use of a didactic board game in Science Education for high school students. The game contemplates in an interdisciplinary way the areas of Physics, Biology, Chemistry and Astronomy and is based on the development of the cognitive structure of the students through the act of drawing the concepts addressed in the classroom, also aiming at socialization through teamwork and the inclusion of students with hearing impairment. The game was created in a physics teacher education course and also aims to promote reflection on teaching practice and t…
From 2001 to 2007, COSMOS provided a teaching and outreach venue for the Center for Adaptive Optics Professional Development Program (CfAO PDP). COSMOS is a four-week residential mathematics and science summer program for high-school students organized by the University of California on four of its campuses. Two topical science courses comprised each COSMOS cluster. An astronomy course has always formed a basis for the CfAO PDP-affiliated cluster. The course included a variety of pedagogical techniques to address a diversity of learners and goals. We outline the astronomy course---lectures, ac…
Light and spectroscopy are among the most important and frequently taught topics in introductory, college-level, general education astronomy courses. This is due to the fact that the vast majority of observational data studied by astronomers arrives at Earth in the form of light. While there are many processes by which matter can emit and absorb light, Astro 101 courses typically limit their instruction to the Bohr model of the atom and electron energy level transitions. In this paper, we report on the development of a new Lecture-Tutorial to help students learn about other processes that are …
A didactic sequence of activities on some topics of Astronomy, related mainly with the length and orientation of shadows cast by a gnomon, the movement of shadows during daytime in different seasons of the year, and finding the true astronomical North, is fully developed. It also includes a discussion of observations from different frames of reference and of some topics in the history of science to enrich a debate among students, as well as the construction of a simplified model for the apparent displacement of the Sun, and of a sundial, and their use as resources to discuss some common miscon…
In this work, we present a study carried out to develop a didactic kit based on the use of touch and thermal receivers for the teaching of Astronomy. The proposal arose in the face of the difficulties encountered in the search for experiments capable of presenting the best concepts involved in the teaching of Astronomy for visually impaired people. The equipment consists of the use of a model with hemispheres with Peltier pellets for simulation of temperature scale of planets of the Solar System. The research was based on the use of accessible and low-cost materials. All the materials used and…
Over the past year and a half we have developed an innovative approach to the teaching of `Physical Science', a general education course typically found in the curricula of nearly every college and university. The new approach uses popular movies to illustrate the principles of physical science, analyzing individual scenes against the background of the fundamental physical laws. The impact of being able to understand why, in reality, the scene could or could not have occurred as depicted in the film, what the director got right and what he got wrong, has excited student interest enormously in …
In D(L)akota star knowledge, the Sun is known as Wi and the Moon is Han-Wi. They have an important relationship, husband and wife. The pattern of their ever-changing relationship is mirrored in the motions of Sun and Moon as seen from our backyards, also called the lunar phases. The framework of the cultural teaching is storytelling and relationships. Cultural perspectives in astronomy such as this remind us of how indigenous ways of knowing are rooted in inclusion, engagement, and relevancy. Designed by A. Lee in 2007, the Native Skywatchers initiative seeks to remember and revitalize indigen…
Over the past two decades, I have been actively involved in teaching astronomy and astrophysics to Chicago Public School (CPS) students and their teachers, in collaboration with various groups as well as by myself. Valuable resources that we have created for schools include the Multiwavelength Astronomy Website, with modules for infrared, optical, ultraviolet, X-ray and gamma-ray astronomy. The content of each lesson is derived from interviews with scientists, archived oral histories, and/or memoirs. Lessons are evaluated by a science educator and at least one subject matter expert before bein…
We have created a website, called "Black Holes: Gravity's Relentless Pull", which explains the physics and astronomy of black holes for a general audience. The site emphasizes user participation and is rich in animations and astronomical imagery. It won the top prize of the 2005 Pirelli INTERNETional Awards competition for the best communication of science and technology using the internet. This article provides a brief overview of the site. The site starts with an opening animation that introduces the basic concept of a black hole. The user is then invited to embark on a journey from a backya…
