Rationale and Objectives

 Rationale 

Astronomy education has become a major topic for the IAU’s goals. Scientific results from this field have great potential to enhance the teaching and learning of Astronomy for learners of many ages.  
Taking into account two of the Goals of  the IAU-Strategic Plan for 2020-2030 :
  1. The IAU leads the worldwide coordination of astronomy and the fostering of communication and dissemination of astronomical knowledge among professional astronomers.
  2. The IAU stimulates the use of astronomy for teaching and education at school level.
We considered that in this framework, new results and research methodologies from the cognition and learning science domains are now able to influence the work of astronomy educators, enabling them to make informed innovations for the teaching of astronomy and are part of the bases to reach the IAU objectives.  

 

 Goals 

The primary goal of this Symposium is to give perhaps for the first time a global vision of Education and Heritage in the frame of the goals of the IAU, taking into account the Plan 2020-2030 and to propose an eventual ‘next steps’ road map and a global astronomy education  agenda for the next decade, while honoring the education from the past. 
In this sense, we would foster inclusiveness in the advancement of astronomy and facilitate the advancement of the next generation of astronomers and scientists, through encouragement of  the use of new methods of learning and best practices (including distance education: Moocs) in pedagogy at university level, as well as the use of astronomy for teaching and education at school level, which are part of the definitions of the proposed Office of Astronomy for Education (OAE), which also pursuits the establishment of  a Network of Astronomy Education Contacts (NAECs) to provide accessible materials and astronomy literacy guidelines globally. The invited speakers  are international leaders in discipline-based education in astronomy and the planetary science, but also in communication, history, inclusion and protection of world’s heritage, including the dark sky.
As with most other sciences, astronomy is being fundamentally transformed by the Information and Computation Technology (ICT) revolution. The data volume is growing exponentially, can be accessed remotely and the observations can be performed even without a real knowledge of a telescope. The new approaches to the data permits the development of new tools, techniques and resources for data analysis and produce discoveries which probably never would be reached with traditional astronomy data analysis period.

 

 Topics 

  • State-of-the-art of astronomy education in countries/continents in the framework of the 2020-2030 IAU plan.
  • Meta-analysis of astronomy education research on contents/school grade levels/focus on education cross studies.
  • Literacy in Astronomy.
  • Innovations in education methodologies and instrumentation.
  • Research into the value and influence of astronomy education in other disciplines.
  • Big Data in education and Open Astronomy.
  • Astronomy as an interdisciplinary approach to science education in all levels.
  • Inclusive education in Astronomy.
  • Use of Astronomy Education Research experiments and results by teachers and in  informal education activities (museum, planetarium, etc).
  • Cultural Astronomy and heritage and education: from Stonehenge to the Space telescopes.

 News

Editor(s) of Proceedings 

Rosa Ros, Universidad Politécnica de Catalunia, Spain
Jay Pasachoff, Williams College—Hopkins Observatory, USA
Patricio Rojo, Universidad Nacional de Chile, Chile
Naomi Pasachoff, Williams College—Hopkins Observatory, USA

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