What is the future of astronomy education worldwide? How can astronomers and astronomy educators ensure that the future will be a positive one? A few years ago, one of us was invited to write an article on the topic of the first question (Percy, 1996). The article also addressed the second question, but it ended as follows:

Fortunately, many of the characteristics of this “alternate future” do not appear to be developing – yet. But there are negative developments. Belief in pseudosciences, such as astrology, creationism, and space aliens, is widespread, and is not decreasing, as both Jayant Narlikar, and John Percy and Jay Pasachoff, have explained. Astronomical misconceptions, of many kinds, continue to abound. Astronomy is poorly taught, if it is taught at all, in many schools. The scientific enterprise appears to be maintained by a small fraction of the population.

An overview of IAU Commission 46: “Astronomy Education and Development”

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) is a union of professional astronomers who produce a large number of new astronomical results and make the frontiers of astronomy expand. However, the union cannot stand by itself but needs much support from governments as well as from the public. Therefore, the IAU established Commission 46 through the vigorous efforts of E. Schatzman, and others. In 1967 it was originally called “Teaching of Astronomy” and was renamed in 2000 “Astronomy Education and Development,” with a much wider scope of activities, in order to cover from the level of beginners to that of doctoral and post-doctoral students. Table 21.1 gives a list of its presidents; they are well distributed internationally.

There are currently nine “program groups,” as shown in Table 21.2. Because of limited budgetary resources, it is difficult for the IAU to cover all the possible fields to promote our Commission's goals.

Introduction

Scientists occasionally lament the low public interest in science and the falling level of scientific literacy in the public. However, public surveys continually demonstrate that public interest is high, and although we might not be happy with the current level of scientific literacy, it is, if anything, on the rise (albeit marginally).

In the classical study by Durant and Evans (1989), more than 80 per cent of the respondents professed (a high or moderate) interest in science. A survey in Norway by Eide and Ottosen (1994) found that “as many as 37 per cent of the readers regularly read science articles presented in newspapers.” Other researchers using various indicators report significantly higher self-reported interest in science, although there is a strong subject dependency.

Recently, Eurobarometer (European Commission 2001), the survey carried out on behalf of the European Commission in the 15 member-states of the European Union (later augmented by a similar survey in those countries that since joined the Union), looked at attitudes towards and knowledge about science.

Discovery of GRBs. Gamma-ray bursts were serendipitously discovered by the nuclear test-ban monitoring satellites Vela (US), (Figure 11.1) and Konus (USSR). Soon afterwards, it became clear that these events were not thermonuclear experiments of terrestrial origin, but rather a new astrophysical transient in the sky. These data were first released in 1973 by R. Klebesadel, I. Strong and R. Olson[296] and in 1974 by E. P. Mazets, S. V. Golenetskü and V. N. Ilinskii[368]. The first detection of a gamma-ray burst in the Vela archives is GRB 670702 (Figure 11.2). In the footsteps of Vela and Konus, a number of other gamma-ray burst detection experiments and missions were conducted[12]: Apollo 16, Helios 2, HEAO-1, International Sun Earth Explorer 3, Orbiting Geophysical Observatory 3 and 5, Orbiting Solar Observatory 67–8, Prognoz 6–7, Pioneer Venus Orbiter (1978–92), Konus and SIGNE on Venera 11–12 and Wind, Transient Gamma-ray Spectrometer (TGRS) on Wind, SIGNE 3, Solar Maximum Mission (1980–89), Solrad 11AB, MIR Space Station, GINGA, WATCH and SIGMA on GRANAT and EURECA, and Ulysses.

While the Dipper may rule the sky of spring and early summer, different stars and new opportunities await the sky's watchers in late summer and fall.

High in the western sky is the “Summer Triangle” of Vega, Deneb, and Altair, leading their respective constellations of Lyra the Harp, Cygnus the Swan, and Aquila the Eagle. To the east of the Triangle flies the square of Pegasus, the winged horse. I have never thought this asterism looks much like a horse, let alone the kind that flies, but its four bright stars do resemble a baseball diamond. You can easily spot home plate and the bases, while the Milky Way to the north represents the fans in the stadium. A little further to the east is Andromeda the Princess, and Perseus.

We now focus on Beta Persei. In 1603, Johann Bayer published a star atlas in which stars in the different constellations were given Greek letters in approximate order of brightness. Many stars are numbered instead, according to John Flamsteed's 1725 catalog, which used increasing numbers from west to east in each constellation.

Beta Persei, the demon star of mythology, is more commonly known as Algol, the star that winks! Every 2.9 days, or 69 hours, Algol drops in brightness by a full magnitude for about ten hours. It is one of the finest examples of a celestial event: a star that is not just there, but is visibly doing something for all to see.

Astronomy education research (AER) uses the systematic techniques honed in science education and physics education research to understand what and how students learn about astronomy, and determine how instructors can create more productive learning environments for their students. As the field of AER grows - and it is doing so vigorously - many readers may find it useful to have a concise summary of what has been published to date. The purpose of this paper is to summarize and categorize the various research projects in astronomy education in order to set the stage for subsequent efforts. In researching the field, a number of information sources were consulted. Three electronic resources served as the starting point for the review: the SABER (Searchable Annotated Bibliography of Education Research) database, the American Astronomical Society's education bibliography (http://www.aas.org/education/biblio list.html), and the Astronomical Society of the Pacific's education bibliography (Fraknoi, 1998). Further references were found in a variety of journals, often through a “snowballing” technique of looking through an article's references for new articles.

Cosmology – the study of the evolution of the universe as a whole – is becoming an ever more exact science with the recent precision observations by BOEMERANG, MAXIMA and WMAP. Within a few percent uncertainty, we know that the universe is open, flat and contains only a few percent of baryonic matter. The universe is primarily filled with Cold Dark Matter (CDM) and dark energy (a cosmological constant). If this is not a coincidence, the cosmological constant is time-varying, and exchanges energy and momentum with CDM and, possibly, baryonic matter. The imprint of the earliest epoch of the universe that at present can be probed, is the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). The CMB is a relic of the last surface of scattering at time 379 kyr[45]. Its extreme homogeneity is well accounted for by a preceeding inflationary phase. A recent review of cosmometry is compiled by L. M. Kraus[308].

The early universe may well have produced a stochastic background in gravitational waves. If so, these relic waves could provide the earliest signature of the universe at an epoch much earlier than the CMB and the preceding phase which produced the initial light element abundances[360]. At present, this relic in gravitational waves is largely unknown, except that its spectrum should be smooth. It may or may not have a thermal component.

Through the magic of variable stars you now have traveled through a looking glass. You have discovered stars passing through the eruptions and inconsistencies of youth and you have visited and drawn comfort from the cosmic wisdom of the aged Mira stars. You have watched the dwarf novae perform and you have looked on as old novae sleep peacefully as the eons after their outbursts pass by.

You passed through the looking glass in a mood of curiosity and I hope you return unsatisfied, demanding more. Through the bibliography, I have suggested certain sources that may help, but the most important source of all is that of the glass of your telescope, coupled to the retina of your eye, and connected by optic nerve to an inquiring mind searching for answers. Every year, new variables are discovered and much more is learned about how these stars behave.

Quite possibly your own observations may add to this knowledge. Possibly also, you will want to pass this on to someone younger.

In the nature of variable stars lies a key to introducing children to astronomy. Stars are individual, they behave in definite ways. They are born, they grow up, they mature, they grow old, and they die. Stars also have moods – sometimes their light output changes. When a star is young, it might flicker with the intensity of a rebellious child, unable to decide on its future course.

This section on teacher education begins with Bruce Partridge and George Greenstein asking the question What should we teach? Goals for astronomy courses.

Each year, more than 250,000 North American university students study astronomy. Few of these continue in the field professionally; many will go on to be secondary schoolteachers. What sorts of learning should survey courses in astronomy encourage? Two national meetings were held in 2002 to develop a list of goals for introductory survey courses in astronomy. The list of goals presented below was arrived at by consensus involving both astronomers from leading research universities and well-known science educators. While they were intended for university astronomy courses, it may be that they would be of interest also to those teaching astronomy or related physical sciences at the secondary school level. Note their generality (they were not focused on specific content items like galaxies or Newton's Laws). Nor were they intended to be a prescribed curriculum for introductory astronomy courses. Instead the set of goals developed in these meetings emphasizes deep learning, development of general skills, and good understanding of a limited number of general scientific principles, rather than broad coverage.

This book is based on the proceeedings of a conference on “Effective Teaching and Learning of Astronomy” held on July 24–25, 2003, in Sydney, Australia, as part of the 25th General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union (IAU). It followed two previous IAU conferences on astronomy education, held in Williamstown, Massachusetts, USA, in 1988 and in London, UK, in 1996. The conference was organized within the framework of the work of IAU Commission 46 on Astronomy Education and Development. A major emphasis in the 1996 conference was the educational potential of the Internet, and robotic and remote telescopes, and it was heartening, in 2003, to see the growth and maturity of these technologies. But the basic challenges of astronomy education - especially at the school level - still remain.

The Organizing Committee for the conference consisted of: John Dunlop (New Zealand), Julieta Fierro (Mexico), Michèle Gerbaldi (France), Mary Kay Hemenway (USA), Syuzo Isobe (Japan), Barrie Jones (UK), Margarita Metaxa (Greece), Jayant Narlikar (India),Wayne Orchiston (Australia), Jay M. Pasachoff (USA), John R. Percy (Canada, Chair), Case Rijsdijk (South Africa), Rosa M. Ros (Spain), and Graeme White (Australia), with valuable help from the local organizing committees for the General Assembly, especially Nicholas Lomb, Sydney Observatory. Special thanks are due to Magda Stavinschi (Romania), whose proposal for an IAU Resolution with respect to astronomy education was a significant inspiration for this conference.

Over a hundred astronomers and educators from over two dozen countries attended or contributed to this conference. These included the presidents of the IAU, of the American Astronomical Society (USA), and the Royal Astronomical Society (UK), among others.

The place and nature of astronomy in the school curriculum vary greatly from one country to another, and even from place to place within a country. There are two main “systems” of education, which are usually called the “European” system and the “North American” system. These, and the place of astronomy in each, were eloquently described by Don Wentzel in his prologue to the proceedings of the 1988 IAU conference on astronomy education, held in Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts, USA.

In the European system, there is usually a national curriculum. An often cited example is that in France, at 10 a.m. on the second Thursday in April, every student in a certain grade is learning the same thing from the same page in the textbook. Students are streamed, at an early age, into university, technical school, or the workplace. Astronomy tends to be taught to science students, by teachers who are well trained in science and science teaching.

In the North American system, the curriculum may be determined locally; astronomy is taught in a variety of places in the curriculum; and the teachers may therefore not be well trained in astronomy content or pedagogy. A recent requirement in the US's No Child Left Behind Act (a controversial law that played a role in the presidential campaign), that every teacher be certified in every subject that he or she is teaching, does not meet, for example, the reality of small schools in rural states in which a single teacher may teach some biology, some chemistry, and some physics. This requirement is, therefore, being relaxed.