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International body to open centre to streamline school-level astronomy education in India

To strengthen efforts to support astronomy education worldwide, the International Astronomical Union has announced the founding of four new centres in its global network of the Office of Astronomy for Education (OAE). The OAE Centre India will be managed by the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune, an autonomous institution under the University Grants Commission, in association with the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai.

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The focus of the work carried out in this new centre will be on astronomy teaching methods and tools of assessment for middle-and high-school students and teachers, along with language inclusivity. “Although the astronomy community has collectively created a large number of education resources in the last few years, there is a need for standardised tools and protocols to assess the quality and impact value of these resources, as well as those of the teacher training programmes that are currently conducted,” said Somak Raychaudhury, director of IUCAA

“The OAE Center in India will strive to develop these tools and protocols, and also devise newer modules and training structures based on such an assessment. The activities of the centre will impact astronomy education in Indian schools and classrooms internationally.” It also has a leadership role in future astronomy projects like the Thirty Meter Telescope, LIGO-India and several Indian space astronomy missions.

“Understanding teacher’s existing beliefs, competencies and confidence levels with regard to teaching astronomy in classrooms will be key to restructure teacher training programmes. It will also help to refine astronomy curriculum materials,” said Surhud More from the IUCAA. “Our centre will create assessment rubrics not just for student learning but also to improve the clarity of curriculum materials and the efficacy of teacher training programmes.”

“The centre will also work towards formal astronomy education research at the school level. The cognitive landscape, related to astronomy, in students’ minds would be systematically investigated by developing tools such as concept inventories. At the same time, creating astronomical concept maps will lead to better understanding of learning trajectories,” said Aniket Sule from the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education.

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