Published: 7th March 2023 11:00 (UTC)

The overarching theme of the 4th Shaw-IAU workshop held 15-17 November 2022 was ‘Leveraging the potential of astronomy in formal education’. The proceedings consisting of summaries from all the contributions are now online. It also includes links for all the talks published on the YouTube channel of the IAU’s Office of Astronomy for Education and poster PDFs available on the website.

The online workshop with around 500 participants from 90 countries was made possible by the generous funding from the Shaw Prize Foundation.

The workshop ran over three days with a total of nine sessions, each focusing on the role of astronomy at different stages of formal education. Experts from various parts of the world shared ideas on developing a robust astronomy curriculum. Different methods to teach astronomy in primary and secondary schools as an independent and interdisciplinary subject were discussed. Additionally, three special sessions were scheduled for encouraging community discussions in specific languages and a workshop to introduce and highlight the astroEDU resources.

This collection was compiled and edited by Asmita Bhandare, Eduardo Penteado, Rebecca Sanderson, Tshiamiso Makwela, Niall Deacon, Moupiya Maji, Emmanuel Rollinde, Francesca Cresta, and Aniket Sule. Asmita Bhandare who led the effort says, “We are pleased to have put together all these different ideas and projects that introduce Astronomy in the school curriculum and also use it as a tool to create awareness about the most urgent issues like Climate Change.”

More information:

The IAU is the international astronomical organization that brings together more than 12 000 active professional astronomers from more than 100 countries worldwide. Its mission is to promote and safeguard astronomy in all its aspects, including research, communication, education and development, through international cooperation. The IAU also serves as the internationally recognised authority for assigning designations to celestial bodies and the surface features on them. Founded in 1919, the IAU is the world's largest professional body for astronomers.

The IAU Office of Astronomy for Education (OAE) is hosted at Haus der Astronomie (HdA), managed by the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy. The OAE’s mission is to support and coordinate astronomy education by astronomy researchers and educators, aimed at primary or secondary schools worldwide. HdA’s hosting the OAE was made possible through the support of the German foundations Klaus Tschira Stiftung and Carl-Zeiss-Stiftung. The Shaw-IAU Workshops on Astronomy for Education are funded by the Shaw Prize Foundation.

The OAE is supported by a growing network of OAE Centers and OAE Nodes, collaborating to lead global projects developed within the network. The OAE Centers and Nodes are: the OAE Center China–Nanjing, hosted by the Beijing Planetarium (BJP); the OAE Center Cyprus, hosted by Cyprus Space Exploration Organization (CSEO); the OAE Center Egypt, hosted by the National Research Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics (NRIAG); the OAE Center India, hosted by the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA); the OAE Center Italy, hosted by the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF); the OAE Node Republic of Korea, hosted by the Korean Astronomical Society (KAS); OAE Node France at CY Cergy Paris University hosted by CY Cergy Paris University; and the OAE Node Nepal, hosted by the Nepal Astronomical Society (NASO).