Shaw-IAU Workshops by the OAE

Mathematics lessons do not only involve the study of different solution methods, but also the application to problems to provide purpose and benefit to the methods learned. This is where the interdisciplinary nature of astronomy can be utilized. In this talk, a project is presented in which astronomical facts and laws are transformed into mathematics problems for lower secondary school. The developed problems comply to modern competence-based mathematics lessons and convey interesting facts about our universe. It allows students to acquire some astronomical education even in cases in which astronomy is not taught as a separate subject. The problems are designed such that also a teacher with little to no astronomical knowledge feels confident in using them. Exemplary problems will be shown.

About Eleen Hammer

Eleen Hammer is a secondary school teacher for mathematics and physical education in Germany. She studied astronomy as her third subject and graduated with honors. After that she received the Thuringian Graduate Scholarship for her doctoral thesis project on which she currently works at the Research Group Teaching Methodology in Physics and Astronomy at Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, Germany. In addition, she works as an astronomy teacher at a public secondary school. Her research focuses on teaching astronomy through mathematics problems.

Watch a recording of this talk (external link)