Related papers: How Astronomers View Education and Public Outreach…
The global climate crisis poses new risks to humanity, and with them, new challenges to the practices of professional astronomy. Avoiding the more catastrophic consequences of global warming by more than 1.5 degrees requires an immediate…
Diversity, equity and inclusion are the science leadership issues of our time. As our nation and the field of astronomy grow more diverse, we find ourselves in a position of enormous potential and opportunity: a multitude of studies show…
Hundreds of thousands of astronomy education activities exist, but their discoverability and quality is highly variable. The web platform for astronomy education activities, astroEDU, presented in this paper tries to solve these issues.…
Arts are a seamless way to introduce the general public to both basic and more sophisticated astronomical concepts. The visual richness of astronomy makes it attractive and easily incorporated in painting and literature. Astronomy is the…
The transition between receiving a PhD and securing a tenure track faculty position is challenging for nearly every astronomer interested in working in academia. Here we use a publicly available database of recently hired faculty (the…
As a short introduction to the astronomy session, the response of the community to the Call for Themes issued by ESA and the specific themes selected by the Astronomy Working Group are briefly presented in connection with the four grand…
In this review, I reflect on four decades of my experience in linking astronomy research and education by supervising variable-star research projects by undergraduates, and by outstanding senior high school students. I describe the…
As our capacity to study ever-expanding domains of our science has increased (including the time domain, non-electromagnetic phenomena, magnetized plasmas, and numerous sky surveys in multiple wavebands with broad spatial coverage and…
This work reports on results from the first national study of the impact of student facilitation of informal physics outreach programs on their physics identity, sense of belonging, and essential career skill development. Drawing on results…
In order to attract and retain excellent researchers and diverse individuals in astrophysics, we recommend action be taken in several key areas impacting young scientists: (1) Maintain balance between large collaborations and individual…
The NASA/IPAC Teacher Archive Research Program (NITARP) provides a year-long authentic astronomy research project by partnering a research astronomer with small groups of educators. NITARP has worked with a total of 103 educators since…
Science Fiction is using astronomy to offer to the public blockbusters at the movies (e.g. Interstellar), series or movies in streaming media (Don't Look Up, The Expanse), many books from classic authors (I. Asimov, A.C. Clarke) or more…
The target auditory of scientific outreach efforts is often limited to the small enthusiastic subset of the society that value science and actively seeks knowledge. However, the vast majority is usually indifferent or in some cases may even…
A common flaw of astronomers is to believe that they know the truth even when data is scarce. I provide ten examples where this approach led to wrong strategic decisions in research plans, causing unnecessary delays in finding the truth. In…
The core of scientific research is turning new ideas into reality. From the school science fair to the search for the secrets of dark energy, high-quality research consists of scientific investigation constrained within the scope of a…
We discuss our outreach efforts to introduce school students to network science and explain why networks researchers should be involved in such outreach activities. We provide overviews of modules that we have designed for these efforts,…
Perhaps more than other physical sciences, astronomy is frequently statistical in nature. The objects under study are inaccessible to direct manipulation in the laboratory, so the astronomer is restricted to observing a few external…
In the last years it is becoming more and more evident the importance in providing to the students, and people in general, a more realistic view on the scientific research world. In this framework many initiatives are beeing carried out to…
We report on research carried out to improve teaching and student engagement in the introductory astronomy course at the University of Cape Town. This course is taken by a diverse range of students, including many from educationally…
In the past 15 years, the number of known planets outside of our solar system has grown from about 200 to more than 5000. During that time, we have conducted one of the longest crowdfunding campaigns in history, a nonprofit adopt a star…