John Percy
In September 2007, a group of us held a one-day meeting at Tufts University to promote more and better astronomy education research (AER). The meeting was organized by Eric Chaisson, Claudine Kavanagh, and Aaron
Price (Tufts). The focus was on developing a "charter", similar to the "Washington Charter" -- a call to astronomers and their institutions to increase and improve their communication to the public. All astronomers
engage in education and outreach to a greater or lesser extent. For those of us in universities and colleges, it is a substantial part of our job. Education and outreach should be guided by research, just as our science
should. But it rarely is. AER is incomplete, and not always put into practice. The purpose of our meeting was to improve the situation.
The keynote talk was by Sidney Wolff (NOAO) who, with Andy Fraknoi, founded and has edited the Astronomy Education Review (http://aer.noao.edu), a free on-line journal containing both refereed papers and general articles and notes. She pointed out that, although the Searchable Annotated Bibliography of Education Research (SABER) contains an increasing number of AER papers, there are gaps in the areas of informal education, instructor professional development, and good longitudinal studies. Some submitted papers suffer from flawed methodology, or are based on anecdotal evidence alone. Phil Sadler (Harvard) followed up with an overview of good AER methodology. Claudine Kavanagh (Tufts) then gave a comprehensive review of the AER literature. Although the literature is increasing, there are few studies of students' pre-instructional knowledge, and the evolution of that knowledge, especially with regard to topics beyond the solar system.
At http://www.aavso.org/astroed/index.php/Main_Page we have set up a Wiki with a draft charter. We encourage you to look at it, to reflect on how it could be used to promote more and better AER. We invite your comments on how the development, and especially the implementation of AER could be improved. We also encourage you to read and contribute to Astronomy Education Review. Discuss the papers in your journal clubs! And implement the results in your astronomy classes!