Great Ideas for Teaching Astronomy – A Book Review

Although first published in 1989, and now in its third edition, Great Ideas for Teaching Astronomy by Stephen Pompea is a timeless resource for those both new to teaching as well as seasoned veterans. If you are perhaps looking for new ideas to spice up your lectures, or if you have no idea where to even start planning a lesson, this is a must-have Astronomy teaching guide.
Great Ideas for Teaching Astronomy is written with all Astronomy teachers in mind, and provides a plethora of suggestions for your class or lecture in an easy-to-follow manner. The book is written with an informal style – perfect for skimming through when you only have a bit of time at your disposal or when you are trying to find something specific.
Each chapter focuses on a single topic, such as The Moon and Eclipses, Light and Electromagnetic Radiation and Stellar Evolution. Within each topic, a collective of over sixty professors of Astronomy presents a variety of demonstrations, assignments and teaching techniques that they have actually used in their lectures/classrooms and with which they have seen success.
The techniques range from discussion starting points and stories to gain interest in a topic, to basic back-of-the-envelope calculations that can disprove misconceptions. Many of the demonstrations are simple to set up and use common household or lab materials. From making rainbows on a large scale to demonstrating gravity and orbits with a doughnut, to “Newton’s Laws Using Sticks and Balls” to illustrating with magnets how the Coulomb barrier is overcome. Most experiments are geared toward first-year Astronomy students. However, the demonstrations would certainly benefit students of all levels as an introduction or review of a previously-learned concept, or even as a way to make a grad-student lecture a little more interesting.

Pompea also addresses the fundamentals of teaching in his book, particularly teaching astronomy. The opening chapter, Connecting with the Students, offers suggestions on surviving large lecture hall classes, attracting and keeping the attention of students, troubleshooting student confusion and providing incentives for student learning. Toward the end of the book, Pompea takes these concepts one step further with chapters on Creating Astronomy Outreach Programs and Astronomy Education Research, each written in the same style as the chapters on curriculum content, with easy-to-use suggestions and examples of what has worked for the authors in the past.
I am often looking for quick and easy ways to reach as many of my students as possible, and two sections in the book jumped out to me immediately as easy ways to catch the interest of my class. First (and one of my favourite sections), is the listing of musical pieces – everything from the classical composers to the Moody Blues and They Might be Giants – and the astronomical topic they connect with. These can be played as the students are entering/exiting the lecture hall or softly during an activity or quiz, with an explanation provided either beforehand or afterwards as to the piece’s connection to the curriculum. Another often-used resource is Pompea’s listing of 33 common astronomical misconceptions and their explanations. The author suggests using these as a starting point each week of a course, but they could also be used in discussion, debate, student voting, or in part of an assignment, challenging the students to prove them wrong.
Finally, the last – and largest – chapter is devoted to other resources for teaching Astronomy: Image Processing for Teaching, Planetarium Activities for Student Success, Resources on Women in Astronomy to name a few, as well as an annotated listing of many books and websites.
Though easy to read, Great Ideas for Teaching Astronomy would benefit from an index to facilitate looking up a specific activity or topic, or finding a well-liked demonstration for a second time. There is also a definite American slant to the book – although there are a few Canadian contributors in the collective – but this only really shows itself in the chapter on Astronomy in the American Science Education Standards (which is similar to the Pan-Canadian Science Protocol). Having said this, the chapter is still worth reading, as it addresses different approaches to teaching and assessment as well as inquiry-based teaching, just with reference to the American standards.
If you have a copy of this book sitting on your shelf, dust it off and see if you can’t use a new idea or two in your last few lectures of the term. If you are likely to be starting your teaching over the summer or in the fall, be sure to pick up a copy of this book for your own use. You will find it to be one of your most-used, tried-and-true resources for the classroom.