Learning About Astronomy in Mathematics Lessons: Eleen Hammer at the OAE’s 4th Shaw-IAU Workshop
0Title: Learning about astronomy in mathematics lessons.
Summary: Astronomical facts can be conveyed to school students through specially designed math problems.
This was a talk given at the 4th Shaw-IAU Workshop on Astronomy for Education, organised by the IAU Office of Astronomy for Education (OAE, http//astro4edu.org).
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 utilised. 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.
About the 4th Shaw-IAU Workshop:
The topic for this year’s Shaw-IAU Workshop on Astronomy for Education is ‘Leveraging the potential of astronomy in formal education’ and is scheduled to run 15 to 17 November 2022 as a fully virtual event on Hopin as in previous years. This year’s Shaw-IAU Workshop focuses on the role of astronomy in the core regions of formal, primary and secondary, education: How do we teach astronomy as its own subject? What is the role of astronomy in teaching physics or chemistry – or in communicating such a central future topic as climate change? In sessions marked with a * we aim to hear specifically from teachers. We also address the question of how to approach those who set the framework for teaching: How can you get your administration, or at a much higher level: your education ministry, to listen to you? Last but not least we look at how to bridge the divide between the fundamentals that are commonly taught in school and results from cutting-edge research, which tend to be fascinating to students and the general public alike. he workshop was organised by the IAU Office of Astronomy for Education (http://astro4edu.org). More details can be found on: https://astro4edu.org/shaw-iau/4th-shaw-iau-workshop/
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