http://www.astrosociety.org/education/resources/useducprint.html
Astronomy Education in the United States
Andrew Fraknoi, Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 390 Ashton Ave., San Francisco, CA 94112
E-mail: fraknoiandrew {at} fhda.edu, [Version 2.1; © copyright 1998, A. Fraknoi]
This is an updated, expanded version of an invited talk given at the 189th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society, held in Toronto, Canada in January 1997. An earlier version was published in Astronomy Education: Current Developments, Future Coordination, edited by J. Percy (1996, Astronomical Society of the Pacific Conference Series).
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. The Domains of Astronomy Education
3. Graduate Education
4. Undergraduate Education
5. K-12 Education
6. Informal Education Institutions
A. Planetaria
B. Museums
C. Observatory Visitor Centers
D. NASA Centers and Divisions
E. Other Institutions
7. Amateur Astronomers
8. Astronomy Interpretation Community
A. Magazines
B. Daily Newspapers (Radio/TV News)
C. Radio and Television Programming
D. Nontechnical Books for Adults
E. Children's Books
F. The World Wide Web
9. Conclusion
10. References
1. Introduction
Let me begin by asking the question: where does astronomy education take place in the United States and Canada? I suspect many of you who teach would say, it takes place in classrooms just like mine. But I want to argue that astronomy education happens in many other places as well:
· it happens in hundreds of planetariums and museums
· it happens at meetings of amateur astronomers around the country
· it happens in front of television and radio sets (and, alas, less and less frequently, when someone reads a good astronomy story in a newspaper)
· it happens when someone reads a popular book on astronomy, or leafs through a science magazine
· it happens in youth groups taking an overnight hike and learning about the stars
· it happens when someone surfs the astronomy resources on the internet.
我們來問個問題：美國和加拿大的天文教育應該在哪裡發生？我猜教師們會回答：就在教室啊！但我認為其他的地方也有：
· 好幾百個天文館和星象廳裡；
· 全國各地業餘天文學家的討論會；
· 電視機前和收音機旁，還有偶而在報紙上讀到天文消息；
· 天文的科普書籍，或是匆匆翻閱科學雜誌；
· 年輕人的野外夜遊和認星活動；
· 瀏覽天文網站資源。
This is not to say that the classroom is not a vital and large part of the puzzle. In the U.S. for example, formal education is a big business. At all levels, from kindergarten to college, the U.S. in 1997 enrolled 67 million students -- 38 million in grades K-8, 14 million in grades 9-12, and 15 million in colleges and universities. The entire U.S. educational system employs almost 5 million teachers and other staff. The annual cost of the U.S. educational enterprise is almost $500 billion, about 8% of our gross domestic product. Are we getting our money's worth?
這不是說教室不是解答迷惑的重要場所，在美國，正式教育是一個大企業，1997年為例，從幼稚園到大學的學生有6700萬人，k-8(國中以下)有3800萬人，9-12有1400萬人，大學有，1500萬人，全國的教職員就有500萬人，全國的教育事業每年大約花費5000億美元，是全國物產總值的8%，錢花得值得嗎？
In 1988, the Public Opinion Laboratory at Northern Illinois University, conducted a survey of a representative sample of 2,041 American adults to get a sense of their scientific literacy. Among the 75 basic science questions was one about the Earth:
1. Does the Earth go around the Sun or the Sun around the Earth? 21% got it wrong and 7% said they did not know
2. The 72% who got it right were then asked what period of time the trip took. 45% got it right, 17% said 1 day, 2% said one month, 8% said they did not know.
1988年，設立在北伊利諾大學的輿論實驗室做了一項研究，調查2041位美國成人的科學素養，共有75個關於地球的基本問題，例如：1.地球繞太陽轉還是太陽繞地球轉？21%的人答錯了，7%的人說他不知道；2.再繼續問答對的人(共72%)：地球繞太陽轉一圈的時間多久？45%的人答對了，17%的人說一天，2%的人說一個月，8%的人說不知道。
This means 94 million people in our country could not correctly say that the Earth went around the Sun AND that it took a year to do so. And astronomy is not alone in being a field about which Americans know little. The Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology and Government reported in 1991 that 47% of US 17-year olds could not convert 9 parts of ten to a percentage and that (in a multiple choice survey) 63% of adult Americans thought that lasers work by focusing sound waves. [Reported in Beardsley, T. "Teaching Real Science" in Scientific American, Oct. 1992, p. 98.]
In September 1993, the Dept. of Education issued the report of a survey on adult literacy in the U.S. In one question, those in the survey were given a calculator, were told the cost a carpet per square yard, and were given the size of a room. The question was, how much should carpet cost to cover the entire room. Even with a calculator, 96% of those interviewed could NOT do it correctly. [See Barber, B. "America Skips School" in Harper's, Nov. 1993, p. 39.]
上面的調查結果意味著：美國有9400萬人不能正確地說出地球是繞太陽院轉以及繞一圈是一年。只有很少的美國人知道天文學是獨立的一個領域。另外，Carnegie科技委員會(Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology and Government)在1991年的一項複選題的調查報告指出：美國有47%的17歲年輕人不能把十分之九轉換為百分比；有63%的成年人認為雷射是由聲波聚集造成的。[資料來源：Beardsley, T.(1992). 真實科學的教學，科國的美國人雜誌1992年10月號98頁]。
1993年9月美國教育部公佈一份有關「科學素養」的調查報告，其中有一個問題是提供計算機、已知地毯每平方碼的價錢及房間的面積，問題是房間鋪滿地毯的話需要多少錢？受試者利用計算機來回答問題，有96%的人沒有辦法正確的計算。[資料來源：Barber, B.(1993). 美國人忽略了學校，Harper雜誌十一月號39頁]。
That's one part of our problem; here is another. In June 1990, the Gallup organization conducted a national survey of beliefs among adult Americans. About one in four said they believed in the basic premise of astrology, and 74% read their horoscopes at least occasionally. 47% thought that UFO's are real, and 27% thought that aliens have actually touched down and visited the Earth.
Now you may laugh at the notion of taking this kind of belief seriously. But if a large number of our citizens (and even our leaders) believes that our lives are governed by magic and superstition, will they feel the same urgency we do about the need for more science and technology education to solve the difficult problems of our age? And if you don't believe that such fiction sciences have an influence, I should perhaps just remind you of the revelation during the Reagan administration, that a San Francisco astrologer named Joan Quigley was given control over the president's schedule during much of his time in the White House.
這是我們一部分的問題，另外在1990年6月，蓋洛普機構(Gallup organization)對美國的成年人實施了一項全國性的信念調查，大約四分之ㄧ的人相信占星術的原理，74%的人偶爾而會閱讀自己的天宮圖，47%的人認為飛碟是真的，27%的人認為外星人已經登陸並拜訪地球。
現在你可能會嘲笑這些想法，但如果大多數的國民甚至領導者都相信的話，我們的生活將被魔法和迷信所控制，，，，，，，，，，，，，，，
What makes this kind of widespread belief in pseudoscience and widespread ignorance about science possible? Greedy and ignorant media, cynical publishers, and scientists sticking their heads in the sand all bear some of the responsibility, but our system of education is certainly a main culprit. Many teachers, especially at the elementary level, just don't have adequate training in science and the scientific method. Thus it is a lot easier and less frightening for them to teach as little science as possible or to teach science out of the textbook. And many high schools in the U.S. spent the 1980's relaxing their requirements and offerings in science to the point where we might say they are not just relaxed, they're ASLEEP.
In 1986, the National Science Teachers' Association surveyed the high school teaching scene. To take one example, of the 24,000 high school in the US, about 1/3 offered no physics course at all. Many of the courses that were offered in physics are taught by teachers whose training is in some other field. And of the physics teachers, 82% taught only two or one physics classes in a school year! In the decade since this survey, some tightening of standards has taken place but its effect on overall levels of physics literacy have been small so far.
That same survey showed that in the year of the survey, only 57% of US high school students were enrolled in any science class! 43% were taking no science at all that year! Of the 1990 graduating class, fewer than 50% took a chemistry class, and about 20% took physics. (In more recent surveys, this rose to about 24%, touted by some observers as a marvelous step forward!) Contrast that with other countries where students take three science classes every year of high school.
A 1985 survey by the Stanford School of Education revealed an interesting fact about the roots of the problem. A typical elementary school student in the US spends about 25 hours per week in instructional activities (that by itself is sobering). But of those 25 hours, how much time does a student spend on science? What would you guess ... a fifth, an eighth? The answer turned out to be 44 minutes or about 3% -- and much of that on learning vocabulary rather than discovering ideas.
But I want to follow these sobering statistics with a positive thought: survey after survey reveals that when students are asked what topic in science is most interesting to them, the top two winners are consistently dinosaurs and outer space. The fascination of astronomy is a powerful tool for engaging the intellect and imagination of our youngsters, and this is what encourages us to work to make it part of the positive school experience of every child.
Nor do I want to imply that the public is necessarily uniformly hostile toward astronomy (or even science). There is by all indications a tremendous hunger among many people in this country to share in the excitement of scientific discovery and to know more about the fruits of scientific exploration. And astronomy seems to be near the top of the list of topics the public is eager to learn more about. The problem is more that this hunger is so often left unsatisfied, that the meager meal of science gruel set before the public by our educational system and the media, leaves them like Oliver Twist, dreaming of a richer repast.
table of contents
2. The Domains of Astronomy Education
So let us turn from this very quick taste of the problem to the places where solutions might be expected. Some of the programs I will mention briefly below are described in more detail in the Catalog of National Astronomy Education Projects that we have compiled for Project ASTRO (see the web site: National Astronomy Education Projects). I've divided the places where astronomy education takes place into six broad (and somewhat arbitrary) areas:
· graduate education
· undergraduate education
· K-12 education
· informal science education institutions
· the world of amateur astronomy
· the interpreters of astronomy (the media)
table of contents
3. Graduate Education
According to the American Institute of Physics, there were about 175 astronomy and astrophysics PhD's in 1995. Some estimates are that once they are done with their post-doctoral positions (which are still plentiful), and begin searching for permanent jobs, perhaps half will end up in non-traditional astronomy careers because permanent academic or research jobs in our field are so scarce. And even those who are in traditional astronomy careers will increasingly be asked to communicate the results of their work to students, funders, and the public.
What kind of job are we doing in training these graduates of our programs for their future in the competitive world of 21st century science? Many scientific and engineering disciplines (as well as the National Academy of Science) are taking a new look at this question and beginning to urge university departments to broaden the skills with which their students emerge from graduate school. In astronomy, the American Astronomical Society in the early 1990's appointed an Astronomy Education Policy Board, which took on as its first task a nationwide re-examination of graduate training in our field.
Astronomer Eugene Levy, Dean of Science at the University of Arizona, in an eloquent introduction to one of the workshops this Board held on the future of graduate education, pointed out that in this era of shrinking opportunities, academia has for the most part adopted "a posture of studied denial" about the problem. He reminded the group that we have lived through several decades of tremendous growth in both research institutions and colleges and universities in this country. This growth has been fueled both by generous federal spending on science and by the fact that, as a B.A. degree has replaced the high school diploma as the minimum qualifier for many jobs, many more people have gone to college.
The expansion of research funding and higher education has allowed our country to absorb a very high - much greater than replacement level - growth in the number of PhD's. If the growth in research support or the expansion of universities slows (as it now appears to be doing), we will quickly have an oversupply of PhD's in science - just as we already do in some areas of the humanities, for example.
There are several reasons why today's and tomorrow's PhD's in astronomy may find a broader training in science education and communication useful. As we shall see, even those who find traditional research-oriented jobs in our field will increasingly be called upon to participate in educational outreach. Universities are placing increasing teaching demands on their faculty. NASA has begun requiring an educational component to all their future missions and is placing emphasis on how scientists can get involved in leveraging their work for maximum educational benefit. NSF has announced that future research grant proposals will also be evaluated on their value to the nation. And those scientists who obtain jobs in the corporate sector will find that many companies value and reward such abilities as working well within teams, communicating results and proposals effectively, and getting involved in community service to education. Ultimately, some observers are even predicting that Congress or NSF may make continued funding of research in universities and laboratories contingent on these institutions becoming actively involved in assisting K-12 education.
Yet, despite these signs on the horizon, the culture of most of our astronomy departments today clearly follows the research goal: research skill is what is sought out, research skill is what is rewarded. Little attention is paid in most departments to teaching or to making contributions to education in other ways. In some departments, students or faculty members who do take an active interest in education are quietly warned that it may negatively affect their chances for future success, tenure, and promotion. Indeed, graduate school often manages to convey to research students that having to teach is a minor irritant in one's research career that any smart person can learn to put up with, doing the minimum one can.
A few departments make a serious effort to help their students become better teachers, but most follow the old prescription for how you teach a kid to swim: throw a graduate student into a pool of lukewarm students and let him fend for himself - he'll soon get the hang of it! A graduate student -- often in his or her very first year - is simply assigned to be a teaching assistant and told (explicitly or implicitly) that teaching is something they can pick up on their own.
This unfortunately means that in many introductory undergraduate courses around the country, the first person non-science students have close contact with in astronomy turns out to be a nervous graduate student who is mostly unprepared for that contact. The resulting experience is often an unsatisfying one for each side. A first step in remedying this situation would be for all astronomy departments to foster a sense that education has value in the training and work of astronomers that is - if not equal - at least within the same order of magnitude as the value they place on research. In some departments that will be harder than finding a snowball on Venus; but in others, the slow winds of change are starting to blow.