The Journey to 'Investigating Astronomy': Reflections of a Former Astronomy Teacher
November 23, 2010
By Jeff Lockwood
“Hey Mr. L., could we do more of that astronomy stuff? Learning about the planets is a lot of fun.”
I was asked this seemingly simple question back in 1978 when I was teaching high school physics at Sahuaro High School in Tucson, Arizona. As part of the unit that dealt with Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation and the orbits of planets, I had shown slides of the planets, moons, and other objects in the solar system and had included several activities that were astronomy-related. But my students clamored for more. I didn’t know then that my students’ interest in astronomy would send me on a quest for a comprehensive high school astronomy curriculum.
Astronomy had always been a personal interest of mine—I had a fascination with planetary geology and other topics in space science. I welcomed the opportunity to teach more astronomy, but knew I couldn’t add more to the physics course. I went about exploring how I could teach a separate, year-long astronomy course, and put in a request that was approved by the district office. As I began reviewing textbooks to design my course, I discovered that all of the textbooks were written for college audiences, and none of them contained inquiry-based activities.
For the first year of teaching my astronomy course, the district required me to adopt a textbook, but I only used it for reference and to point out diagrams or illustrations that I thought students would find interesting. As I progressed in teaching astronomy (I went on to teach astronomy at Sahuaro for twenty years), I never asked students to answer questions at the back of a chapter nor did I ever give them a vocabulary quiz—instead, I engaged them in hands-on activities that I gathered from multiple sources. I essentially designed my own program, stitching together active-learning activities and other resources into a sequence that made sense to me. Still, I yearned for a coherent, cohesive program that would employ inquiry and investigation to allow students to uncover their own conceptual knowledge and connections.
In 1987, I attended a summer workshop sponsored by a group of scientists at the Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) at Harvard who were developing activities for high school astronomy (Project STAR). We developed a lot of hands-on activities that were then placed in a separate lab book while staff scientists at CfA wrote a textbook to accompany the activities. I thought the activities were exemplary, but envisioned a textbook beyond the one created by CfA scientists that would include additional topics to pique student interest—like black holes and neutron stars. In 2003, I finally got the opportunity to create the curriculum I wanted to teach. With a grant from the National Science Foundation, my colleagues Jodi Asbell-Clarke, Erin Bardar, Teon Edwards and I began writing and developing what would eventually become Investigating Astronomy.
The curriculum we developed has all the features of a comprehensive high school astronomy text. Readings are kept short but substantive (and geared to an appropriate reading level for grades 9-12) and student engagement in all manner of activities is maximized and supplemented by technological tools. In a real sense, our book encourages students to discover the universe and how it works for them as learners instead of being passive observers—allowing them to explore all the major topics in astronomy while conducting ‘hands-on, minds-on’ investigations that require them to master scientific inquiry (making scientific claims, finding supportive evidence, and using scientific reasoning to justify and revise their claims). We even adapted some of the same activities I had used in my teaching days—particularly those from the Project STAR/Smithsonian CfA at Harvard workshops— and also added many elements that brought scope and rigor to our program.
The Investigating Astronomy curriculum is available for purchase through It’s About Time. The below PDF file is a sample activity from Unit 3 of Investigating Astronomy.
Investigating Astronomy is the first comprehensive astronomy textbook conceived, developed, and written by former classroom teachers at TERC specifically for high school students. Included within are all the major topics in an astronomy course supplemented with hands-on investigations and web-based tools and software. The student guide has six major themes of astronomical content: 1) Investigating Motions of the Sky; 2) Investigating the Sun-Earth-Moon System; 3) Investigating Planets; 4) Investigating Tools of Astronomy; 5) Investigating Stars; and 6) Investigating the Universe. The first three units deal with observations humans have made from earth for thousands of years (as well as the mechanics and characteristics of objects within our solar system) and the second three units deal with more advanced topics of electromagnetic radiation through telescopes that are outside the solar system (and even outside the galaxy).
Within each unit is a series of ‘Explorations’. Modeled on best practices of scientific inquiry, each exploration is based upon an essential question that will guide students through the chapter and include steps for students to make initial claims and then confirm or revise them based on progression through each unit. Explorations within a unit prepare students for ‘Challenges’—projects that make use of all the information presented in that unit. Technology tools include the IA Data Center, a web-based investigative tool in ten of the activities that offers students opportunities for realistic image processing and analysis; Starry Night to measure sky motions over time through graphing and analysis; and the IA Triplet Game—an online game that introduces students to the structure of the universe. For more information about the curriculum or to order, see It's About Time publishers.
For more, see http://www.its-about-time.com/htmls/astronomy/index.html.
