Stars, Sight and Science: Astronomy Instruction

Sasha Hinkley, CfAO

August 6, 2001

CfAO Summer School

Overview of Astronomy component

• Primary goal was to allow students to get first hand experience with the day-to-day operations of a professional astronomer through a independent project.

• Secondary goal was to explore inquiry-based learning techniques in the classroom.

• A roaring success!• The students far exceeded our expectations with persistent

interest and remarkable scientific maturity.

Goals:

Results:

S^3 Astronomy Instructors

Patrik Jonsson Anne MetevierLynne Raschke Sasha Hinkley Scott SeagrovesStuart Norton Phil Choi

Basic Physics/Astronomy Interactive Presentations

• Size/Scale of Universe• Emission lines/blackbody spectra• Telescope making• Table Top optics• Introduction to Adaptive Optics• CCD’s

• Field trip to Lick Observatory

Basic Physics/Astronomy Interactive Presentations cont.

In addition to some instruction on optics, the students participated in interactive lectures concerning the makeup and operation of telescopes.

Inquiry Based Learning

• “Inquiry is an approach to learning that involves a process of exploring the natural or material world, and that leads to asking questions, making discoveries, and rigorously testing those discoveries in the search for new understanding. Inquiry . . . should mirror as closely as possible the enterprise of doing real science.”

--Foundations, Vol. 2 “Inquiry: Thoughts, Views and Strategies for the K-5 Classroom,” 1999.

National Science Foundation. Division of Elementary, Secondary and Informal Education.

Inquiry Based Learning (cont. )

Exploration: A chance for students to become intrigued by a particular phenomenon or effect, and generate questions about the observation.

Investigation: Opportunity for students to gather data, and test out any preexisting models they may have had up to that point .

Meaning: A time to synthesize the gathered data and observations into acoherent picture. Also, exchange ideas with others so that patterns or similarities can be identified.

Three basic stages involved in the Inquiry process:

“Opening Up the Black Box of Inquiry.” Rankin, Lynn andDoris Ash. Inquiry and the National Education Standards. 2001

Starting Points/Exploration

•Designed to capture students’ interest using hands-on materials that are easily accessible to observation.

•Opportunity to raise questions that may lead to more focused investigation later.

Focused Investigation

•During the Starting points/Exploration session, the students formulate questions on their own.

•Focused investigation is designed to allow students to conduct their own experiments to answer these questions.

•Opportunity for students to test their ownmodels and use previous conceptions as aspringboard for more complete understanding.

•Delicate balance between encouragement, guidance and fostering personal discovery!!

Processing for Meaning

•Chance to share observations, and reflect on experiences.

•Not necessarily a final stage! This may be a perfect time to have a mid-point discussion.

•Opportunity to make conceptual leaps as a group if students are stalled on the previous stage.

Tools to aid the inquiry process

•Build off of students’ preexisting models about the process at hand. Students will retain the ideas more effectively if they are able to modify their own understanding rather than starting as a clean slate.

•Help students to form an internal dialogue as they solve problems. By verbalizing their thought processes, students can solidify their own thinking more effectively.

Internal Dialogue:

Build off their understanding:

Why is inquiry so important?

One of the eight major Science Content Standards*:

• Unifying concepts and processes in science.

* Science as inquiry.

• Physical science.

• Life science.

• Earth and space science.

• Science and technology.

• Science in personal and social perspective.

• History and nature of science.

*National Science Education Standards, National Research Council, 1996.

Inquiry training in Kona

Graduate students and postdocs participated in the first annual retreat aimed to combine research in education in Kona, Hawaii last April. Using extremely simple household materials, participants got first-hand training in the inquiry methods and investigated the many different ways people learn.

Astronomy Student Projects

• “Messier marathon”• Classifying galaxy morphologies• Period of an eclipsing binary• Study of open star clusters• Study of globular star clusters.

Projects

Students used “real life” software. With the guidance of CfAO grad students, our students used packages such as IRAF and DAOphot to analyze their data.

In addition, students made heavy use of the world-wide-web combined with hardcopy images.

Results

Isochrones

Computer model of a cluster of stars at the same age and distance going through its lifetime.

How often does the eclipse happen?

• It depends on how far the stars are from each other .The stars that we observed takes about twelve hours.Some might even take thousands of years.The least that it can take is about four hours.

BETTER IMAGE OF THE DISK

Student Feedback

• A vast majority (86%) of the students say they definitely learned what is involved in being an astronomer.

Mission accomplished!!

• The same number stated the most valuable parts of the experience were the intangibles: e.g. interacting with the grad students.

• Many students greatly appreciated the field trip experiences: Lick observatory, Berkeley Laboratory.

What next?

Future Goals:• Continue the “Stars, Sight and Science” program next year

with similar projects in hand. • Consider the broad range of students’ abilities: Cater the

projects to better facilitate those not challenged enough.• Make projects more inquiry based, rather than too much of

a “cookie cutter” format.

Mentoring possibilities:• Academic year science projects. • Expand Student web page. • College admission guidance.

Special Thanks

• Doris Ash

Assistant Professor of Education

UC Santa Cruz

• Barry Kluger-Bell

Assistant Director for Science

Institute for Inquiry

Exploratorium, San Francisco, CA

• Lisa Hunter

Associate Director, Education and Human Resources

CfAO, UCSC