This is a preliminary survey of astronomy topics incorporated into the Malaysian national school syllabus. Topics directly relevant to astronomy are situated within the general science subject from Year 4 (age 10 years old) until Year 9 (age 15 years old) and are grouped under four main themes: Earth-Sun-Moon system, the Solar System, Stars, and Exploration of Outer Space. Contemporary topics such as exoplanets and astrobiology are not explicitly mentioned, but students are required to engage in hypothetical thinking by speculating on planetary diversity and its implications for life in the Universe. We characterize the astronomy content in the Malaysian national school syllabus to be life-centric and relatively open-ended.

The US astronomy/astrophysics community comes together to create a decadal report that summarizes grant funding priorities, observatory & instrumental priorities as well as community accomplishments and community goals such as increasing the number of women and the number of people from underrepresented groups. In the 2010 US National Academies Decadal Survey of Astronomy (NRC10), it was suggested that having to move so frequently which is a career necessity may be unattractive to people wanting to start a family, especially impacting women. Whether in Europe or elsewhere, as postdocs, astrophysicists will relocate every two to three years, until they secure a permanent position or leave research altogether. Astrophysicists do perceive working abroad as important and positive for their careers (Parenti02); however, it was found that the men at equal rank had not had to spend as much time abroad to further their careers (Fohl12). By implication, women need to work abroad longer or have more positions abroad to achieve the same rank as men. Astrophysicists living in the United Kingdom prefer to work in their country of origin, but many did not do so because of worse working conditions or difficultly finding a job for their spouse (Fohl14). In sum, mobility and moving is necessary for a career in astrophysics, and even more necessary for women, but astrophysicists prefer not to move as frequently as needed to maintain a research career. To gather more data on these issues and to broaden the discourse beyond male/female to include the gender diverse as well as to include other forms of diversity, the ASTROMOVES project was created which is funded through a Marie Curie Individual Fellowship. Though slowed down by COVID-19, several interviews have been conducted and some preliminary results will be presented.

EnDiAs is an argentine group of astronomy fans founded fifteen years ago, whose goal is the public dissemination of Astronomy through Non-Formal Education. We consider that the sky is a World Heritage and everyone should have access to its observation and study. This paper shows the activities carried out by EnDiAs to fulfill its goal.

The original design of the IAUS367 included the development of a Workshop, thought to be a face-to-face instance, in order to interact with teachers and researchers, and to discuss the design, the theoretical foundations and the use of some didactic devices to observe and record the state of illumination and shadows casting variations on different objects, natural or artificial, through time, and its interpretation from a local, topocentric perspective, together with a global, planetary perspective. The pandemic forced us to convert this activity in a virtual one, which was very interesting anyway, with the participation of colleagues from different countries and with great theoretical wealth in the discussions. The Workshop lasted 2 hours, in Spanish language. We present here the initial proposal and a summary of what was discussed. (The complete video register can be accessed in the YouTube channel of IAUS367).

This communication introduces two cases of the use of astronomy as a motivating context to interdisciplinary science education with emphasis on modeling activities. Firstly, a dedicated software, called SalsaJ, allows students to reproduce the same data analysis as made by astronomers. The case of exoplanet detection will be used as an exemple. Secondly, bodies of learners are considered to model movements of planets with a Human Orrery (a Spatio-Temporal Map of the Solar System), connecting thus mathematics, physics, geography and arts.

This investigation was derived from the observation and teaching process carried out in elementary classes at the Brigadeiro Eduardo Gomes Municipal Middle School (Natal, Brazil) at the end of 2019. The sciences classes taught were the following: the development of astronomy and astronautics from antiquity to the modern era and, introduction to stellar evolution. The goal was to focus on preparing for the Brazilian Astronomical Olympics (OBA) for students in these classes. The results, both quantitative and qualitative, were quite satisfactory. Taking into account the region’s socio-economic vulnerability profile. In this context, the study of Astronomy in the classroom in search of creating new mechanisms to improve pedagogical activities encourages the critical and creative development of students, showing that they have the potential and want to make use of it.

This presentation will provide an introduction to the concept of lifelong learning, exploring its relevance and potential for future human development. Lifelong learning – comprising learning in formal education, in non-formal contexts and informal ways – plays an increasingly important role within society and also within the higher education sector. Universities have a social responsibility towards society, conducting research that benefits society, making research results widely and openly available, communicating research to the wider community, and providing learning opportuntities for people of all ages and social backgrounds.

Increasingly, the global community acknowledges that lifelong learning – available to all, at every stage and in every sphere of people’s lives – is key to addressing the multiple challenges faced by humanity. Lifelong learning fosters people’s capacity to deal with change and to build the future they want. This is profoundly important given the disruption and uncertainly resulting from the familiar threats and opportunities of demographic change, the climate crisis, the rapid advance of technology and, more recently, the COVID-19 pandemic. In such uncertain times, new ways of learning provision have to be found.

Learner autonomy is the foundation of this lifelong learning culture. Learning to learn has become a basic competence, as has managing one’s own learning journey and creating one’s own learning biography. Understanding all levels of learning as learner-centric presents a crucial shift to fundamentally thinking and planning education with demand in mind. This way, learners are active agents rather than passive recipients of prescribed knowledge. They co-design and use any learning process and its outcomes actively to realize their potential as fully as possible.

Learning is understood as a collective process, taking place among peer groups, within communities and across generations. Education emphasizes becoming global citizens who care about each other, other communities and the planet. Consequently, lifelong learning is for all, and learning opportunities can be created for and with the most excluded learners. There is a global learning ecosystem, built collectively to inspire and empower learners with a plethora of opportunities. The learning ecosystem integrates diverse learning modalities fluidly, including all digital-based and real-life experiential learning as well as blends of formal, non-formal and informal learning. The learning opportunities allow for planned or spontaneous, individual of collective learning. There is easy access to face-to-face and online learning opportunities as local infrastructure, global connectivity and sponsored devices are available for all. New pedagogical and andragogical principles have been developed, including innovative blended learning concepts that integrate digital and face-to-face elements while considering learners’ specific needs.

The presentation will link these future-oriented ideas of lifelong learning with the higher education context, the open science movement and explore ways in which research-based knowledge can be provided to learners in different contexts.

The Pierre Auger Observatory, built to study the physics of astroparticles, has expanded its endeavours in outreach and education. Since its inception, the collaboration has been informing the general public about its discoveries. From creating a visitor center in Malargüe, Argentina, to providing talks for different audiences, science fairs for students, international measurement workshops, and making compilations of the scientific contributions of women in different countries throughout history, we share the passion for science with the population. The collaboration processes a huge amount of data and requires a large storage capacity. However, 10% of this data is made available to the general public in a useable format. The collaboration developed special masterclasses aimed at high school students, providing the software that can be used to analyse the public data set. In addition, a summary of the different outreach activities performed by the members of the Pierre Auger Collaboration will be presented.

We shall present with examples how analysis of astronomy data can be used for an educational purpose to train users in methods of data analysis, statistics, programming skills and research problems. Special reference will be made to our IAU-OAD project ‘Astronomy from Archival Data’ where we are in the process of building a repository of instructional videos and reading material for undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as interested participants. Virtual Observatory tools will also be discussed and applied. As this is an ongoing project, by the time of the conference we will have the projects and work done by students included in our presentation. The material produced can be freely used by the community.

The IAU Strategic Plan 2020–2030 identifies five goals to guide the Union’s activities through this decade: to lead the global coordination of professional astronomy, to promote inclusive advancement of astronomy, to promote astronomy as a tool for development, to promote public engagement in astronomy, and, to stimulate using astronomy for primary and secondary education. Education permeates through all these goals – professional development, informal education and formal education for the very young through to the PhD level. For the IAU’s Division C, Education, Outreach and Heritage, the plan provides the foundation for supporting teachers worldwide who use astronomy as a tool for teaching science, the humanities and the arts, to promote astronomy education research, to engage life-long learners, and to engage everyone with our collective history and heritage to understand the Universe. I describe Division C’s remit, where we are now in this 3rd decade of the 21st century.

An Eclipse is an astronomical event that convenes a large audience. Few days before it, most of the community is aware of the event and the press is activated fully on it. The alignment recovers our most intrinsic human aspects, the curiosity, and enthusiasm for a natural phenomenon. This work is focused to enjoy and perceive it in three different ways: visually, listening, and in an artistic expression.

We focused on the construction of more than one hundred LightSound devices, which the main purpose is to record the light intensity and transform it into different tones. Besides, we created an artistic representation of the Eclipse motivated by the ancestral culture of the people residing in the totality zone. This music adds a sensorial joy to the eclipse event.

The development of astronomy has been developed by the cooperation of amateur astronomers and researchers. Sunspot observation is a good example of Extreme citizen science in early days. Issei YAMAMOTO (1889–1959), organized “Oriental Astronomical Association (OAA),” Yamamoto’s materials (now in Kwasan observatory) include solar observation data sent from many observers in Japan. From the viewpoint of today’s Citizen Science, collaborative observation of sunspot between researchers of solar physics and amateur astronomers in Japan has clearly a context of social mission rather than mere academic interest. From the viewpoint of science communication, we can see that Yamamoto’s call includes a social mission to promote astronomy in Japan, and that amateurs responded to Yamamoto’s call by participating in the observation network. It can be said that this collaboration have not only “cultural” aspect but also “civic”or “practical” aspect.

Ural Federal University is one of the main and most effective centers for educating young astronomers in Russia. The traditional student scientific conferences “Physics of Space” have been successfully held annually in Kourovka Astronomical Observatory of the Ural Federal University for 50 years and have gained recognition not only in Russia. The conference initiated many educational initiatives both in the Ural region and, in general, in Russia. The astronomy education system implemented by UrFU and partners includes the following activities: 1) education and career guidance of schoolchildren in the Lyceum of UrFU, 2) activities to attract applicants, 3) training at the speciality, undergraduate, and graduate level, 4) participation in the student conferences “Physics of Space”, 5) postgraduate studies, 6) cooperation in the field of education. This activity ensures the attraction of promising youth to scientific research.

We present the design and development of accessibleWe have shortened the running head. Please check. activities in astronomy for blind persons in Puerto Rico. We design for a diverse audience that sees from different perspectives, but with the same purpose: to know and discover the Universe. We adapt tactile materials to develop themes that require visual images. We design and develop three-dimensional tactile material to offer blind people the opportunity to get the conceptual idea of the specific topic under consideration. Listening and designing bearing in mind the voice of blind people with their different life experiences is essential. Through years of experience (2006 – 2020) we have learned to use new strategies in the design and development of tactile materials. We recognize that what we have achieved to date has been possible through the exchange of efforts, collaboration, and volunteering. In recent months, we have been publishing videos with each of the tactile materials, with the purpose of contributing to the literacy of astronomy worldwide.

Ibn al-Haytham (known as Alhazen in occident), extensively studied the camera obscura phenomenon in the early 11th century. This instrument was used to obtain the projected image of a landscape on the screen and also was addopte by the scientists and famous painters along the centuries, to experiment with it until their final evolution as the modern photografic camera. The resource in the simple version of the “pinhole camera” can be used at the classroom to experience several phenomena, such us solar eclipses and Moon phases, and to each about optics and geometry. This contribution presents an application of this ingeniuos tool in the framework of solar eclipses, where the scale models are important to understand what really happens with the Sun-Earth-Moon system.

The cult of the mountains, the wind and the request for “good rain” constitute today,the fusion of pre-Hispanic religious beliefs and meteorological knowledge in the agricultural development of central Mexico. Understanding this cult of the earth, from an indigenous perspective, led by certain specialists who have extensive knowledge of the landscape and meteorology, called Tiemperos, is a fundamental and necessary feature for the development of atmospheric sciences and the inclusion of rural villages in environmental research, carried out in certain areas of Mexico. Understanding the world in which these specialists are inserted is complex if one does not have a joint vision of the ethnographic data and the social relevance that the Tiemperos have on the communities. During 2018 I carried out an investigation on the request of rain and “goodweather” rituals that are carried out year after year in certain areas of central Mexico. From that initiative we developed an educational model and a prototype weather station that could be designed, built and adapted to the needs of each community, considering the traditions and teachings of the local Tiempero. Making use of microcontrollers, basic electronics, and a traditional indigenous technique, each station was built and designed with the people of the community where it would be installed, with the idea of involving and enriching scientific meteorological knowledge, which could be useful for each community. The project, still in development, included meteorological stations designed by the author and built by the communities, a series of educational exercises for children involved in the project and the proposal of a “goodweather” ritual using the data collected by the meteorological stations, with the intention of using technology and science-based information with traditional indigenous practices giving way to new forms of research and inclusion of science in remote communities in Mexico.

In this study, we identify patterns among students beliefs and ideas in cosmology, in order to frame meaningful and more effective teaching activities in this amazing content area. We involve a convenience sample of 432 high school students. We analyze students’ responses to an open-ended questionnaire with a non-hierarchical cluster analysis using the k-means algorithm.

Galaxy Forum (GF) South America 2020, was held virtually on December 8, 2020 on the opening eve of IAU 367 by the International Lunar Observatory Association (ILOA Hawai’i) with the support of the Instituto de Tecnologías en Detección y Astropartículas (ITeDA, CNEA-CONICET-UNSAM) and IAU. Galaxy Forum is an education and outreach program sponsored by ILOA, an interglobal enterprise incorporated in Hawaii as a non-profit organization to expand human knowledge of the Cosmos through observation from our Moon and to participate in internationally cooperative lunar base build-out.

As a IAU-367 associated event, Galaxy Forum featured comments by Dr. Beatriz Garcia and presentations by ILOA Director Steve Durst (ILOA Hawai’i, USA), Marcelo Colazo (CONAE, Argentina); César Gonzalez García (CSIC, Spain); Li Geng (NAOC, China); Santiago Paolantonio (Córdoba Observatory, Argentina) and Margarita Safonova (IIA, India). In this contribution, the overview of the contributions permits an approach to the GF interests.

The growth of the Internet has facilitated the easy availability of resources for teaching astronomy and doing astronomy outreach. This overview concentrates on resources that are free or open access. Basic teaching materials like textbooks and lab activities can be found, along with higher level items such as concept inventories and interactive instructional tools. There is also a small but growing research literature on astronomy instruction to be found online. Astronomers engaged in outreach can have access to large image collections, tools for doing citizen science, and planetarium apps. These resources are of enormous value to both novice and seasoned instructors, and anyone conveying the excitement of astronomy to a public audience.