Education is important to astronomers because it affects the recruitment and training of future astronomers, and because it affects the awareness, understanding and appreciation of astronomy by taxpayers and politicians who support us. We have an obligation to share the excitement and the significance of our work with students and the public. Education is often neglected by the scientific and professional community - not by us, of course - and by many research universities. Our task is not only to be better astronomy educators ourselves, but to convince and train our students and colleagues to do likewise.

Following the inclusion of Astronomy in the revised National Science Curriculum for England and Wales the Association for Astronomy Education, AAE, embarked on a programme of in-service training workshops for teachers to help them to understand the new ideas and deliver the new curriculum. Teacher confidence and knowledge has been the greatest challenge to establishing astronomy in school curricula. As part of the the AAE team I gave presentations on a host of activities including simple cut and paste sundials for pupil projects. We are now seven years on from the revised Science Curriculum and my interest in sundials has stepped up a gear. I have developed an interest in real dials, both studying existing dials and making dials for the homes of friends and families and for schools. This presentation, which has as its focus, the sundial as an architectural feature, uses slides I have taken of some of the dials to be seen in the central London area including some of my own.

There is no doubt that the science of astronomy is now in an exhilarating state. We are in the era of the 10 m optical telescope. Radio astronomy rivals optical astronomy in both positional precision and sensitivity. Observation from space has opened access to a wide range of frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum. The spectacular achievements of the Hubble Space Telescope underline the success story of space astronomy. At all wavelengths, detector technology has made striking advances in sensitivity and, coupled with cheap, sophisticated and powerful computers, raw data can be transformed into useful scientific data with breathtaking speed. One has only to add up the number of papers published in the three major astronomical journals to realise that one must read 100 journal pages a day (every day) to keep up with the literature in these three journals alone. Astronomy at the close of the 20th century is indeed exhilarating.

When designing courses in astronomy - or any other science - there is a tendency to assume that the students whom we are addressing are younger versions of ourselves. As undergraduates we studied astronomy and now we are practicing it: it is natural to assume that the students we teach are destined to go on to become scientists themselves. But while this was a perfectly valid assumption in the past, it is valid no longer; and if we do not adjust our teaching methods accordingly, we do our students a grave disservice.

For many years, copies on film of photographs, both direct and through objective prisms, taken with the 1.2 m United Kingdom Schmidt Telescope, have provided teaching material suitable for universities and colleges (Brück and Tritton, 1988). Table 1 outlines the various types of application to which the photographs may be put. With additional data, some real physics can be injected into the exercises, allowing students to perform quite elaborate projects.

A reform of the content of university education is taking place in Russia today. A restoration of human directed principles, the denial of strict ideological components in education and an improvement in the teaching content of the humanities, are among the most important characteristics of the on-going reforms. An important part of today's activities is the introduction of the basics of natural sciences to the process of teaching humanities. We have gained four years experience in the establishment of natural sciences in humanities at the Ural State University (Ekaterinburg, Russia).

Early in this century, many cities and universities could support telescopes large enough to do serious research. There were significant observatories even in the less accesable parts of the world. Astronomy was very much an international science, and the IAU was founded to aid this international outlook.

In the middle of this century, astronomy changed in two ways. First, the frontier research turned to new topics. It needed telescopes too expensive for most small and many large countries. Second, physics became a more prominent part of astronomy. That left many of the existing small observatories scientifically isolated, especially in developing countries. The scientifically lonely astronomers there needed new alliances to survive.

Simultaneously, the new prominence of physics led to astronomers appearing in physics departments of developing countries. These new astronomers were also isolated and they also needed to build alliances to survive.

A summary of work related to astronomy education carried out during the last three years in India is presented here. Since India is a huge country and many educational efforts are made by individuals alone, this report cannot be regarded as complete, but a specific sampling.

India has more than 200 Universities, 8000 colleges, and about 100,000 schools, 33 planetaria, more than 100 museums and about 60 well known amateur astronomers’ clubs. Scores of dedicated astronomy oriented school teachers, act as nuclei of astronomy education for the general public and school children .The astronomical almanac, used in a typical household is in some way related to the stars in the sky and the movements of the Sun, the Moon and the planets. Traditionally, a rudimentary knowledge of the celestial sphere is common. The recent developments in space technology have brought a fascination and glamour to modern astronomy for all age groups, and this is noticeably reflected in the number of media coverages of astronomy.

Having recently returned to England (where I am an Open University tutor) after having spent about 18 years teaching Physics and Astronomy at the University of Nigeria at Nsukka in the Eastern part of Nigeria, I find myself in an unusual position to understand the difficulties of teaching such a rapidly changing subject as astronomy in an isolated place like Nsukka. For example I have seen a great contrast between the OU Astronomy and Planetary Science course material and the few available text books at Nsukka. Although not very mathematical, the OU material includes a lot of the latest research results and theories, whereas at Nsukka the books have hardly changed in the past 20 years.

Beginning in 1990, a group of scientists, engineers and educators based at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) developed a prototype of a small, inexpensive and fully integrated automated astronomical telescope and image processing system. The MicroObservatory combines the imaging power of a cooled CCD, with a self contained and weatherized reflecting optical telescope and mount. A microcomputer points the telescope and processes the captured images. Software for computer control, pointing, focusing, filter selection as well as pattern recognition have also been developed. The telescope was designed to be used by teachers for classroom instruction, as well as by students for original scientific research projects. Probably in no other area of frontier science is it possible for a broad spectrum of students (not just the gifted) to have access to state-of-the-art technologies that allow for original research projects. The MicroObservatory has also been designed to be used as a valuable new capture and display device for real-time astronomical imaging in planetariums and science museums.

In 1986, a group of university astrophysics institutes in eleven Western European countries established a federation known as the European Astrophysics Doctoral Network (EADN). The aims of the EADN, then and now, are to stimulate the mobility of postgraduate students in astrophysics within Europe, and to organize pre-doctoral astrophysics schools for graduate students at the beginning of their PhD research. The network has by now expanded to include about 30 institutes in 17 Western European countries, and ways are being actively sought for expanding the EADN even further to include Eastern and Central Europe. The coordinators have been Prof. Jean Heyvaerts (France) until 1992, Prof. Loukas Vlahos (Greece) 1992–1993 and myself since 1993. The network is financially supported by the European Union “ERASMUS” and the “Human Capital & Mobility” programmes as well as by national funds.

Distance education has a track record in astronomy and is already making a significant contribution worldwide. It will make an even greater contribution in the future, not only at-a-distance, but through greater use of self-study materials on- campus, where it will liberate staff for more appropriate forms of face-to-face teaching, and help overcome the need to do more and more with less and less resource. Distance education offers huge promise in meeting the educational needs of a burgeoning world population, and because low costs can be achieved there is no need for people in areas of material deprivation to face mental deprivation also. The IAU and The Open University can be proactive in promoting the spread of distance education, and of self-study on campus.

The University of South Africa celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. Over this period it grew, becoming one of the largest tertiary distance education institutions and the largest university on the African continent.

South Africa always had a mixed racial population with each group having its own culture. This difference between people is further aggravated by differences in the level of “westernisation”. Furthermore, South Africa also suffers from an extreme urbanisation problem where on the one hand we find modern cities and on the other tribal groups. All these factors led to a differentiation of the population into a first world and third world component.

A distance teaching course in Astronomy was developed three years ago by the CNED (Centre National d'Enseignement Distance) in collaboration with professional astronomers from the University of Paris Sud XI.

We wish to present our course with :

1. • the conceivers and designers’ point of view

2. • the learners’ point of view.

I discuss the burgeoning World Wide Web and how it can be used to aid astronomy teaching.

I supply a list of a variety of useful Web sites.

The World Wide Web was invented 5 years ago at CERN, which is now translated as the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, as a way of aiding access to information from remote sites. The invention of graphic interfaces, notably Mosaic by a group at the National Supercomputer Center in Illinois and then Netscape Navigator as a private development by many of the original Mosaic people, led to an explosion in use of the Web. Millions of people around the world are now able to access information from over 100,000 Web sites.

There is much astronomical information on the Web, though that information make up only a small fraction of all the information available through this medium.

The data, scientific results, and expertise from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and other NASA Missions are being integrated into programs that support innovative and experimental methods to improve content in science and math education. Partnerships with science museums, teachers, other educators, community colleges, universities and other key organizations integrate unique and cutting edge science data and the associated satellite technology into resources which have the potential to enhance science, math and technical learning. The inspiring nature of astronomical data and the technology associated with the HST and other missions can be used by teachers to engage students in many inventive activities. The resources created through collaborative teaming will be discussed, as well as the process for creating partnerships to benefit the education community. Many NASA supported programs encourage electronic access and distribution of multi-media interactive activities and curriculum support materials distributed across the Internet.

Were we meeting a century ago to discuss the state of astronomy education, we might have noted that remarkable changes were taking place in our field. The discipline, then regarded as a branch of geometry or mechanics, concerned itself primarily with the determination of positions in the heavens and the mapping of places on the earth. But with the advent of spectroscopy and the construction of large telescopes, astronomy was beginning to probe the how and the why of the heavens as well as the where and when. It was, in short, transforming itself into astrophysics, the study of the physical nature of the universe.