This is truly an international gathering, as befits the IAU. We have a wide range of educational backgrounds. Most of us hope to adapt each others’ ideas to suit our own needs. That adaption will be much easier if we appreciate each others’ individual circumstances, and especially if we know something about each others’ different educational systems. To ease the exchange of information, I shall outline two very different educational schemes. I shall call them the “traditional” and the “U.S.” system. I suspect that about half of us will identify more closely with the traditional system, and half with the U.S. system.

In a discussion on the training of astronomers, the question naturally arises: “Training...but at what level?” After all, the subject of astronomy happens to be unique amongst all sciences in that it interests children and educated general public at one end and professionals at the other. Before coming to these specifics, certain general remarks will be in order.

Astronomy is a branch of science. This fact is not readily appreciated at the “lay” end of the above spectrum. Unlike other sciences, which have Earth-based laboratories in which controlled experiments are performed, astronomy has its labs located in the heavens far beyond the reach, let alone “control,” of the terrestrial observer. So how can one be sure that what one sees out there is subject to the same rules and disciplines of science that govern the local laboratory experiments of physics and chemistry? Yet that happens to be so!

What is the purpose of an astronomy degree? Why should students wish to take such a course? What will they do after graduation? In what way would such a course uniquely differ from a physics degree with a little astronomy tossed in? And given that we are called upon to provide such a course, what syllabus might we teach? These are some of the questions that occurred to me as I was preparing this paper.

One obstacle to giving clear answers is that the higher education systems of various countries differ greatly in structure. As one who was trained in one system (U.S.A.) and who teaches in another (U.K.), I am perhaps in a better position than most to appreciate the differences in approach, and to weigh the advantages and shortcomings of each system. But, as Shakespeare’s Dogberry said, “Comparisons are odorous,” and I do not propose to do this! What I describe refers to current practice in the university system of England and Wales, and I will use my own institution’s long-standing astronomy degree as an example.

Astronomical education has been developing at an increasing rate in China since 1977. Many Chinese astronomers think that the development and the popularization of astronomical education are future human needs. For this reason, we use radio and TV broadcasts as well as planetariums to popularize astronomical education in our country. The teaching of astronomy is enhanced in schools step by step. For elementary schools many astronomical topics are included in a course under the general title of Nature. Some activities such as astronomical observation and courses of astronomical lectures are organized in secondary schools. In universities, elective courses of astronomy are arranged not only in some departments of natural science but also in some departments of liberal arts. Some students in other scientific departments are encouraged to take astronomical courses, so that universities can supply frontier science with researchers.

In 1984, the University of Porto started a program for the first degree in astronomy in a Portuguese university. Jointly offered by the Physics and Applied Mathematics Departments at the School of Sciences, the degree is strongly marked by the interdisciplinary character essential for the teaching of modern astronomy. It includes 37 per cent in physics, 32 per cent in mathematics, 25 per cent in astronomy, and 6 per cent in chemistry, geology, mathematics, or physics. Its structure in course units comprises:

Our educational system, like that of any other country, has grown up to meet the needs of the environment in which it developed. Perhaps its most distinctive feature is its emphasis on education of the masses rather than on education of the intellectuals.

The philosophy of the Hungarian educational system is that a democracy depends upon a well-informed electorate, and that therefore each citizen should receive the best education possible. As a result, in our country most children in the same community attend school together from kindergarten through secondary school practically regardless of differences in intellectual ability or in family background.

The University of São Paulo (USP), founded in 1934, is the largest university in Brazil, having about 50,000 students and 5,000 teachers/researchers distributed among 33 institutes and 184 departments.

Astronomical work was already developed at the older São Paulo Observatory (founded 1912), which was later attached to the university. The observatory has been renamed as Instituto Astronômico e Geofisico (IAG), and presently houses the departments of Astronomy, Geophysics, and Meteorology. Graduate astronomy courses, intended to provide Master (M.Sc.) and Doctor (D.Sc.) degrees, started in 1973.

In this first international meeting on the teaching of astronomy, we should not only look at many specific techniques and approaches but also examine the overall process. In doing so, several general problems come to light and need to be commented upon:

1. 1. Introductory astronomy course lab exercises are often lacking in rigor, compared to labs in other physical sciences. Students are often asked to do simple, qualitative exercises like drawing the moon or constellations – projects that bear more resemblance to 19th-century astronomy than to the work of modern science. Lab programs should be modernized, taking advantage of modern telescopes and ancillary instrumentation.

2. 2. A survey taken of U.S. astronomy department chairs, in preparation for an American Astronomical Society roundtable discussion, revealed a wide spectrum of approaches to undergraduate astronomy instruction. The one single obvious result of the survey was the recognition of a need for an international survey, with the results distributed and discussed by the participants. The dispersion of programs may also suggest another need ....

3. 3. The astronomy instructional community lacks a central journal for the publication of pedagogical articles. The physicists have the American Journal of Physics and the Physics Teacher for advanced and lower-level articles, respectively. While astronomical articles appear in these from time to time (as well as in other publications), there is no single publication that educators can depend upon to contain important articles. While there is probably too little material available to form a new journal or newsletter, perhaps educational sections could be started in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Mercury, or Sky & Telescope.

4. 4. Astronomy students (majors) are often told to “get a physics (undergraduate) degree” in preparation for becoming an astronomer, yet strongly desire to take astronomy courses. This dual-program requirement results in either larger course loads (to include the astronomy), or the possibility of losing them to other disciplines. Students can perhaps be kept interested by involving them in astronomy research while they are learning their basic math and physics.

Three good reasons for using historical materials in teaching astronomy are:

1. • The simplest concepts are introduced first in a natural sequence;

2. • For non-science students, history can build onto other interests;

3. • The historical perspective shows the changing and iterative nature of scientific explanatory structures.

This historian of science offers a few samples of the kinds of understandings his students will be subjected to. (a) In early times, Britons used careful observations of astronomical events to establish their calendar; (b) In the 4th century BC, Aristotle used the spheres of Eudoxus to establish his cosmological principles; (c) In the second century of our era, Ptolemy made astronomy scientific, partly for the sake of astrological predictions; (d) In the fifteenth century, Columbus used crude astronomical observations to find latitude, (e) In the sixteenth century, Copernicus revised Ptolemaic astronomy in order to improve its fit with Aristotelian cosmology, and in the process challenged that cosmology; (f) Kepler used Tycho’s more precise data to destroy heavenly circularity; (g) In the early seventeenth century, Galileo based his renovation of motion studies on the investigative style he learned from Ptolemy, coupled with mathematics learned from Euclid and Archimedes.

One of the phenomena in the development of science in the second half of the twentieth century is the appearance of complex branches of knowledge. This fact along with the accelerated increase of science information called forth well-known integrative processes in education. One of the most widely spread forms of these processes is the incorporation of one school subject in another. In such a way, astronomy in secondary school is incorporated in the subject of physics and sometimes in geography and mathematics. The argument for this, if there exists one, is that nowadays astronomy is astrophysics, i.e., physics of celestial bodies, or that the cosmographical function of astronomy resembles the function of geography.

In this paper, we make an attempt to adhere to the thesis that astronomy is a school subject with wider connections in the human sphere than with only one branch of science (Nikolov, 1986). As a consequence, if the school subject astronomy is incorporated only in a specific discipline, this would limit the possibility of teaching facts or phenomena of other spheres of the human spirit.

To understand the motivation for my talk, you must bear in mind what Don Wentzel discussed so eloquently at the beginning of the colloquium. In the U.S., the vast majority of students taking astronomy classes at the college level are not science majors. Many students coming into the astronomy courses are afraid and distrustful of science and often see science as a very alien endeavor, quite separate from their everyday lives and other studies.

For such students, it can sometimes be very reassuring and enlightening to show some interesting connections between astronomy and other (nonscience) fields at a few places in the introductory astronomy course. For example, many students are surprised and excited to see the inspiration that astronomy has provided for music, literature, and art and some of the interesting connections between astronomy and psychology, archaeology, and law.

For many of us in the United States, the majority of our students are in descriptive astronomy classes. And since these classes typically satisfy general education or core curriculum requirements that must be completed by all students, the students can range from those genuinely interested in astronomy to those who are taking the class because “it sounded less boring” than other options available. Whichever end of that spectrum the students occupy, many of them approach astronomy with quite a bit of anxiety because it is a science class. In student lore, a science class is a class that is by definition more difficult — perhaps verging on the impossible — than other classes, one that discusses totally foreign things in an arcane language and, above all, is a class that has no connection with anything else in the curriculum, except maybe another science class.

The University of Tromsø is located at 70° northern latitude. It is planned for 3,000 students and was opened in 1972. Research interests in physics are centered on the physics related to the upper atmosphere. The region is coastal and mountainous, and is sparsely inhabited. People in the region are good observers, and those away from city lights watch the lively auroral displays that can be observed almost every clear, dark night. The different auroral forms — wavering structure, colors, and diffusing and changing appearance — all challenge the imagination. There are popular and folkloric descriptions as well as manifestations in art, including poetry, paintings, music, and drama.

When teaching science to nonmajors lacking an interest in science, two major goals are to stimulate their interest and to provide these students with information and scientific skills useful in their lives and careers. Business students now comprise over 23 per cent of the undergraduates in America, and they generally view science, including astronomy, as not relevant to their lives and careers. I find the students entering my introductory astronomy course for business students expect a pictorial tour of the universe, and are unhappy when asked to calculate redshifts in the laboratory or to attend an extra class meeting for telescope observing. Astronomy is not what they have come to a business college to learn, but they have a laboratory-science requirement to fill for their degree.

In the process of communicating to the student or the lay person, we often forget to point out why it is that scientists are involved in their esoteric explorations of the universe. As a result, the scientific endeavor is painted as being somewhat removed from “real life.” This unfortunate misconception can be remedied by discussing the thrill of discovery.

Scientists love to “boldly go where no man has gone before.” The act of discovery produces a heady sensation akin to the thrill of victory for an athlete. The thrill may come as a surprise, as the result of a serendipitous turn of events, or may be experienced at the conclusion of a dedicated piece of research whose end-point was always understood. In either case the joy is associated with the revelation of what was previously unknown or not understood. It is this joy that is the reward for the researcher.

Most beginning college professors in the United States receive little if any help in the important task of learning how to teach well. Occasionally, a colleague or department chairman can provide some guidance, but in general most American college faculty are taught how to teach by the “sink or swim” method. There are many resources that can help the new professor swim, rather than sink, but in my case at least, I found out about them many years after I needed them the most. This paper will identify some of the literature, journals, and on-campus facilities that can help both new and experienced faculty members develop and hone teaching skills.

The literature on teaching and learning is vast. Fortunately, the new teacher need not spend years becoming an expert on this literature; much of it is like the astronomical research literature in that it is full of jargon and it requires some expertise to distill useful, easily implementable ideas from it. Fortunately, there are a few (too few!) books that distill this vast literature into practical advice from it.