Bridging Cultures: the Office of Astronomy for Education Italy Initiatives for Student-centered Education in the Mediterranean
The Office of Astronomy for Education was established by the International Astronomical Union with the aim of supporting the use of Astronomy to promote STEM education. The Italian Center of OAE – managed by the National Institute for Astrophysics – supports the OAE in particular focusing on the Mediterranean Region and on the promotion of sudent-centered practices [1]. Since its establishment, our team has championed a co-design approach involving IAU-endorsed educators. This choice is based on the belief that bottom-up processes are essential for developing meaningful and beneficial activities for diverse communities. This strategy also aims to foster new connections across countries and among individuals. In this talk, we will describe the evolution of our co-design projects. We will start describing our pilot project, MIRTO/STEAM-Med, for co-designing educational resources around the common theme of light. The co-design process was first run remotely, facilitating online peer pairing and mentoring among educators from 12 countries and later during a one-week, in-person
workshop in Lampedusa, a highly symbolic location at the heart of the Mediterranean Sea [2]. Finally, all resources have been published in a multilingual booklet and on the open online platform AstroEDU [3], (peer-reviewed resources for astronomy teaching). We will then discuss the following co-design efforts in the OAE framework: FRESCO and Sabir. Both are co-design projects that created innovative educational activities through online meetings during many months, followed by in-person residencies.
Sabir is dedicated to inquiry-based learning resources for high school students, and FRESCO to playful and game-based learning activities for children (up to 12 years) within a worldwide community.
In Sabir, NAECS from Lebanon, Turkey, Spain and Morocco proposed resources which were collaboratively transformed according to an enquiry perspective and finally published on astroEDU [e.g.4]. In FRESCO, educators from ten participating countries, designed from scratch two original board games and a playful children-centered educational path. We will especially focus on evaluation – especially of the process of co-design, which results in a truly collaborative and valid effort leading to valuable shared products, a strong and persistent network and robust empowerment towards innovative education techniques.
Keywords: Astronomy, co-design, inquiry-based, game-based, playful learning
REFERENCES
1] IAU Office of Astronomy for Education, OAE Center Italy - Annual Report 2023,
https://doi.org/10.20371/INAF/TechRep/294
[2] https://edu.inaf.it/oae_italia/mirto-steam-med-co-design-process/
[3] https://astroedu.iau.org/it/
[4] https://astroedu.iau.org/en/activities/321-time-for-water-rockets/
New Perspectives in Science Education
