Astronomy Education: contributions of a teacher training course in a non-formal learning space

Abstract

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14244/198271991314

Astronomy is a key area in Basic Education, and it provides an understanding of everyday phenomena. However, teachers and students have difficulties understanding the concepts in this area of knowledge. Thus the importance of this research is warranted to investigate the teacher training course on “Theoretical and Methodological Foundations for Teaching and Learning in Astronomy: Educator Training” offered by the “Polo Astronomical Casimiro Montenegro Filho”, located in Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil, and evaluate the perception of participating teachers in relation to the training performed. This is a qualitative work which used questionnaires, interviews, and records of the development of the course for data collection. Data were analyzed based on content analysis following the theory of Bardin (1977) and indicate that, with respect to the astronomy content, teachers have many difficulties because they lack quality initial or continuing education. Moreover, conceptual errors and misconceptions in issues related to astronomy were detected in researchers and course participants. The data indicate difficulties in teacher education regarding the area of Astronomy, but they present suggestions to alleviate these difficulties, such as the course for teacher training in Astronomy, which proved to be an ally of the teacher for working with contents, methodologies, and potentially usable resources in the classroom.

Keywords: Astronomy education, Importance of Astronomy teaching, Teacher training in Astronomy, Non-formal learning space.