Astronomy’s Discoveries and Physics Education

"Astronomy’s Discoveries and Physics Education" was the topic of the 2012 Physics Research and Education Gordon Research Conference. At this GRC a distinguished group of speakers reviewed major discoveries and technologies of astronomy and astrophysics. They and members of the astronomy and physics education research communities explored and revealed ways to use this material to enrich and enhance undergraduate physics education. As with all GRCs, advancing research frontiers was an important goal, but, in addition, this conference sought to motivate participants to create astronomy-based teaching materials that will convey to students the excitement of these frontiers and also entice physicists to use them as contexts for teaching physics in their undergraduate courses. The conference’s format - invited plenary sessions, contributed poster presentations, and generous amounts of unscheduled time for informal discussions - promoted dialogue and cross-fertilization of ideas between educators and researchers at the forefront of their fields.

The participants were a stimulating and diverse group sharing an interest in fostering the use of astronomy’s discoveries to better teach physics to undergraduates. The126 attendees included active researchers in astronomy and astrophysics -- some with well-established reputations and others early in their careers. Also attending were authors of books that present physics in a strong astronomy context, developers of curricula and educational materials, physics and astronomy education researchers, research associates (postdocs), and a remarkable group of graduate students, many of them nominated by their mentors as outstanding teaching assistants in physics or astronomy. There were faculty from two-year colleges, from four-year colleges, and from teaching and research universities; there were people involved in a variety of outreach programs in and outside the United States.