Space Curriculum in schools

Expand space education in schools on an international level by convincing governments and schools to include space curriculum in classrooms. This idea needs to be implemented because there is a lack of space education in schools, especially in developing countries.

Students are not aware of the opportunities that exist such as remote sensing applications, satellite communication, or future space programs in their country. They will be able to apply this knowledge to solve specific problems within their community in a more efficient way, thus helping the economy of their nation.

To achieve this goal, first a pilot program needs to be launched to asses the effectiveness of the program. At least two key private schools should be found in one region of a country willing to teach this space curriculum in order to allow for competition and continuance of the education. Young, motivated student-teachers focusing in science and mathematics may be the best candidates for training. The initial training for the teachers should be held by local community professors working within space-related research to both inspire and educate the teachers along with at least one SGAC representative from the country. Educational materials are available online through space agencies’ educational outreach offices. Along with the educational materials, the program will need to get students excited about space through various activities. Some examples of these could be activities during World Space Week and Yuri’s night.

After a period of one year, the program will be reviewed. If successful, the program will be expanded to include many more schools from around the world. The participating schools will contact each other and be able to work together on a global
level, such as attending space camp, space competition projects, or using the internet to hold meetings with other schools to discuss the space programs of each country. Training can initially be done the same way for each new participating school. After the program is established, the teachers will need to receive continuing education. This can be in the form of a conference involving scientists and engineers from around
the world presenting space related research.

Resources needed:

Human Resources

To teaching the motivated teachers, it was suggested to find suitable university professors who have experience in teaching these experiments. Here it needs to be stressed that for this task it is not necessary to be the best expert of one field but instead it should be somebody who is very good at teaching children or who could explain this process in an easily understood way. If university professors cannot be recruited, alternatively teachers who have experience in science and mathematics who are willing to help acn be addressed. If this still does not work, then we could look into the opportunity of teleconferences with suitable people from other countries set up by the SGAC.

Additional Resources

The teaching resources will be acquired from ESA and NASA websites for Public Outreach and Education.

Apart from these things the pilot project isn’t supposed to need any additional financial resources.

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