Learning science requires much more than just learning science. -- Joe Heafner
Every course you take is the most important course you take. -- Joe Heafner
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
I have begun writing an introductory astronomy textbook
tentatively entitled Learning Critical Thinking Through
Astronomy. It will differ from existing textbooks in that
it will be built entirely upon the themes of critical
thinking and inquiry. I would hope that it could be used
for one semester courses, including the first semester of
a two semester introductory astronomy sequence, both at
the high school and college levels. It will definitely be
a radical departure from the status quo for both levels,
more so for the high school level.
I have put considerable thought into the book's title. It
could just have well been titled Learning Astronomy
Through Critical Thinking as some readers may
suggest. I chose the title based on my strong feeling
that critical thinking should underly all introductory
science regardless of specific discipline. Of course, if
one puts the astronomy before the critical thinking, then
one can certainly "teach" astronomy this way, but it will
amount to no more than having students memorize terms
(many of which are incorrect to begin with) and
regurgitate them on tests. I can do better, and our
students deserve better.
The actual text will be rather easy to write as there
will not be much of it. Most of the book will consist of
activities that emphasize critical thinking and how to
apply critical thinking to basic astronomy. The
activities will also be inquiry based so students get
experience in formulating and articulating solutions to
increasingly complex questions and problems. Some of the
activities have already been written, but many still only
exist in my head. I had hoped to spend most of the summer
of 2007 writing drafts of the remaining activities, but
my request for educational leave for summer 2007 was
denied on the grounds that writing a book would be of
more use to me personally than to my students. Go figure.
I hope to have the entire project completed in time for
fall 2012 classes. That seems like a long period of time
(and it is!) but I expect to spend a tremendous amount of
time refining the activities and developing accompanying
assessment instruments, all based on actual classroom
experiences. I also anticipate developing extensive
accompanying WebAssign materials to go with
the book. Maybe five years is not enough after all!
I will not remotely consider approaching a publisher
until I have a finished product in hand, although three
have already asked me about the project. The entire book
will be peer reviewed throughout the writing and testing
processes. I intend to be very stubborn about the book's
content and approach.
As I envision it, LCTTA is one component of an overall
reform in introductory astronomy. The book will have only
six chapters, of increasing difficulty, and relying
heavily on previous chapters. Each chapter will begin
with an antetest (what others call a pretest, but I
needed a name that alphabetically precedes posttest) to
help gauge students' initial state of understanding. The
bulk of each chapter will be a series of inquiry based
activities targeting specific questions, allowing
students to learn and apply reasoning skills along the
way. Each chapter will conclude with a posttest which,
together with the antetest, gives a gain, or measure of
what has been learned. The antetests and posttests will
be multiple choice instruments. Within a chapter, some
specific activities will have their own antetest and
posttest assessments. Comprehensive tests and a final
examination, none of which will be multiple choice, will
round out the assessment package. Many questions on these
instruments represent what is nowadays considered either
"too difficult" or "too unimportant" for introductory
astronomy. I intend to demonstrate otherwise.
As the project takes shape, I will provide updates via
the LCTTA Twitter feed and text
materials (but for obvious reasons not the
assessments) on the download page. I intend to
give the presentations, in one form or another, as
papers at AAPT and NCS-AAPT meetings.
Here are currently available materials:
Activity labels are of the form CCAA where CC is the
chapter number and AA is a sequential number within the
chapter. Thus, 0101 means activity one in chapter one. I
occasionally have something like 0300, indicating
activity zero in chapter three. All titles and labels are
subject to frequent change.
• Activity 0100, Dragons (classroom tested)
• Activity 0101, What do you know? (classroom tested)
• Activity 0102, Taking Your First Steps (classroom tested)
• Activity 0103, Frameworks (classroom tested)
• Activity 0104, Scientific Validity (classroom tested)
(When completed, chapter 1 activities will be renumbered to begin with 0101 rather than 0100. Activity 0102 will soon be considerably shorter, and an additional activity on logical fallacies is in preparation.)
• Activity 0201, Shadows 1 (classroom tested)
• Activity 0202, Shadows 2 (classroom tested)
• Activity 0203, Shadows 3 (classroom tested)
(remaining chapter 2 activities coming soon)
I have several activity/chapter assessments in draft form
now, but they are not yet presentable. I will, of course,
share them with instructors but will not otherwise make
them publicly available.