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IAU National Astronomy Education Coordinator Teams (NAEC Teams)


The OAE is tasked by the IAU with creating a worldwide network of National Astronomy Education Coordinators (NAECs), similar to the network of National Outreach Coordinators (NOCs) of the IAU Office of Astronomy Outreach. Each NAEC team should consist of up to five experts in astronomy education. If possible, experts on both primary and secondary education, as well as on astronomy education research, should be included. NAEC Teams should be diverse both in terms of gender as well as in terms of your country or territory’s geographic regions, ethnicities and languages, where applicable.

Each NAEC team is meant to help the OAE document and analyze how astronomy is used in teaching in its country, identify existing relevant actions, organize professional development for teachers and develop readily accessible and high-quality educational material tailored to the specific needs of the country or territory, and for specific groups and school levels. Each NAEC team will be the interface between the OAE and the astronomy education community in its country or territory, particularly creating a link from the IAU to teachers interested in astronomy and in using astronomy as a tool for teaching science in primary and secondary school.

An important part of the mission of the OAE is to support the professionalisation of astronomy education activities and resources worldwide, from introducing active learning techniques to establishing standards for evaluation. In order for this to be a community process, we need the NAECs both to represent their national communities' specific needs when it comes to astronomy education and to disseminate our common results in their communities.

NAEC team members should be chosen so that, between them, they should be thoroughly familiar with all aspects of astronomy education in their country or territory, and should be in touch with all major astronomy education stakeholders, and able to disseminate information from the OAE to their country or territory’s astronomy education community. At a later stage, the NAEC teams are also meant to serve as OAE’s liaison with the country’s curriculum experts, as well as with officials involved in administering the country or territory’s educational institutions, as one of the OAE’s aims is to further the inclusion of astronomy in national curricula and, where appropriate, work with the local community in proposing modifications of the national curricula and schools’ syllabi.

Interested in becoming a NAEC?

If you are interested in becoming a member of a NAEC Team, please tell us! In order to do so, please fill out the following NAEC nomination form:
NAEC application form (Word file 18.63 kB)
Once you are done, send it back to us via e-mail (oae​atastro4edu.org).

How the decision is made will depend on whether or not your country or territory is an IAU member country, and if it is, whether or not it has a National Committee for Astronomy (NCA). But as long as you have mailed your nomination to us directly, we will make sure it reaches the appropriate decision-makers.

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