A descriptive overview of English-language publications in the field of Astronomy Education Research, 1898 to 2022

Abstract

Discipline-based education research (DBER) takes the theories and methodologies of education research and applies them in the context of a specific discipline, in this example, astronomy. Research in the teaching and learning of astronomy has an extensive history; astronomy education research (AER), as its own separately defined field, is relatively new, stemming from the early to mid-1990s, as a separate track from physics education research (PER). By using a mixed-methods approach to textual analysis considering 2085 English language publications in the field, an order of magnitude larger than the previous largest overviews of the field, this study paints a rich picture of the landscape of AER over the timespan of a century from 1898 to 2022.

This paper finds that AER authors started regularly publishing around 1970 and took off significantly in the 1990s with journal articles (~50%) and conference proceedings (~30%) being the most common method of publication. AER, in its early era, was largely a USA endeavour dominated by ASTRO101. This has changed over time and in recent years, the USA has dropped below 50\% of the worldwide AER publication production. “Celestial Motion”, “Instrumentation/Techniques”, and “Planetary Sciences (not Exoplanets)” are the most common content foci while a significant lack of local galactic and extragalactic education research is identified. AER has been heavily focussed on “Content Knowledge”, “Affective”, and “Engagement”. It is found that most articles tend to be general reporting of approaches or results (~43%) rather than full empirical research (~36%) while there is very little theoretical or historical research in AER yet.

This overview, based on results input to an online database (istardb.org), provides a resource to researchers, educators, and other interested stakeholders allowing efficient ascertainment of previous research. This supports both researchers, allowing them to develop research questions at the cutting edge of the field, as well as practitioners, to inform their pragmatic approach based on latest research findings. We also present a set of recommendations and future outlook of the field of Astronomy Education Research.