Khagol Bulletin # 135 (Jan 2025) - ENG

| 21 | KHAG L | No. 135 - JANUARY 2025 Office of Astronomy for Education (OAE) Center - India The OAE Center India funded three teacher training workshops from October to December 2024, at Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu, Nainital, Uttarakhand, and Nehru Planetarium, Mumbai, Maharashtra. The workshops benefited a number of teachers, and all of them included pedagogical as well as practical aspects of teaching astronomy in schools. The office printed several sets of three astronomy books for school students: ' Big Ideas in Astronomy '(in English and Hindi), 'Khagol Goshti' (Astronomy Tales - in Marathi), and 'Jantar Mantar' (Historic Indian Observatory - in English, Hindi, and Marathi). These books, together with user guides for teachers on how to use these books in their classes effectively, have been distributed in about four hundred schools. The office also completed an English translation of the book ' Khagol Goshti ', which is nowat the vetting stage. Our team performed a secondary analysis of the baseline survey on Astronomy education in order to assess state-to- state differences and similarities within India. We observed substantial disparities in performance across states. The insights gained offer important implications for comparing state-level teaching standards and guiding the development of a more effective national astronomy curriculum. These results were presented at the epiSTEME-10 conference held at HBCSE, Mumbai, and the summary of this work will be pub l i shed i n t he con f e r ence proceedings. Finally, the OAE center India also helped in the organisation of the annual SHAW IAU workshop this year, with members acting to be part of the SOC of the Astronomy Education Research part as well as in the technical organisation of theworkshop. Malaviya Mission Teacher Training Centre Astronomy Centre for Educators National Education Policy – 2020: Orientation and Sensitisation The Malaviya Mission Teacher Training Centre (MMTTC) of the Astronomy Centre for Educators (ACE) conducted a two-week online capacity-building programme on the National Education Policy – 2020: Orientation and Sensitisation. The p r og r amme was schedu l ed f r om November 15 to November 30, 2024. It was open to faculty members, research scholars, research associates, post- doctoral fellows, demonstrators, and tutors from all higher educational institutions. About 30–35 participants attended the sessions every day. The programme comprised two sessions each on eight NEP themes, by prominent speakers with vast experience in their respective fields. The themes and the speakerswere as follows: • Skill Development - The speakers were N V Varghese (NIEPA) and Narayan Sharma (CottonUniversity). • Research and Development - The speakers were Bhupendra N Goswami (Cotton University) and Narayan Rangaraj (IIT Bombay). • Ho l i st i c and Mu l t i d i sc i p l i nary • Indian Knowledge Systems - The speaker was Malhar A Kulkarni (IIT Bombay). • Higher Education and Society - The speakers were Dhruba J Saikia (IUCAA) and Nilratan Shende (EAGL Livelihood Foundation).