Welcome to ABATAC
Contemporary science curricula contain units and astronomy concepts, as they help students to understand science and way the world works. In Greece astronomy concepts are contained in a special unit of the preschool curriculum under the heading "Planet Earth and Space". Educational research has already detected that teachers hold many misconceptions about astronomical concepts, and they are not satisfactorily trained to deliver astronomy lessons in their classrooms.
The ABATAC project aims at developing a blended training approach to learning astronomy for teachers and student-teachers of the early years and the early primary years. The project team will develop an online course that will help participants study astronomy and the pedagogical content knowledge of astronomy following their own individual pace of learning. In addition, the team will create a set of art-based face-to-face seminars that will challenge teachers to reflect on and change their perceptions, stances, attitudes and preferences in teaching methodology.
Participants who enroll in the ABATAC course will have to proceed with astronomy lesson planning and classroom implementations and the project team will monitor these in order to assess the overall impact of the training. The project team will collaborate on every level of this project. The Department of Physics of the University of Crete will support the Department of Preschool Education to identify the basic knowledge which a teacher must acquire in order to develop a good understanding of basic astronomy concepts. In its turn, the Department of Preschool Education will take the lead in the development the pedagogical content knowledge for teaching astronomy, the training methodology, and the training materials (online and face-to-face training).
The two Departments will jointly monitor the classroom implementations, they will evaluate the training process and assess the training results. They will also share the responsibility of the dissemination of the project results at national and international level.
Data collection will take place in the context of monitoring the project implementation and these will be analyzed with a view to improving the ABATAC course.
ABATAC project is the result of a unique collaboration between the Department of Preschool Education and the Department of Physics of the University of Crete and it is funded by the University of Crete. It is an interdisciplinary collaboration which is set to serve as an example for future interdisciplinary projects.