This paper provides a brief overview of the many facets of astronomy education and heritage, and how the IAU stimulates them. Activities range from training in astronomy through scientific meetings and schools for young astronomers, to using astronomy as a tool for development and for stimulating science education at school level. Communicating astronomy with the public and engaging in outreach activities with children to inspire curiosity is yet another way of how astronomy can help build a literate society and install a sense of global citizenship. The involvement of many people at all levels is key to success.

I discuss the second IAU Strategic Plan for the decade 2020–30 in the context of the overall evolution of the IAU in recent past decades. This article shows how the IAU has evolved dramatically since WW2. It is hardly recognizable in terms of its original organization and goals of a century ago. What was once an inward-looking body engaged purely with the procedures of astronomical research is now a dynamic and outward-looking organization, interacting with people, especially students and the public.

A large part of this success must be attributed to the IAU’s unique body of individual members, whose number has grown strongly in recent decades. It is the individual members, especially through the Commissions and Working Groups, who have promoted these enormous changes in the outlook of the Union. This is a model for other scientific unions to follow, and especially for the work to promote the careers of women in science, for promoting the careers of young astronomers, for bringing students into astronomy or into science in general, for helping people with disabilities to have careers in astronomy, for engaging with the public, and for helping to develop astronomy and science in developing countries.

Looking to the future, the IAU’s new Strategic Plan for the years 2020 to 2030 has five major goals for the coming decade: 1. The IAU leads the worldwide coordination of astronomy and the fostering of communication and dissemination of astronomical knowledge among professional astronomers. 2. The IAU promotes the inclusive advancement of the field of astronomy in every country. 3. The IAU promotes the use of astronomy as a tool for development in every country. 4. The IAU engages the public in astronomy through access to astronomical information and communication of the science of astronomy. 5. The IAU stimulates the use of astronomy for teaching and education at school level.

Future developments will also be engaging with the large number of amateur astronomers and helping to promote astro-tourism, which is perhaps the new frontier now growing rapidly around the world. The Strategic Plan is a blueprint for forging a social revolution in astronomy and for using astronomy as a tool for building a progressive society.

Africa has amazing potential due to natural (such as dark sky) and human resources for scientific research in astronomy and space science. At the same time, the continent is still facing many difficulties, and its countries are now recognising the importance of astronomy, space science and satellite technologies for improving some of their principal socio-economic challenges. The development of astronomy in Africa (including Ethiopia) has grown significantly over the past few years, and never before it was more possible to use astronomy for education, outreach, and development as it is now. However, much still remains to be done. This paper will summarise the recent developments in astronomy research and education in Africa and Ethiopia and will focus on how working together on the development of science and education can we fight poverty in the long term and increase our possibilities of attaining the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in future for benefit of all.

The National Schools’ Observatory is an educational platform that offers free access to all schools in the UK and Ireland to the world’s largest robotic telescope, the Liverpool Telescope. The website offers activities, resources for teaching and importantly Go Observing, the telescope interface. The website receives 1.5 million visitors a year and has registered users in 80 countries. The next generation of robotic telescopes offer a unique opportunity to build in education, that is open and accessible to all.

Youths and kids in Indonesia since almost two decades ago have been showing significant increase of interest in space sciences, especially astronomy. One of the main factors is due to the annual event of National Science Olympiad which includes Astronomy as the subject. The increasing level of public interest, especially younger generation on astronomical events, such as eclipses, moon sightings, meteor showers has been constantly observed from time to time. Being aware that Astronomy course does not included in primary and secondary education level’s curricula, teachers are somewhat desperate and are not capable to play role as clearing house in science related to space. The IAU Network of Astronomy for School Education Network (IAU-NASE) course was started in 2016 in Machung University, East Java as the pilot project in Indonesia. The course has attracted significant interest from teachers and university staff, especially in East and Middle Java Provinces. Being confident with the enthusiasm of teachers who expressed that NASE course could fulfil their needs to teach and instruct students in a very efficient way, it was organized consecutively at Bandar Lampung, Lampung Province in 2018 and 2019 (hosted by Institut Teknologi Sumatera) and in 2020 at Bandung, West Java Province (hosted by Institut Teknologi Bandung). The most recent NASE course on 21–23 August 2020, conducted in on-line mode, was attended by 74 participants, although primarily aimed at 15 School teachers, and was quite successful. The on-line observational activity turned out to be the most impressive session for the participants. We report and review four years of IAU NASE courses in Indonesia, with various documentation and brief analysis of the positive impact to the teachers and instructors attitude in teaching astronomy at secondary level of education.

In Thailand, annually there are more than 50 high school students presenting in the Thai Astronomical Conference (Student Session) and more than 20 high school students joining research activities mentored by their teachers and NARIT staff through the “Advanced Teacher Training” scheme. These opportunities offer a unique experience for students to learn various skills through proposing a research question, design research methodologies, acquire different knowledge conducting research, present and communicate their results and response to criticism. Data collection for this qualitative research study is conducted through interviews with the senior high school students who completed their research presentations, with a control group of students who did not have research-based learning experience but had other informal learning experiences such as planetarium visit, or after school astronomy activities. The study looks into students’ learning behaviour, attitude towards science, skills acquired for other subjects, interest in science careers.

This paper summarizes preliminary scientific observations from sites in Chile and Argentina from which the totality was observed on 14 December 2020 at the minimum of the solar-activity/sunspot cycle.

The Astronomical Society of the University of Carabobo (SAUC) is an activity of permanent scientific dissemination, which uses Astronomy as a tool for the scientific enculturation of the local population and non-formal teaching of Science and Technology. The SAUC base their Learning activities through the Bachelard epistemology and Morin pedagogy. Furthermore the focus of the dissemination and popularization of Astronomy must focus on knowledge for life and on overcoming epistemic obstacles between knowledge expert and knowledge taught. The SAUC’s activities are focused on holding Master Class, seminars, astronomy courses for amateurs; development of multimedia materials and the national astronomical ephemeris. The qualitative evaluation, after two decades of activities of the SAUC allows us to conclude that astronomy can affect as a motivating axis for cultural appropriation and scientific enculturation by broad sectors of the local community, regardless of age, gender, race, socio-economic activity, or ideological-cultural diversity.

This communication introduces two cases of the use of astronomy as a motivating context to interdisciplinary science education with emphasis on modeling activities. Firstly, a dedicated software, called SalsaJ, allows students to reproduce the same data analysis as made by astronomers. The case of exoplanet detection will be used as an exemple. Secondly, bodies of learners are considered to model movements of planets with a Human Orrery (a Spatio-Temporal Map of the Solar System), connecting thus mathematics, physics, geography and arts.

Active learning methodologies have been used to teach science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics at higher education institutions in several countries. We report the results of using peer instruction in an Astronomy undergraduate course taught at a research university in Brazil. The course syllabus covered topics on astrometry and celestial mechanics at an introductory level and was offered in the second semester of 2018. In order to better investigate the effect of the interaction among students, we have asked them to talk to their peers after the first poll regardless of the outcome. We have then analyzed the outcomes of all peer instruction polls, before and after student interaction, as well as the course evaluation questionnaires answered by the students at the end of the semester. From these analyses we were able to establish an approximation between peer instruction and some key elements of Vygotsky’s social interactionist theory.

Since January 2020, the International Astronomical Union has an Office of Astronomy for Education (OAE). The OAE, which joins the previously existing IAU Offices for Astronomy for Development (OAD), Astronomy Outreach (OAO) and Young Astronomers (OYA) is hosted at Haus der Astronomie, a center for astronomy education and outreach operated by the Max Planck Society in Heidelberg, Germany. This contribution outlines the mission of the OAE, the current state of the office, its background, mission and collaborative structure, as well as the activities that have already started or are planned for the future.

The IAU Strategic Plan 2020–2030 identifies five goals to guide the Union’s activities through this decade: to lead the global coordination of professional astronomy, to promote inclusive advancement of astronomy, to promote astronomy as a tool for development, to promote public engagement in astronomy, and, to stimulate using astronomy for primary and secondary education. Education permeates through all these goals – professional development, informal education and formal education for the very young through to the PhD level. For the IAU’s Division C, Education, Outreach and Heritage, the plan provides the foundation for supporting teachers worldwide who use astronomy as a tool for teaching science, the humanities and the arts, to promote astronomy education research, to engage life-long learners, and to engage everyone with our collective history and heritage to understand the Universe. I describe Division C’s remit, where we are now in this 3rd decade of the 21st century.

With this roundtable we wished to discuss about different topics related to research, innovation, scientific literacy and inclusion in Astronomy education, putting together the expertise of educators from all around the world. The present paper includes the introduction to the roundtable prepared by the chairs of the session as well as the contributions from several of the participants.

At any stage of education, the students begin to study astrophysics with previous incorrect preconceptions that impedes the understanding of new scientific notions. It is a waste of time to add new concepts on a “weak basis”. In this case the duty of any teacher is to spend more time to carefully remove preconceptions from students’ minds. In the present article there are reviewed some of the most common preconceptions of the students when they are learning astrophysics with the right solutions to break them down using some active teaching methods, especially experiments and models.

For over 30 years, the MCE Sky Pedagogy Research Group (Italy) and Plaza del Cielo Complex (Argentina) had been offering teachers and educators many projects and activities related to training and teaching/learning processes having the sky and the study of the multiple relationships of humans with the sky as a focus of research. We have developed didactical methods based on direct experience, naked-eye activities, cooperation and exchange of experiences. The pandemic forced us to suspend the in-person meetings, which are at the center of our research in the Teaching of Astronomy, so we decided to react constructively exploring virtuality designing the course “Meet the skies of the world”. Two courses where developed from June to September 2020, each one having 4 virtual meetings of 2,5 hours each, with more than a hundred participants from different countries. A Level II course will be developed during the first semester of 2021.

Over the past decade the free and open-source cross-platform desktop planetarium program Stellarium has gained not only most of the computational accuracy requirements for today’s amateur astronomers, but also unique capabilities for specialized applications in cultural astronomy research and astronomical outreach. A 3D rendering module can put virtual reconstructions of human-made monuments in their surrounding landscape under the day and night skies of their respective epochs, so that the user can investigate and experience the potential connection of architecture, landscape, light and shadow, and the sky. It also played a key role in an exhibition about Stonehenge in Austria.

Exchangeable “skycultures” allow the presentation of constellation patterns and mythological figures of non-Western cultures. Stellarium’s multi-language support allows community-driven translation of the whole program, which predestines its use in education also in minority languages.

Stellarium is developed by a very small core team, but is open to external contributions.

The growth of the Internet has facilitated the easy availability of resources for teaching astronomy and doing astronomy outreach. This overview concentrates on resources that are free or open access. Basic teaching materials like textbooks and lab activities can be found, along with higher level items such as concept inventories and interactive instructional tools. There is also a small but growing research literature on astronomy instruction to be found online. Astronomers engaged in outreach can have access to large image collections, tools for doing citizen science, and planetarium apps. These resources are of enormous value to both novice and seasoned instructors, and anyone conveying the excitement of astronomy to a public audience.

Galaxy Forum (GF) South America 2020, was held virtually on December 8, 2020 on the opening eve of IAU 367 by the International Lunar Observatory Association (ILOA Hawai’i) with the support of the Instituto de Tecnologías en Detección y Astropartículas (ITeDA, CNEA-CONICET-UNSAM) and IAU. Galaxy Forum is an education and outreach program sponsored by ILOA, an interglobal enterprise incorporated in Hawaii as a non-profit organization to expand human knowledge of the Cosmos through observation from our Moon and to participate in internationally cooperative lunar base build-out.

As a IAU-367 associated event, Galaxy Forum featured comments by Dr. Beatriz Garcia and presentations by ILOA Director Steve Durst (ILOA Hawai’i, USA), Marcelo Colazo (CONAE, Argentina); César Gonzalez García (CSIC, Spain); Li Geng (NAOC, China); Santiago Paolantonio (Córdoba Observatory, Argentina) and Margarita Safonova (IIA, India). In this contribution, the overview of the contributions permits an approach to the GF interests.

Though there are a variety of astronomy sonification software packages, none of them shown high granularity evidence of having been designed with a user-centric focus. SonoUno is a sonification package created taking into account the user from the beginning, and incorporates end user contact feedback for continuous improvements to the software. In this contribution, SonoUno user cases are presented with the soft corresponding updates, as well as the first description of a recent web page development.

The SciAccess Initiative (“SciAccess”) is dedicated to advancing disability inclusion and diversity in STEM education, outreach, and research. In this paper, the authors present an overview of accessible STEM programs run by the SciAccess Initiative, including an annual conference, international working group, and space science mentorship program for blind youth. Recommendations for creating accessible mentorship programs and networking events, both virtually and in-person, are detailed so that these inclusion-focused efforts may be replicated by others.