Presenter – (Virtual)
Dr. Thomas Madura,
San Jose State, San Jose, California.
Abstract
There remains a nearly complete absence of research studies on teaching astronomy to students with blindness/visual impairments (B/VI). To provide astronomy education opportunities for students with B/VI and help motivate them to pursue a STEM career, we created the STEM Career Exploration Lab (CEL) project, which employs instruction via specially designed 3-D printed models, sound, and kinesthetic activities. We held nearly 20 week-long STEM CEL summer camps in twelve states over the last few years, serving over 120 high school students with B/VI. We collaborated with teachers of the visually impaired to develop our materials and gathered pre- and post-intervention data via surveys, interviews, and assessments, resulting in the largest study on astronomy instruction for students with B/VI to date. We summarize our approach, materials, and key results. We find 3-D printed models and kinesthetic activities can help increase student understanding of important concepts such as Lunar phases, structure of the Sun, constellations, the H-R diagram, star clusters, galaxies, and more. This is the first time most of these topics have been studied with students with B/VI. Our lessons and 3-D models will soon be freely available. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number 1949458.