“Are there living organisms on other planets? Why is the sky blue? Why are the big planets so far away from the Sun?” These are some of the questions that students asked when astro-science ambassadors visited schools in Tanzania.
UNAWE Tanzania started with the astro-science ambassador programme in June 2014, with the aim to integrate astronomy in the curriculum of Tanzanian schools to improve the development of science learning and teaching.
In July 2015, 16 new astro-science ambassadors were trained to do outreach activities with students and teachers in the Arusha region of North-Tanzania.
Since the programme started, the ambassadors visited 24 schools, thereby reaching around 48 teachers and 1000 students. Astro-science ambassadors help in the establishment of science clubs, they introduce effective ways to use telescopes as a teaching resource, and they use astronomy to demonstrate the importance of scientific concepts in the curriculum.
During a school visit, the ambassadors give a short presentation on how astronomy relates to other science subjects, followed by hand-on demonstrations to the students and teachers. Whenever possible, the ambassadors organise stargazing sessions in the evening.
“Most of the teachers and students of the visited schools didn’t know how to effectively use astronomy concepts to awake curiosity to learn science in the classroom or science clubs,” says Mponda Malozo of UNAWE Tanzania. “But since the beginning of this programme, students have been asking more and more questions and teachers have felt the need to enhance the understanding of the things they thought they knew best. The programme improved the teaching and understanding of science subjects for everyone.”
In the future UNAWE Tanzania wants to train more ambassadors to spread the astro-science skills to more parts of the country and thereby reaching more schools.
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