K-12 Astronomy Education Conference in Asia

NARIT News

K-12 Astronomy Education Conference in Asia

K-12 Astronomy Education Conference 2025 (K-12 AstroAsia 2025) concludes with a resounding success. Over 137 participants from 17 countries from Asia and beyond Asia united over a four-day conference between September 1-4 of 2025. This conference is meant to serve as a platform where Asian educators can share our unique experiences, challenges, struggles and solutions as we seek to improve the ways in which we educate the future generations of Asia.

The first Astronomy Education Conference held in Asia was first hosted by National Central University (NCU) in Taoyuan in 2023. After the first successful conference in 2023, it was agreed that the National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand (NARIT) will host the next conference in Chiang Mai in 2025. The field of Astronomy in Thailand has been progressing at a rapid pace since the founding of NARIT 16 years ago. Now, Thailand is one of the few countries with astronomy as a separate subject in the mandatory curriculum and has witnessed expansive growth of both formal and informal education across the board. Under this K-12 Astronomy Education Workshop 2025 in Chiang Mai, it is the hope that astronomy teachers all over Asia and beyond could come together to discuss and share their latest advancement in the ways in which we can better educate students in astronomy.

The four-day workshop features 9 keynote lectures, 34 oral presentations, 38 poster presentations, 7 workshops and 1 public talk. Over 137 participants from 17 countries have shared their passion in astronomy education over the conference’s duration. The participants come from various regions of Asia as well as 5 other countries outside Asia.

Keynote lectures features experts from many disciplines in the field of Astronomy Education, from NARIT’s own unique way of engaging with public through close-knit relationship with Thai teachers, International Training Centre in Astronomy under the auspices of UNESCO (ITCA), Office of Astronomy for Education (OAE) of the International Astronomical Union (IAU), IAU Commission C1 (Astronomy Education & Development), International Planetarium Society, Institute for the Promotion of Teaching Science and Technology (IPST), along with experts in the field of astronomy education featuring unique challenges from their countries such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Nepal.

Oral presentations feature many unique ways in which educators around the world choose to engage with their audience. How do we engage with students in the classroom, how to adapt foreign style of instruction to fit Asian cultural context, challenges in curriculum, using various means of media to provide better instructions, how to adapt AI to modern classroom, are among the sample of topics being discussed during K-12AstroAsia2025. Many foreign participants were impressed to find that not only many Thai teachers attended the conference, but also many students engaging in many astronomy education activities as part of their extracurricular activities who were presenting their work in poster sessions.

The workshop sessions featured many hands-on and practical activities ready to be applied, which was widely popular by the participants. Participants learn to use various hands-on and low-cost material to engage students in learning about the orbit of venus, size of the universe, using Parkes observatory for real-time exploration of pulsars, seeing beyond what the visible light allow, making a low-cost planetarium dome using cardboards or crafts activities to do in a cloudy night.

Topic of Astronomy Curriculum was widely popular, as many countries were trying to develop or improve their own astronomy curriculum. Many participants were eager to chair and learn about each other’s astronomy curriculum. Particularly many are eager to learn more about Thailand’s national astronomy curriculum, as it is the only country in the conference and among a few in the world with Astronomy as a dedicated subject in secondary school.

As the host, the National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand (NARIT), also features our many engagements with the public. In the past 16 years, NARIT has grown together with the public to raise astronomy and science awareness in its populace as the field of Astronomical Research in the country began to take shape. Many of NARIT’s flagship programs were discussed such as the teacher training workshop, 10” dobsonian distribution project, Conference on Astronomy Activities in School (CAAS), Thai Astronomical Conference (student session) - TACs, NARIT Youth Camp (NYC), along with ITCA’s attempt in expanding this to international stage such as the ASEAN Astronomy Camp (AAC), and ITCA teacher training workshop.

As an added bonus, participants were also granted the opportunities for exclusive tour around NARIT’s facilities and national infrastructure in Astronomical Research such as the 40 meters Thai National Radio Observatory (TNRO) and 2.4 meters Thai National Observatory (TNO), the largest radio and optical telescopes in Southeast Asia, respectively. Through the tours, participants were able to witness firsthand how NARIT fulfilled its mission to use Astronomy as a platform to push forward human capacity and technology development, with science outreach and public science awareness at the forefront of the whole strategy to propel Thai society forward.

The conference concluded with an overwhelmingly positive note as participants shared their renewed passion and inspirations as a result of the experience during the conference. More importantly, the story of the Astronomy Education conference in Asia does not end here, as many participants expressed interests to host the future K-12AstroAsia and talks are already underway to seek ways in which we can improve this Asia experience to become the envy of the international stage in the near future.