Education in Astronomy Through English Programs

The author is a member of an educational program funded by Kyushu University called “Developing a New Education Program in Studying Astronomy”. The program aims to promote basic knowledge of Science and Technology and refine the social interaction of students. His activities in the 2011 academic year included using a textbook on astrophysics with his English class, arranging a class meeting on astronomy in the Kyushu University summer program held at Pembroke College at the University of Cambridge, and a talk on Tanabata in a public shopping mall event in Japan. The first topic of the paper reports on the use of an astrophysics textbook “A Briefer History of Time” （2005 Shohakusha edition） written by Stephen W. Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, in the author’s English class. The results of the questionnaires collected from the participants showed that although the textbook was a little difficult for non-science majors, the participants, students of physics, found it to be worth intensive reading at an early stage of their English curriculum and that it increased their interest in astrophysics. The second topic of the paper is the lecture on astronomy delivered at the summer program for Kyushu University students at Pembroke College at the University of Cambridge. Included in the program was a science course with one class meeting on astronomy, in which students listened to a talk in an planetarium on constellations and famous astronomers in the history of Cambridge University. This was followed by a visit to the Institute of Astronomy and an old university observatory. The final part of the paper reports on a talk, open to the general public, which the author gave in Japanese under the title of “The Starry Sky and Imagination: in the Case of Tanabata” at a shopping mall event sponsored by the Astronomical Society of Japan. This paper is aimed to contribute to the development of education in Astronomy at Kyushu University