The Gateway Science: a Review of Astronomy in the OECD School Curricula, Including China and South Africa

Astronomy is considered by many to be a gateway science owing to its ability to inspirecuriosity in everyone irrespective of age, culture, or general inclination towards science.Currently, where there is a global push to get more students engaged in Science,Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, astronomy provides an invaluable conduitto achieve this shift. This paper highlights the results of a study which has reviewed thepresence and extent to which astronomy has been incorporated into the school curriculumof the Organisation for Economic and Cooperative Development (OECD) membercountries. In addition, two others strong in astronomy research, China and South Africa,are included together with the International Baccalaureate Diploma science curriculum. Atotal of 52 curricula from 37 countries were reviewed. The results reveal that astronomyand its related topics are prevalent in at least one grade in all curricula. Of the 52 curricula,44 of them had astronomy-related topics in grade 6, 40 introduced astronomy-relatedtopics in grade 1, whilst 14 had astronomy-related topics explicitly mentioned in allgrades. At all year levels, celestial motion is the dominant content area; however, topicssuch as stars, physics, cosmology, and planetary science become much more frequent as aproportion towards the higher year levels. The most common keywords employed in thecurricula related to basic astronomy concepts were the Earth, Sun, Moon, and stars, allwith a high frequency of use. There is hardly any focus on Indigenous Astronomy or therole of prominent women astronomers. Relational textual analysis using Leximancerrevealed that all the major concepts could be encompassed within two broad themes:Earth and Physics. Astronomy and Physics are often seen as different domains, withastronomy content being more facts based, than based on concepts.Science Communication and Societ