A Heliophysics Education and Public Outreach Effort: Training and Supporting the Trainers

摘要

Professional development of educators is recognized by the science ed-ucation profession as an essential component to foster high quality science teaching for students at all levels. In an effort to I) provide greater coherence to NASA's He-liophysics Educator Professional Development (PD) activities and 2) create a national network of Heliophysics Educators prepared to train educators across the U.S., we have brought together several existing PD activities within the Heliophysics EPO commu-nity to support a common effort—The Heliophysics Educator Ambassadors (HEA) Program. The HEA Program is led by the THEMIS/ARTEMIS mission in a collab-orative effort with IBEX, AIM, RHESSI, TIMED, MMS, and Cluster. Materials from STEREO were also part of our program. Our PD approach focuses on an initial in-depth, week-long learning experience with ongoing support for the teachers to train other teachers in their regions in the following year. The week-long PD workshop was organized by "big ideas" and built into a coherent "story" based on participants' prior knowledge, integrating Heliophysics content with advice on inquiry-based pedagogical strategies and demonstrations of the learning cycle.