Overview, Purpose, and Goals of the ASC Curriculum

As a part of their Education & Public Outreach efforts, a consortium of NAI teams funded the development of a curriculum to share the excitement of NASA's astrobiology research with middle and high school students. This curriculum, Astrobiology in the Secondary Classrooms (ASC), allows students and teachers to see the connections among concepts in physics, biology, chemistry, geoscience, astronomy, mathematics, and ethics through hands-on activities.
The ASC development project began in 2003 and is now entering the field-testing phase via professional development workshops and other routes of dissemination. Using a network called the Minority Institution Astrobiology Collaborative, ASC seeks to include astrobiology-related activities in classrooms that contain high numbers of students historically underrepresented in the sciences. A critical partner during the field-testing phase has continued to be the NASA Science, Engineering, Mathematics and Aerospace Academy (SEMAA). Partnerships with SEMAA sites across the nation allow for built-in diversity when field-testing and developing the ASC curriculum both in formal and informal educational settings.


ASC Tackles the Current Problems in Science Education

Addressing curriculum issues including:

Minimizing classroom limitations such as:
  1. Lack of connectedness among subjects
  2. Lack of coherent framework to discuss the nature of science
  3. Public school curriculum that is a “Mile-wide & inch-deep”
  4. Limited access to cutting-edge technology tools and current scientific data
  1. Lack of materials
  2. Topics engaging all students
  3. Teacher content knowledge
  4. Need for differentiated lessons in diverse groups
  5. Interaction with scientists as peers and role-models