School Physicists Astronomical Research at Kent (SPARK)

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The overarching aim of this pilot project is to investigate whether school teachers and pupils could be engaged at a suitable level to develop and deliver real research projects with the Centre for Astrophysics and Planetary Science (CAPS) in the School of Physical Sciences (SPS) at the University of Kent. In order to have students developing and delivering real observational astronomy research projects we have come up with a series of objectives over a two year period which should lead to our observatory being used by schools to conduct their own research. Firstly this project aims to produce a tool kit which will enable schools to develop research level projects to undertake at the University of Kent's Beacon Observatory which is equipped with a 17" optical Astrograph, a 4k x 4k CCD and an optical filter set. The tool kit resources will consist of a jargon free explanation of the capabilities of the telescope along with examples of projects that could be done and possible targets. This will be produced by one of our postgraduate students who has extensive experience with the observatory and who also acts as a student ambassador for various outreach events hosted by SPS. The resources will be developed in collaboration with a small focus group of teachers.To investigate the success of the toolkit some previously prepared curriculum linked project material will be introduced into three schools, with the idea that they would choose targets and plan observations. Schools targeted will be co-ed partner schools of the University of Kent based in areas of low socioeconomic status, to target students with low science capital. The schools will be visited by academics outlining the project and invited to bring a teacher and up to 10 students to spend the night (possibly two) at the University, attending workshops and running observations to collect data themselves. They will then be supported in the analysis of the data once back at their school. Once these initial projects have been run all the participants will work to develop a strategy by which schools could confidently come up with their own projects.The secondary aim of this project will then be to evaluate the impact of the project on the students, teachers and academics to help guide our future public engagement activities. Key questions to be answered will be:1. Has a suitable strategy/set of resources been developed to allow teachers and students to design an observational astronomy project to be carried out using the Beacon Observatory2. Has this project improved teachers and students knowledge of observational astronomy and the work of an astrophysicist3. Has this project contributed to the academic research of CAPS