Community of Astronomy Teaching Scholars (CATS) - National Implementation Program for Learner-Centered Astronomy Teaching

天文学（11）天文学教学学者（CATS）计划的社区是一个影响深远的，社区建设的努力，重点是通过刺激，传播和制度化的创新和有效的方法来教学和学习本科天文学课程的背景下创建和动员教学学者的社区。该项目采用了最佳做法和建立从几个成熟的阶段I和阶段II类项目，开发了强大的教学方法和资源，通过研究，以吸引学生的智力和提高学生的理解力的评价结果。这些项目产生了学术出版物，会议演示，多日教学研讨会，以及一个快速增长的热情的教师和学生社区。CATS计划的目标是：（1）增加接受并成功实施以学习者为中心的天文学教学策略的教师数量;（2）增加将其教学视为学术奋进的教师数量，使他们成为一个课堂研究人员的社区，系统地研究他们自己课堂内外的教学和学习;以及（3）通过让CATS参与者参与社区范围的、国家一级的合作研究项目的实施和出版，扩大关于教学和学习的文献。实现这些目标的基本战略是创建一个全国性的一系列提高认识和实施专业发展讲习班;举办虚拟和面对面的会议，讨论如何将教学作为一项以研究为指导的学术奋进;领导和协调关于教学和学习的合作研究项目;以及彻底的形成性和总结性评价工作。这些活动将有目的地吸引天文学教师作为课堂研究人员的社区，他们模拟最佳教学实践，使用研究作为改进教学的指南，并合作对创新教学的有效性进行系统调查。该计划的智力价值围绕着建立一个可持续的基础设施，以增加教学和学习的学术知识基础，使教师参与进行和出版课堂研究。更广泛的影响是显着改善本科课程，这是STEM劳动力管道和国家教师准备议程的一部分。

Astronomy (11) The Community of Astronomy Teaching Scholars (CATS) Program is a far-reaching, community-building effort focused on creating and mobilizing a community of teaching scholars created through stimulating, disseminating, and institutionalizing innovative and effective approaches to teaching and learning in the context of undergraduate astronomy courses. This project employs best practices and established evaluation results from several mature phase I-like and phase II-like projects that have developed powerful instructional approaches and resources shown through research to engage students intellectually and to improve student understanding. These projects have generated scholarly publications, conference presentations, multi-day teaching workshops, and a rapidly-growing community of enthusiastic faculty and students. The goals for the CATS Program are to: (1) Increase the number of faculty who embrace and successfully implement learner-centered astronomy teaching strategies; (2) Increase the number of faculty who treat their teaching as a scholarly endeavor by enabling and engaging them as a community of classroom researchers systematically studying teaching and learning in their own classrooms and beyond; and (3) Expand the literature on teaching and learning by engaging CATS participants in conducting and publishing community-wide, national-level, collaborative research projects. The underlying strategy to meet these goals is to create a national series of awareness building and implementation professional development workshops; hosting both virtual and face-to-face conferences on how to approach teaching as a scholarly endeavor that is guided by research; leading and coordinating collaborative research projects on teaching and learning; and thorough formative and summative evaluation efforts. These activities will purposefully engage astronomy faculty as a community of classroom researchers who model best teaching practices, use research as a guide to improving instruction, and collaboratively conduct systematic investigations on the effectiveness of innovative teaching. The intellectual merit of this program surrounds building a sustainable infrastructure to increase the scholarly knowledge base on teaching and learning by engaging teaching faculty in conducting and publishing classroom research. The broader impacts are to dramatically improve undergraduate courses that are part of the STEM workforce pipeline and national teacher preparation agenda.