Astronomy Education for the Formation of the Citizen Scientist: Meteor Analysis in High School

The interest of the population and students of basic education by topics encompassing astronomy has eventually been aroused mainly when discoveries about the cosmos or astronomical phenomena occur. However, this interest is not always encouraged, leaving the student unmotivated to learn about the subject. Citizen science has been a new form of interaction between citizens and professional scientists, and more specifically in this project, astronomers. With this, an opportunity to engage with science and the scientific method is provided to the population. Therefore, this research aimed to perform a content analysis of academic bibliographic production on meteors, astronomy teaching and citizen science. Based on the indicators emerging from this analysis, we present a proposal for the formation of high school students aiming at the development of scientific methodology skills for the analysis of photographic records of meteors. It is concluded that the importance of this project is to show how much astronomy teaching can contribute to the development of students’ skills, both cognitive and socio-emotional, arousing interest for meaningful learning, relating new information to be acquired with previous knowledge that the student already has; in addition to encouraging shared learning, where they help each other as a team and collaborate with professional astronomers, according to the objectives of citizen science, strengthening, therefore, the vision and integrity of Science and scientists.