Andrew Newsam: Engaging with astrophysics

Andrew (Andy) Newsam is Professor of Astronomy Education and Engagement in LJMU’s Astrophysics Research Institute (ARI) and the author of Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Universe: And Our Place Within It (2021). Since 1998, he has been at the forefront of involving the public—especially schoolchildren—in astronomy by enabling them to use professional telescopes in The Schools’ Observatory. These include LJMU’s Liverpool Telescope in the Canary Islands, the world’s largest fully robotic telescope.

Andy’s research background is in exploding stars, and he’s taken a pioneering role is shaping ARI’s public engagement work, an outstanding programme that empowers young people to do real science, covering the development of The Schools’ Observatory (TSO), the principles of care and collaboration underpinning this work, and its growing international legacy.

Working together and sharing expertise

ARI’s research spans the origin and evolution of the universe. For Andy, astronomy is inherently interconnected: “You might want to study the origin of the universe, but to do that you need to understand galaxies. And galaxies are made of stars. And to understand stars, you need to look at the gas that forms them.” ARI’s success, according to Andy, is driven by researchers’ ability to connect across research interests to build a coherent picture of the cosmos.

Andy explains that his work involves taking the research of the department as a whole and finding ways of exploring and sharing it: “Impact isn’t about what one person publishes; it’s about the narrative you create together”. This holistic thinking and passion for public engagement led to the launch of TSO over fifteen years ago, which now gives children the opportunity to connect with a network of over twenty telescopes to make observations of the night sky.

Andy and the TSO team see the value in a strategic, proactive approach that places teachers at the centre. “On my very first day at work, the lift doors opened and it was full of teachers,” he recalls. “That’s how we’ve always done this—by asking them what their challenges are. There’s no point producing an amazing resource if it won’t fit into a classroom.”

This insight shaped a co-development model for TSO. Teachers helped design resources, aligning them with the national curriculum and the realities of classroom teaching. Accompanying this strategic approach is a powerful evaluation aspect to the work which shapes their continual development: “We decide what effect we want; not just knowledge, but skills, attitudes, enthusiasm. Then we ask: how do we know if it’s working? If it doesn’t tick at least half the boxes, we don’t do it.”

Embracing evaluation

Andy and the team embed evaluation into their activity to ensure quality and impact. TSO work with external evaluators and an excellent panel of supportive teachers to help assess the impact of their work. Counting the numbers of visitors to the website, the pages they visit and the observations they request gives the team some idea of their reach, but the team are also interested in finding out the effect that their work has on people. Andy explains:

“We do know that the students, their attitudes to science, are improving, they are more confident, they are slightly more likely to choose STEM careers (although that isn't the main goal, the main goal is more confidence and a more positive attitude). We also know their knowledge is increasing. We know they have a good time, and that we're having that long term, sustained impact, and that's what really matters. But we also know there are weaknesses. Nothing is perfect, and so we can take what we learn from our evaluation, and we can use it to improve. There's a constant need to evolve.”

Scaling and engaging with care

In recent years, TSO has grown from one telescope to a global network of more than 20 robotic telescopes, thanks to a new partnership with the Dill Faulkes Educational Trust. Students can take observations from telescopes scattered worldwide and analyse their own data. In addition to this, the team have collaborated with international organisations, including NARIT in Thailand and the Travelling Telescope in Kenya, to expand their offer to young people internationally.

These collaborations offer new opportunities to tailor TSO offer to help it reach the needs of its expanding audience. Educational systems and cultural contexts differ widely. In Thailand, for example, teaching can be heavily shaped by rote learning, whilst in Kenya, learners may be encountering balancing schooling and family responsibilities from a young age, once schooling is no longer mandatory. Andy explains, “We realised we couldn’t parachute in and say, ‘Here’s our project—use it.’ We had to work with partners who understood their own cultures and curricula”. Rather than imposing models, TSO provides tools and astronomical expertise, while local partners provide essential local expertise to adapt the opportunity to their contexts. “It’s not about us knowing best. It’s about asking, is this useful for you, and what needs to change to make it so?”.

Central to Andy’s philosophy is engaging with care. Public engagement is often measured by numbers alone: how many schools visited, how many students attended. For Andy, the real task is building confidence, curiosity, and trust in science. Engaging with care are also means being attentive to inclusion. In international contexts, this ethos of care extends to respecting cultural traditions and educational norms and co-creating opportunities that resonate locally.

Looking Ahead, the future promises to be bright for Andy and The School’s Observatory. Andy’s career demonstrates how academics can develop engagement activity into a large scale, sustained, international programme with measurable educational impact. By listening to teachers, embedding evaluation, respecting cultural contexts, and insisting on engagement with care, he and the excellent TSO team have created a model that inspires curiosity and confidence in young people across the globe.