• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.42 no.2
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• pp.289-309
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• 2022

In recent years, astronomy has been snowballing: including Higgs particle discovery, black hole imaging, extraterrestrial exploration, and deep space observation. Students are also largely interested in astronomy. The purpose of this study is to discover what needs to be improved in the current astronomy curriculum in light of recent scientists' researches and discoveries. We collected keywords from all papers published from 2011 to 2020 in four selected journals-ApJ, ApJL, A&A, and MNRAS- by R package to examine research trends. The curriculum contents were extracted by synthesizing the in-service teachers' coding results in the 2015 revised curriculum document of six subjects (Science, Integrated Science, Earth Science I, Earth Science II, Physics II, Convergence Science). The research results are as follows: first, keywords that appear steadily in astronomy are 'galaxies: formation, galaxy: active, star: formation, accretion, method: numerical.' Second, astronomy curriculum includes all areas except the 'High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena' area within the common science curriculum learned by all students. Third, it is necessary to review the placement of content elements by subject and grade and to consider introducing new concepts based on astronomy research keywords. This is an exploratory study to compare curriculum and the field of scientific research that forms the basis of the subject. We expect to provide implications for a future revision of the astronomy curriculum as a primary ground investigation.