A new international agenda for astronomy education research

A good deal of the research on astronomy education is based on comprehensive summary reviews of scholarly production revealing trends and gaps in the area. Motivated by the recent reform of the IAU Commission Reform, we are proposing projects related to the Commission 46 and more specifically to the Working Group on Theory and Methods in Astronomy Education. The goal of this work is to present a new international agenda for research on astronomy education. In a general way we intend to encourage efforts to increase the scholarly production in the area and, at the same time, encourage summary reviews of what has been published in several regions of the globe. These reviews refer to the various forms of production of this research, published in theses dissertations, conference proceedings and journal articles. We believe that there is already sufficient production and the more complete surveys must reveal a ``hidden'' material that may be available locally and internationally. Much of the work in these venues is certainly not known by researchers in Astronomy, not only because they belong to a different area of theoretical and methodological framework, but also because they are related to teaching in Physics and general sciences, rather than Astronomy specifically. This kind of research is largely invisible because it occurs in very specific different contexts of production, culture, curriculum, materials and application in schools with local teachers and the general public. To improve the present situation, international events are proposed in various continents seeking to encourage surveys of already published materials, their studies and seeking also new key lines of research. As concrete examples, scholarly reviews and studies conducted in Brazil and other countries are shown. We believe that such actions should raise the visibility of authors and institutions and enable studies of state-of-the-art showing trends and gaps, allowing future developments and collaborations.