Context

Promoting Life Long Learning strategies for scientific issues is much more difficult, if compared to other subject areas (e.g. humanistic subjects, business management, language learning) as when the compulsory educational pathways end up, those that are not specifically interested in science are much more likely to abandon completely the subject.

Moreover teachers, the key actors of the promotion of scientific awareness, have to face a major challenge coming from the fact that the speed of the development of scientific knowledge is constantly increasing.

Among the scientific fields, Chemistry is identified as an exemplary Case Study as it is recognised as one of the most difficult subjects.

Objectives

The Chemistry is All Around Network project aims at stimulating the interest of students towards the study of Chemistry.

This general aim will be achieved through these specific objectives:

• Enhance the interest and stimulate the active learning process of students of all educational levels, concerning Chemistry, by sharing the most effective ICT based practical experiences that promote an interactive and amusing approach to the understanding of Chemistry.
• Present Chemistry under a renewed and positive attitude, by giving evidence to how it affects our everyday life and how it can contribute to the explanation of many phenomenon that people encounter everyday.
• Create a Network among different educational institution for the exchange and comparison of experiences and knowledge in order to develop and exploit a new “language” to be used to fill in the gap between the world of scientist and researchers and school teachers.

Target Groups

The main target groups of the project are:

• school teachers directly involved in the project activities
• scientific experts in chemistry to be involved in an active cooperation with teachers

Activities

The project main activities are:

A) Research Activity

Involvement of school teachers and chemistry scientific experts in a joint effort to share information about the national and international state of art regarding the main obstacles that affect the interest of students for Chemistry and the initiatives, methodological approaches, didactical solutions that demonstrated to be effective in answering to the identified barriers. The research activity focus on 3 main subject areas:

• Students’ Motivation
• Teacher Training
• Successful Experiences and Good Practices.

Result

• Creation of a database of reviews of publications on teaching chemistry
• Production of papers presenting the actual state of the art and the foreseen future perspectives of teaching chemistry

B) Collection of Teaching Resources

The aim of the activity is to provide school teachers with existing resources and materials (particularly online sources) to teach Chemistry in a more innovative, attractive and interactive approach, focusing on the exploitation of ICT and the valorisation of enquiry based methods and solutions.

Results

Availability of a collection of reviewed and assessed teaching resources.

C) Networking activities

Promotion of a knowledge sharing experience among teachers and scientific experts on the theme of strategies and solutions for promoting the learning of Chemistry by making it more attractive to students through the use of ICTs and the exploitation of enquiry based teaching methods.

Results

• Organisation of workshops and virtual meetings involving teachers and experts
• Assessment of publications, papers and teaching resources available on the Portal

D) Organisation of Transnational Conferences

Organisation of transnational conferences to present the results achieved by the project, in each of the 3 thematic areas identified as most important in order to understand the main obstacles that affect the interest of students for Chemistry: motivation of students, teacher training and successful experiences and good practices in the field.

Results

• Organisation of 6 transnational conferences