Research Meets School

Teacher Training on the Supervision of Scientific Propaedeutical Student Papers and on Particle Physics

Together with the universities in Potsdam, Bochum, and Cologne, we offer free training and exchange opportunities for teachers. The online events aim to enable teachers to guide students as they write research papers/seminar papers and to facilitate the communication between the university and the teacher on a technical and educational level. The events feature different formats, while emphasizing the inclusion of the teachers’ school expertise so that their students will be even more prepared for scientific work at the university in the future. As part of the Dr. Hans Riegel Awards, the project is geared towards teachers who themselves also supervise research or seminar papers on a STEM subject. 

The training measures focus on the following areas:

•   Application of the knowledge about school performance based on the evaluation through the Dr. Hans Riegel Awards

•   Discussion of the expectations of new university students and required skills

•   Optimization of the learning units required to teach the scientific propaedeutical content

•   Early communication on excellent school performance and the corresponding university support programs

•   Insights into current university research for teachers

Information on partners and events:

Together with the Professional School of Education, the Academy of the Ruhr University Bochum (RUB) offers three online seminars through the RUB Teachers Academy. These seminars provide teachers in mathematical and natural science subjects with training and optimal preparation to support school students in writing papers in mathematics and physics class. The seminars address general and subject-specific aspects regarding the identification of the subject, scientific work and quality criteria, assistance during the writing process, and the development of a scientific writing style. The events are held from December to February 2021 in the afternoons in 150-minute units each. We start all events together using a multidisciplinary format before beginning with the subject-specific part (mathematics and physics respectively) after about an hour.

Once the current edition has been evaluated, the program is continued in the following school year.

You will find more information about the program here.

With their research papers, school students learn the first steps of scientific work. Both students and teachers are faced with the challenge of finding an interesting topic and a relevant issue in everyday school life. At the same time, they have to select a methodology and analyze suitable data, and the basics of scientific writing, research, and work have to be taught. It's a process that can be challenging for everyone involved. One way to meet this challenge is through the collaboration between universities and schools.
 

The free training series "Science@School" is heading into its next edition! The series is sponsored by the Dr. Hans Riegel Foundation and takes place as part of the school network in the ZfL Center for Teacher Education. Under the motto "Inter- and transdisciplinary cooperation at school", we focus on teaching scientific methodology over two days. Based on the issue of climate change, we will examine and discuss how we can facilitate and shape interdisciplinary cooperation in student research papers. The training is aimed at (trainee) teachers and teacher candidates in the STEM subjects on secondary school level II.


You will find more information about the program here.

Particle physics is one of the most exciting research topics in basic research. This is where the really big questions are asked: How is the world constructed? What happened at the Big Bang? - and, almost incidentally, new technologies are being discovered. To make it clear to pupils why this aspect of physics education could hardly be more topical and exciting, we are cooperating with the Particle World Network.

Physics teachers can register for the training courses lasting several days and even qualify for a one-week summer school at CERN. While the training courses provide an introduction to the topic using the teaching materials of the Particle World Network, the Summer School for teachers provides a comprehensive insight into the theory-based concepts of the Standard Model and the Higgs discovery in combination with various guided tours and insights into the experiments at CERN.

In addition, we offer nationwide online training courses on various aspects of physics in the field of elementary particles, astroparticles, nuclei and hadrons.

You can find out more about the training series on the Netzwerk Teilchenwelt.