Accelerating teaching - approaching particle accelerators and new scientific research through online professional development

The aim of the project was to increase teachers' knowledge and agency in teaching about particle accelerators through constructing a MOOC. The course comprised the physics and the applications of ...

The aim of the project was to increase teachers' knowledge and agency in teaching about particle accelerators through constructing a MOOC. The course comprised the physics and the applications of particle acclerators, learning scenarios and digital tools to use in their classrooms. The aim was furthermore to explore teachers' experiences of using the MOOC content and share the project to ministries of education in Europe and other relevant actors. A secondary set of aims were thus to address the needs for research facilities to communicate their research, utilise science centers as a platform for science communication with teachers, and to make learning resources available for all teachers to use in their classrooms.

During many years, there has been a decreasing interest in science among young people. However literature shows a low interest in school science and a high(er) interest in new scientific endeavours and tech development. At research facilities such as CERN and ESS (both particle accelerators), there is a need to communicate their research. This project brings together state-of-the art research, science communication, science in schools and professional development of European teachers. Therefore a MOOC was constructed, offering learning resources for the teachers to learn about particle accelerators, curriculum-based digital tools and learning scenarios to use in science classrooms and the confidence to construc learning scenarios adapted to their own practice. From this course, teachers could feel increased agency in teaching about advanced science and possibly impact students interest in science. From this approach we address the needs of the partnership and the needs of the target groups, namely the European teachers of high school science, and through them their students.

The two main result of this project were a) a successful production of a functioning MOOC, on time, hosted by Scientix - an existing network of science teachers across Europe managed by partner EUN and b) a number of trained teachers with expected increased agency and confidence in teaching about advanced physics related to particle accelerators and state-of-the-art research. The MOOC contained, as planned, one completely new digital teaching resource, Race to Space, and four new videos interviewing people who use particle accelerators and introducing them as ‘Scientist stories’. We also provided links to more than twenty high-quality existing digital resources, to make them easier to find and more accessible for a teacher audience. In the application, we hoped for 400 participants but in all 1293 teachers participated in the MOOC. This implies an indirect reach of 15000 students. The dissemination part reached 81000 through newsletters, articles in journals, science educators and conference attendance. From the analysis and report we could conclude very positive teacher feedback from the course and that the resources provided were experienced as accessible and easy to employ in their classrooms.