Science Teacher Meets Scientist

Supporting teachers in delivering the best science teaching to their students is a prime way for ISTA’s science education team to improve science education in Austria. Events such as the Institute’s Science Education Day have been building bridges between science teachers and researchers for years and continue to grow in importance. As part of this effort, the event “Science Teacher Meets Scientist” on February 22 brought over 30 high school physics and chemistry teachers to the campus.

They listened to interesting lectures at the interface of physics, chemistry and biology, had a look into the laboratories and took part in a campus tour. Physicist Jérémie Palacci shared his work on innovative materials that develop amazing properties through the activation of microparticles, and chemist Paul Schanda demonstrated how methods of advanced nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy shed light on cell biological processes. Small groups visited the laboratories of the two research groups and ISTA’s state-of-the-art NMR Facility.

Teacher training events such as this one are organized by the newly established Science Education Team at ISTA, who gave an input on ways how to discuss curiosity-driven basic research, the nature of scientific inquiry with learners.