Abstract:

Experimental activities are essential to stimulate students' aptitude for scientific reasoning, so the laboratory should be one of the most frequent moments in student's STEM education. To promote laboratory practice in schools, it is essential to support teachers in designing and carrying out experimental activities.

With this spirit, the LSOSAlab Project, (“Laboratorio di Scienze – Obiettivi Specifici di Apprendimento” meaning Science Laboratory - Specific Learning Objectives) was founded in 2013 in Italy; it is characterized by the sharing of experiences and knowledge between universities and schools and it promotes the laboratory as a cornerstone of STEM education.

As part of this project, a repository of laboratory experiences designed for high schools was created and published; each one is accompanied by a detailed sheet of classroom conduct of the experiment, including data collection and analysis. These experiences, which are often grounded on everyday experience, are based on the idea of the laboratory not only as a physical place, but also as the ability to cultivate a scientific mindset, the aptitude for observing phenomena, linking observed quantities into causal relationships and mathematical models, doing measurements and analysing data. The resulting 234 experiments, secondary-school-focused, selected through a review process like that of scientific articles, are published in the platform “Fare laboratorio” (https://ls-osa.uniroma3.it/); they are also collected in the volume “Fare laboratorio. Guida alla didattica esperienziale”, where a short description of each experiment is present, with a link to the detailed description on the platform.

On the strength of this experience, in 2023 the process to extend the project to younger students began, involving a committee of 24 middle school teachers to select, test and optimize a subset of activities published for secondary schools. In this talk we will describe this new phase of the project, the results achieved so far and its prospects.

Keywords:

Lab, experimental activities, physics experiments, science experiments, education.