Abstract:

Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) is a public research institute. Its mission is to study the fundamental constituents of matter and the laws that govern them. It carries out theoretical and experimental research in the fields of subnuclear, nuclear and astroparticle physics, in strict collaboration with international partners all over the world and with the Italian Universities.

INFN operates 4 national laboratories, twenty local units and three national centers. In addition, with French CNRS and Nikhef (Holland), it operates the European Gravitational Observatory near Pisa. To perform its activities INFN holds a strong technical expertise in high-tech area and its structure allows a widespread presence throughout the Italian territory.

Part of INFN mission is the knowledge transfer in technological field with stress on medical area, in the analysis and study of cultural heritage and the environment. Moreover, as part of this mission, it is fully committed to promoting scientific culture. INFN has now a long tradition in dissemination activities and each year, besides participating to the main Festivals, organizes exhibitions and events throughout the country as well as training course teachers and a broad variety of activities for pupils.

Programma INFN per Docenti (PID) is residential training course for secondary school teachers on frontier physics carried out by INFN.

The course lasts one week and takes place at the national laboratories sites alternating theoretical lessons with laboratory activities. On the last day we have lectures on special topics (like gender gap in STEM etc.).

During the course teachers have the opportunity to work alongside researchers using the most modern technologies to perform actual physics measurements.

The PID goals are:
- provide a high quality course that has direct impact on daily teaching;
- exploit the different research activities carried out in our structures to propose a full set of up-to-date aspects of physics research;
- involve teachers from all over Italy;
- strengthen the educational activities already present in the structures involved;
- create a group of teachers who have strong links with INFN structures, are aware of the many opportunities offered by the Institute;
- build a network of teachers aimed to improve modern physics teaching in Italian schools;
- raise awareness of the gender gap in STEM problem.

The PID project started in autumn 2018 involving Legnaro National Laboratories (PID_LNL18) followed by Catania National Laboratories (PID_LNS19), Gran Sasso National Laboratories (PID_LNGS19) and again Legnaro National Laboratories (PID_LNL20, in February 2020).

About 35 teachers can participate in each course and considering 3 courses each year, the teachers involved are about 100 every year from all over Italy.
Due to the COVID pandemic we were forced to cancel the edition PID_LNS in Catania in March 2020 and all edition for school year 2020/2021.

With the collaboration of Pearson publisher, that supports PID since 2020, we realized PID@Home, a series of five online lessons on physics in society in (Fall 2020). In Spring 2021 we did an online course, on the use of Open Data and Open Source tools for data analysis using big data platforms.
In November 2021 we resumed the in-person- course, again in Legnaro.

We will present this experience and discuss the feedback that we received from participants.

Keywords:

Frontier physics, training course, STEM, gender gap.