Abstract:

It is described an educational experience developed in three different interdisciplinary itineraries submitted to Italian students in the three-year period 2019/2021 and used to promote the Gender Equality in STEM in Italian project PLS (Programma Lauree Scientifiche).

The focus is to highlight the three educational itineraries schema carried out, with a single guiding thread and the same logic: physics lessons where you can merge a laboratory itinerary (carried out with the Inquiry method) with a learning itinerary with contents not only technical-scientific but also historical- sociological.

At first, the common part of the three itineraries is the introduction about the problem of Gender Equality and to narrow the attention to the field of STEM by briefly reviewing both the history of the Nobel laureates (in physics there were 4) and of those who missed Nobel goal due to historical-sociological reasons for these failures.

It was interesting to include in the three paths of the three editions of 2019/2021, the survey of the "Draw a scientist" - test (DASt) (scientist is a neutral term in English and lends itself well to the ambiguous request of externalizing one's mental habitus with a drawing of the scientist to understand the gender of reference) proposed in the 70s by an Australian sociologist, David Chambers [1], to bring out students thoughts and introspection regarding some stereotypes about women and science.

In these itineraries, the laboratory action has preceded the theoretical approach to the topics under consideration with according to the Inquiry method by proposing guided experiments related to the topic treated by the scientist in question.

In detail, the thematic sessions dealt:
- with the educational itinerary inspired by Lise Meitner, it was carried out the measurement of the Planck constant with a photodiode, since she was a student of Boltzmann and then of Planck at the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Universitat of Berlin (hostile to women careers into the university but struck by the young Lise, presented by Meyer);
- with the educational itinerary inspired by Maria Telkes instead it was conducted a measurement of the efficiency of educational photovoltaic panels, since Telkes in 1950 together with the architect Eleanor Raymond, designed the Dover House, the first house completely heated by the sun with metal panels and glass behind the windows.
- in this latest 2021 edition, inspired by Nasa Women [2][3], carried out in Distance Learning, there was two itineraries focused on the theme of "Physics of Flight" which ranges from the study of kinematics, of the launch trajectories studied in the 1950s from Katherine Johnson in NASA, to the aerodynamic characteristics of aircraft (airplanes or rockets), inspired by the first female pilot Amelia Earhart. In these lessons, free materials made available by NASA for teaching will be used and all NASA references that students can use for an interdisciplinary itinerary that also includes understanding of content in another language will be provided.

Finally, there is a reports about the methods of collecting the results achieved in these three years.

Keywords:

Draw a Scientist Test, Gender Equality, Educational Itineraries.