Abstract:

ESTALQUIM – ILLES BALEARS is a two years project promoted by the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB) and the Association of Chemists of the Balearic Islands (AQIB). It is aimed at students in the second year of ESO (Secondary Education Course) (13-14 years old) to stimulate their scientific vocation and promoting their interest in chemistry, in particular, and in scientific culture, in general, through the direct contact with experimental practice.

These students have not yet begun to work with the discipline of Chemistry. But, how can we select these students? We used a test in which the competencies in science and in chemistry of the participants were assessed and for which curricular knowledge was not be necessary. The pre-selected students did a personal interview. In this interview, the parents of the candidates are an important part of the project to ensure their involvement for two consecutive years.

The 18 selected ESTALQUIM students, during the first year of the program, develop 13 workshops (http://estalquim.uib.es) in the laboratories of the Chemistry Department of the UIB on Saturday morning every two weeks. The topics of these workshops range from very basic aspects of Chemistry such as working with gases, with materials of different densities, understanding the ideas of atoms and playing with them to form molecules, to more applied workshops in which the students extract essential oils, make a perfume, recycle oil, know how photographs were taken in the past, or work with chemical techniques applied to cooking. The program ends with three workshops dedicated to a Crime Scene Investigation (CSI), to an escape room on the periodic table, and, finally, in the last one, the students will be the leaders of the workshop that will be aimed at their families.

These sessions are developed using innovative active learning methodologies, encouraging students' motivation and stimulating their creativity. All are coordinated by three mentors, combining university and non-university professors.

In the second year, students will carry out an activity in their own school. This methodology will provoke an amplifying effect of the project, with a great quantitative impact, since we will be able to act on all science students in these centres, contributing to an improvement in science education in all of them.

The obtained results in this first year are very encouraging. The response of the students is incredible and the objectives are absolutely being fulfilled. The partial questionnaires done to the students for the six first workshops show an assessment of the workshops that range between 8,7 and 9,2 about 10, and the mentors are valued between 9,1 and 9,5.

Finally, during the project it is notorious that even at an early age there are some erroneous concepts and beliefs that must be corrected in order to have an educated and critical society, a society that in general has not studied Chemistry. These are, therefore, associations that these boys and girls have probably heard or read through the media. This circumstance has allowed us to propose a profound reflection on the Chemistry that we want or should spread in the 21st century. Thinking that education and training are exclusive to educational centers is a mistake. It also concerns families, teachers and society and also encompasses non-curricular activities like this ambitious educational project ESTALQUIM.

Keywords:

Chemistry, experimental learning.