Abstract:

In relation to the educational labor developed in the secondary education centers and at university we find the concern for awakening the interest of students due to its strong influence on the assimilation of the contents of the different disciplines and also on the scope of the competences to get during the teaching-learning process.

Chemistry is considered by students as a difficult subject. There are many factors that contribute to it, one of them the lack of connection between the chemistry that is studied in the classroom and phenomena observed outside of it.

The lack of interest may have its origin in that the science taught in the classroom is not attractive. A few concepts based exclusively on the information, opposite to the impact that other media as the television or Internet produce, do not call the students attention. An incentive for the study of the chemistry can be that students find it relates with something daily and already known. The employment of daily chemistry as a base for the study can be a stimulus.

Particularly striking is the decrease in favorable attitudes towards the learning of science. This may be one of the reasons why lately it is being detected a decrease on the number of students choosing science degrees. The academic authorities are looking for ways to attract students to science careers.

In recent years the Faculties of Sciences, and inside them, the Faculty of the Sciences at Burgos University (UBU), are registering, in general, a marked decrease in the number of enrolled students, though some strategies may influence significantly in order to try to reverse this trend.

Among the solutions that could be adopted it is be considerate the impulse of the collaboration between secondary education centers and university centers and the promotion of actions aimed to train teaching staff in this regard.

Teaching Innovation Group at UBU “Inquior” has developed a series of activities aimed to train the teaching staff of non-University levels of education and the divulgation of Chemistry in different education levels.

We have participated in various courses and related events:
• The Magic of Chemistry: Aimed at students from different educational levels and the General Public in various exhibitions related to Science and more recently in the Junior FIRST® LEGO® League.
• Divulgation Workshops for Primary School Teachers, in the seminar "Fun Science for primary education: Playing with Chemistry”
• Course "Domestic Chemistry” for Secondary Education Teachers, Vocational Training Teachers and UBU Graduates in which we participated in the seminar "Pharmaceuticals" and as a result of this Seminar, 5 groups of Secondary school, High school and Professional Training students have carried out Organic Chemistry Practices at Organic Laboratory of the Faculty of Sciences.

Keywords:

Staff training, non-university levels, chemistry practices.