Closing date: 21 March 2022
1.
Doctoral student position: Fostering Inquiry-Based Practices in Science Teaching of Italian Middle School Teachers
https://international-relations.web.cern.ch/opportunities/2021/fostering-inquiry-based-practices-science-teaching-italian-middle-school
Closing date: 21 March 2022
Interest in science is a crucial component of the scientific literacy, and several studies show the effectiveness of Hands-on and Inquiry-Based learning activities in fostering the students motivation in school science.
HOP, Hands-on Physics, is a project developed by the CERN Science Gateway Education Labs team aiming at empowering Italian middle school (grades 6 to 8) science teachers to adopt an Inquiry-Based approach in their teaching.
HOP started in 2019 with the development of a collection of teaching units on different physics topics, including a series of experimental activities put together in all-in-one education kit ready to be used in classroom. The second phase of the project will focus on the development of professional training sessions for teachers to reactivate their physics knowledge and to encourage them to include physics experiments, like the ones in the education kit, in their classroom.
In order to evaluate the impact of this project on teacher practices, a comprehensive study should be conducted.
This thesis will focus on the effect of the HOP training sessions on the attitude of teachers towards the education kit, and the implementation of the experimental practices in their science teaching on a long term.
2.
Doctoral student position: Investigating the Impact of the CERN Programme for High-School Students
https://international-relations.web.cern.ch/opportunities/2021/investigating-impact-cern-programme-high-school-students
Closing date: 21 March 2022
The educational offer of CERN includes several programmes for high-school students, 16 years and older, aiming at bringing them in contact with the scientific research at an early stage of their career.
Currently, the flagship programmes are Beamline for Schools and the High-School Student Internship Program (HSSIP). Beamline for Schools is an international competition where teams of students are invited to write the proposal of an experiment suitable to be performed at the beam line of a particle accelerator, and win the opportunity to access an experimental facility to realize it.
HSSIP is a two-week long internship that gives students the opportunity to gain experience in science, technology and engineering at CERN. Beamline for Schools is running since 2014, while HSSIP started in 2017, with a pilot phase involving national programmes for 21 CERN member states. Both these programmes received very positive feedback from the participants, and the stakeholders involved in the organization, but a systematic study on their impact on young students is crucial to further develop and improve them.
The goal of this thesis is to study the effect of these programmes on the participants’ view of nature of science, and their career aspiration in the field of STEM. The research project will be conducted in the context of the specific format of each program, i.e. an international team competition, or a national or international internship.
3.
Doctoral student position: Evaluation of Teachers’ Views on and Preferences for their Professional Development
https://international-relations.web.cern.ch/opportunities/2021/evaluation-teachers-views-and-preferences-their-professional-development
Closing date: 21 March 2022
Every year, CERN offers numerous professional development programmes for in-service high-school science teachers to keep up-to-date with the latest developments in particle physics and related areas, and experience a dynamic, international research environment. All programmes are facilitated by experts in the field of physics, engineering, and computing and include an extensive lecture and visit itinerary (http://teachers.cern). However, in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, CERN’s teacher programmes were delivered in an online setting only and future developments of CERN’s teacher programmes foresee the instalment of hybrid teacher programmes. Here, teachers will follow lectures remotely leading up to an extensive on-site visit at CERN that will feature both visits and discussion sessions.
Therefore, the goal of this PhD project is to investigate teachers’ views on and preferences for professional development programmes in on-site and online settings to support the ongoing research-based development of CERN’s teacher programmes. Previous studies have already shown that teachers are essential for students’ success in formal education (Chetty et al., 2014) and that professional development programmes are foundational in reforming and enhancing teachers’ instructional practices (Capps et al., 2012). However, education research has also suggested that there exist discrepancies between the features of professional development programmes that the literature indicates to be effective and the features that teachers consider to be preferable (Owens et al., 2018). Therefore, the research aim of this doctoral research project is to contribute to narrowing this research-practice gap by virtue of empirical studies on the development and implementation of hybrid teacher programmes at CERN.
