Expedition to the South Pole: experience of the educational laboratory on polar sciences with primary schools

Abstract

The Polar Sciences represent an excellent topic for promoting new forms of collaboration between the world of research and the education. The outreach of the polar sciences, one of the branches of the Earth systems sciences tree, represents a unique opportunity, not only for its importance, multidisciplinary values and relapse of the polar researches, but, mainly, because it addresses and transmits ethical and social values as example of strong integration between human beings and extreme environments. In this frame the idea to communicate and to share the experience of the scientific research in Antarctica with the public and with the school is a challenge that a team of INGV researchers, engaged for many years in scientific missions in Antarctica, carries on with great enthusiasm within the several outreach activities of the Italian National Program for Antarctic Research (PNRA). The present work reports the experience of the outreach laboratory “Expedition to the South Pole”, realized in the frame of events organized by INGV and dedicated to the primary school. The educational themes developed within the laboratory concern the research in Antarctica, with particular focus on the human aspects, the geophysics and the progress of new technologies. The innovative aspect of the laboratory stands in the strategy to deal with Antarctica with an educational aim, proposing Antarctica as a natural laboratory, not only from a scientific point of view, but also as a laboratory of shared human experiences. The Laboratory is based on interactive methodology that uses the role-play and the experiential activities, enable the children to acquire knowledge on Antarctica (knowledge); to explore Antarctic characteristics as a natural laboratory and to experiment an emotional education through individual and team experiences (doing); to develop civics path linked to “sense of belonging and citizenship”, that will make the children aware that Antarctica does not belong to anyone but it belongs to everybody: it is a common and unique good (being). Based on several experiences realized with the schools, a video was made. The video is structured as tutorials for teachers who want to address the issue of Antarctica with their classes. During the presentation will be shown excerpts from the video to facilitate the sharing of this experience and to promote the production of other laboratories on Antarctica using the role-play technique.