National Centre for Education in Physics

Sweden, along with many other countries, is facing a gradual decrease in the number of young people who choose to study science and engineering. With the intention to bring about a change, five centres for science education have been established by assignment of the government. The centres, physics, chemistry, biology, technology and mathematics are located at five different universities with the purpose to reinforce the aim to be national centres and to spread the activities to all Sweden.

The assignment and the goal for the National Centre for Education in Physics is to increase the public interest in science and technology, specially physics. The centre is aimed at beeing a resource for teachers as well as students in the comprehensive school and the high school (corresponding to A-level). The aim should be to inspire and stimulate the development of education in physics and to give teachers the opportounity to further studies of physics.

The centre, which was established in 1994, initially focused on giving teachers working with children aged 7-12 years a knowledge of physics and physics teaching. About 1600 teachers in primary school are at present active in or have completed the distance-learning course, "Fysikbutiken" (Shop of Physics). The teachers are working in local groups during 2-3 terms, using a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) system named kASPer. The model for this on-line distance-learning system is to assign a unique webpage for the course, presented on log-in, with hyper-links to the various tools that are available. All communication student to student and between students and teachers at the Centre is done via this webpage. The activity of the Centre has expanded and today we have on-line distance-learning courses for teachers at all different levels of the educational system. The courses use the earlier described VLE system, kASPer. For two of the courses we collaborate with the Swedish Television.

On-line courses (2-3 terms)

The Centre also offers "days of inspiration" , often with a specific theme of physics, e.g. laser-, environmental- or biophysics. In-service training arranged by the Centre include up-to-date physics and learning strategies. We have the ambition to integrate these parts even if focus is different from one course to another.

• Ask the physicist
• Read the questions and answers from other students
• Find interesting physics-links
• Get information about further education
• Read about projects going on at different schools
• Recieve inspiration and ideas for laboratory work

The Centre continually takes part in the process of evaluating curriculum and writing new syllabi for physics courses at different levels. We also try to keep ourselves up to date in the field of research in physics education.

At the centre of physics, located at the University of Lund, we are eight teachers working part-time. We are all active teachers representing different levels of the Swedish educational system, at which we are aimed to be a resource.