Back
“Precampus”: a collaboration between Secondary School and University
Luigia Cazzaniga
I.T.C.G.”Primo Levi” Seregno (Mi), SILSIS di Milano
Fabrizio Celentano
Università dell’Insubria Varese
Marco Giliberti
Phycsics Department Università degli studi di Milano



GIREP Seminar
2003


The connection between Secondary School and University represents a difficult problem non yet completely solved; in particular, from the point of view of disciplinary contents, a lot must still be done. University teachers say that, according to their experience, students, in particular during the first year of Scientific Faculties, have problems when they are required to articulate concepts in a formal way; it seems that they are unable to find a link among disciplines that seem to be kept in separated boxes, without possibility of any interaction. As a result of this fact, study and learning are fragmentary and not effective. We are referring, in particular, to the field of scientific disciplines (such as Physics, Biology, Chemistry and so on ) in which mathematical formalism is required to solve problems, in particular in modeling. Some Scientific Faculties realized projects in order to help students at the beginning of their University experience ( in particular the University of Insubria in Varese has been doing it for three years with apposite tests, courses and so on); however, according to us, the problem should be tackled much earlier, when the students are still in the secondary school. For this reason the project “Precampus” has been realized in order to create a link between the two levels of instruction (secondary school and University) for what concerns contents and methods of Mathematics and Physics. The project was sponsored by European Community Funds; seven different institutes of secondary level of instruction and the University of Insubria took part in it. The results of the experimental project will be showed