Chemistry Teachers ’ Training in Europe

The identified background of the project idea relies on the evidence of common needs within the countries involved and in Europe in general, related to the insufficient diffusion of scientific culture and awareness, that starting from the school level (primary and secondary education) affects all levels of educational and training systems and therefore citizens in general. Promoting Life Long Learning strategies for scientific issues is much more difficult, if compared to other subject areas (e.g. humanistic subjects, business management, language learning) as when the compulsory educational pathways end up, those that are not specifically interested in science are much more likely to abandon completely the subject. Moreover teachers, the key actors of the promotion of scientific awareness, have to face a major challenge coming from the fact that the speed of the development of scientific knowledge is constantly increasing. The scientific background of a teacher who started teaching 10 years ago, without a constant update, risks to become soon completely obsolete. But often the language used by most advanced researches is too complicated even for teachers and the knowledge gap between university and research centres and the teachers themselves tends to become too big to be handled, with the most negative effect