How do students perceive science communication and how can it be made more relevant to the target group? The project „We talk about science“ of the group of chemistry education at the University of Graz in cooperation with the intitute for science education  at the KPH Vienna/Krems wants to pursue these questions.

To this end, we encourage learners to leave the consuming role and offer them the opportunity to prepare topics themselves in a scientifically communicative manner. Based on the reflection of their own consumption of science communication products (videos, homepages, newspaper reports, etc.), learners in this project are instructed to communicate scientific aspects from the two selected current and socially relevant subject areas of electromagnetic radiation and carbon dioxide. Together with experts and supported by student teachers, they design their own science communication products.

We are interested in which aspects of the two subject areas the learners consider relevant, who they select as the target group for their communication products and how they prepare and communicate the scientific topics for their chosen target group.

Primary school pupils are also the focus of the project. With the first small projects on science communication, we want to find out which aspects are already perceived at this age and what target group-adequate science communication in elementary school looks like.

The target group of the project are not only the learners, but also interested people in the two regions of St. Stefan ob Stainz and St. Leonhard am Forst. Within the framework of science cafés, we would like to make the communication products publicly accessible together with the schoolchildren and thus initiate an exchange on scientific topics. On science afternoons and evenings, learners should get in touch with local people and communicate about their aspects. We hope that this will generate greater interest in scientific results and also hope to be able to initiate discussions and talks on these topics. With the students as communicators, it can become possible to reach target groups that have previously had little interest in science.

This Sparkling-Science-project is funded by: