STEM prize for three Aargau secondary schools
Three secondary schools from Wohlen (Aargau) received this year's prize for special contributions to the teaching of STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) today from ETH Rector Sarah Springman.
ETH Zurich is thereby putting schools that are particularly dedicated to optimising STEM teaching in the spotlight. The winners receive a financial contribution for experiment and teaching materials.
ETH research in practice
The secondary schools Halde, Bünzmatt and Junkholz in Wohlen were honoured for their particularly effective implementation of findings from ETH learning research. The physics teachers taught the topics “How does buoyancy occur?” and “Sound and sound propagation” using tasks and experiments from ETH’s STEM learning centre. The material is connected to what is taught in primary schools and continues the topics at a more advanced level.
With these lessons, the secondary schools are participating in ETH Zurich’s Swiss STEM study, which examines the long-term effect of optimised physics teaching from primary school onwards on learning outcomes.
A further STEM prize went to the emeritus professors Aegidius Plüss (University of Bern), Jarka Arnold (Bern University of Teacher Education) and Tobias Kohn (ETH Zurich, Cambridge) for the development of the platform TigerJython for teaching programming.
The STEM prizes were presented together with other accolades during the Swiss Day of Computer Science Education. The event, organised by ETH Zurich, enabled IT, maths and physics teachers to talk directly to researchers, learn about new lesson styles and try them out themselves.