EDUCATION OF SCIENCE AND COMPETITIVE ACTIVITIES

The presented research educational project is aimed on search of new forms of competitive activities that would support the interest in natural sciences as such. For school collectives there were suggested topics for the scientific competitive work in good accordance with their age group. Fundamentally the topics had to correspond with the pupil's and the student's request to work on a serious scientific problem. In the first year of the project, there were involved 29 pupils from three primary schools, 38 secondary school pupils from four schools and 81 students attending high school in eleven different institutions. In the course of the first year of the project, it has been proved that especially the pupils from primary and secondary schools are enthusiastic and eager to work and participate on the solution of some “semi-scientific problems”. For this age group there were chosen two themes - “Water and Milk” (primary school) and “Honey, the Gods' Dish” (secondary school). First mentioned topic undoubtedly fulfilled all the requirements for the great experimental potential but the topic for secondary school involving experiments with honey has proved not to convey such variety of impressive experiments as it had been expected and calls for optimalisation. High school students have already obtained sufficient knowledge from natural sciences. Moreover, teenagers want to be treated as adults and therefore they feel the need to work on “real” research topics. This kind of approach was offered by the finally chosen theme “Plants, medicinal plants, and drugs” which was very well received by the newly established groups of young scientists. The schools were offered the background support from the university, which was highly praised especially when the realization of more complicated experiments were required.