Science Across the World (for Older Students)

This collection includes the topics that were developed for secondary students by international teams of teachers as part of the Science Across the World project. The project was run by the Association for Science Education (ASE). Every topic leads towards an exchange of findings and ideas between groups of students. Each topic is provided in several languages.

Exchanges: Working as a class and guided by their teacher, students aim to reach consensus about the information they have found and the ideas that they have come up with. They tackle a series of tasks to gather the information they need to complete an Exchange Form.

After exchanging their findings and views with students in other countries, students compare and discuss the responses received from classes in other parts of the world.

Topics for secondary students: The topics in this collection were written for students in secondary schools aged 12 – 19. Topics more suitable for younger students deal with issues that are close to the family, home and local environment. Topics for older students generally take a wider perspective and tackle regional or global issues. The titles are:

• Acid Rain
• Biodiversity Around Us
• Chemistry in our Lives
• Domestic Waste
• Drinking Water
• Global Solar Partners
• How Plants Grow
• Keeping Healthy
• Plants in our Lives
• Talking about Food
• Talking about Genetics
• What did you Eat? Topics in many languages

Each topic includes Teacher Notes, Student Pages and an Exchange Form. Some topics include pages of data or other information. These are always provided in English together with versions in several other languages. The file structure may vary from language to language. The translations were carried out by science teachers so that they take into account variations in the curriculum and different classroom contexts from country to country. In all versions the Exchange Form is the same so that the reported findings are easily compared.

Finding exchange partners: There are still active schools making use of the topics and exchanging ideas and information. For details visit the Science Across the World pages of the ASE web site. Publication dates: More popular topics were revised and updated during the life of the project from 1991 - 2010. This collection includes versions published between 1992 and 2010. Some topics, in some languages, were converted to web-based, interactive versions that are no longer available.