Geoscience Today And Tomorrow In The Ukrainian Physical And Mathematical Lyceum Of Taras Shevchenko National University Of Kyiv

   

Ukrainian Physical and Mathematical Lyceum of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv is a special educational institution where talented teenagers from different regions of the country study and live in a campus. Mathematics, Physics, Astronomy, Informatics, Chemistry are the main subjects which students learn on more advance levels than in ordinary schools. But to integrate their knowledge and to shape correct scientific imagination about nature and the Earth, it is important to study Geography.

Activities of the geography teacher include curricular classes and outclass work. On the lessons teacher helps students to analyze and search correct information for specific topic of the lesson. For example, about climate change, the new energy sources, the land reclamation, the mining of rare earth elements, the disturbance of forest ecosystems, etc.

But the more possibilities in learning to write and work on scientific topics, students have after main classes by individual work with the teacher. Students work on their own small research projects, write and submit the thesis to the competition-defense jury. This competition has three stages starting on school level then city level and the most successful projects are defended at the national level. The organizer of this competition is the Junior Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

The students can get useful experience when they take part in school conference of scientific students' reports -"Scientific Olympus". The conference includes the 7–8 sessions such as physics, mathematics, geography, biology, chemistry, computer science and humanitarian sciences. A two month before students select the problem, they are interested in, and prepare a report.

In 2021, 2022 our students took part in a joint project of the Junior Academy of Sciences of Ukraine with the American SSEP (Student Spaceflight Experiments Program). They were proposed to create their own research projects and test them in microgravity conditions in space on the International Space Station. These projects were focused on biology and chemistry sciences. Students were divided in groups of 3–5 persons, supervised by teachers as facilitators. The most difficult requirement was to limit the research in a mini-laboratory – a small hermetically sealed silicone tube with volume of 9.2 ml.

Apart from these projects the teaching activity includes meetings with scientists, excursions to the geological and science museums, coordination of the competition-game “Heliantus” (Geography, Physics, Chemistry, Biology), geography olympiads.

There are much more difficulties for students now with the full-scale russian war on Ukraine, and it requires even more efforts from teachers to provide them with high quality education in natural sciences and particularly in geosciences, since the war has huge impact on ecosystems which need to be recovered by new generations of researchers and engineers.

In the future as for tomorrow in our Lyceum we are looking forward to continuing the above activities and to joint other projects in cooperation with educational institution and resources from other countries.