Physics Education Laboratory

General Info

Head:   Dr. Józefina Turło,

Dr. Katarzyna Przegiętka,  Dr. Grzegorz Osiński, Elżbieta D±bkowska, M.Sc., Andrzej Karbowski, M.Sc., Krzysztof Służewski, M.Sc.



The Physics Education Group has been established in order to prepare physics students for elementary and secondary school teacher careers. The activity of the members of this group involves a faculty-based programme of workshops, seminars and lectures as well as supervised teaching practices in different types of schools. A range of courses devoted to various aspects of physics education is offered to students of physics and astronomy, postgraduate students as well as practising teachers.
The group members especially are involved in the development of ICT skills of pre-service and in-service courses participants.



The students -  teachers to be are exploring properties of microwaves in the laboratory

In 1988 the Teacher’s Training College at Physics and Astronomy Faculty was established to prepare students for two-subject elementary school teacher careers (with the core subject: mathematics-physics and physics-chemistry) in three-year vocational courses. Accordingly, a modified course matching the special needs of this group of students has been also designed.

In the years 1997-2001 we played a role of contractor and co-ordinator of the TEMPUS programme on: “Modernisation of two-subject teacher education in physics and mathematics”. Within the frames of this programme the collaboration between the Physics Education Laboratory and the European Union universities (Cambridge (UK), London (UK), Southampton (UK), Leeds (UK), Poitiers (F), Amsterdam  (NL), Oldenburg (D), Kiel (D), Aarhus (DK) has been established. Both, the staff  members and student activities have been provided within these schemes. As a result computer assisted learning techniques and multimedia capabilities have been up-dated and developed enabling applications in various fields of physics education, both  in the traditional topics and the new ones. Thus, in particular, the interactive computer programmes using new visualisation methods has been elaborated to show the result of ionising radiation investigations in the environment and to introduce some new topics such as items of chaos and fractal theories (e. g. the notions of strange attractor, bifurcation, growth models, fractal music, fractal dimension,  etc.) The example of fractal, produced by electro-sedimentation method in our Laboratory is shown in the picture. Its fractal dimension was estimated by students as 1.84 with the accuracy of 1.1%.


The access to computer network (e. g. INTERNET) and due to collaboration with EU colleagues within the SOCRATES/STEDE programme some attempts have also been made to introduce the elements of distance learning  into the basic physics education.
The Education of Physics Laboratory has qualified staff, experienced not only in professional activities, but also in co-operation at local, regional, national and international level. These experiences include among others:
  • Participation in projects supervised and supported by the Polish Ministry of Education, concerning mostly IT based education (e. g. Project RRI. 14 on: „Introducing of Information Technology to Teaching and Research at the University Level”, „Microcomputer Based Physics Laboratory, "The Internet Network of Teachers" collaborating on new effective MBL applications for science education at the secondary school level) and by the National Scientific Research Council on: „New Computer Aided Physics Experiments”.
  • Within these projects, two solutions are of the great importance for us:
- elaboration of hardware and software (now Windows version) for computer aided ionising radiation investigations (which we are also exporting), - construction of continuous wave, ultrasonic motion detector for the measurements of  the positions of two independently moving objects in the real time.


  • Active participation in preparation of educational TV programs within the VIDEO-SCHOOL series, competitions for teachers and students, exhibitions of educational aids and various demonstrations of physical experiments for teachers and students as well as writing expertises on textbooks, educational aids and multimedia resources.
  • Organisation of the international and national conferences as:
    • International Group on Physics Education (GIREP) '91 on "Teaching about reference frames:from Copernicus to Einstein",   
    • „Computer aided experiments in physics education”, 1993-1999,
    • "Science and mathematics teaching for the information society", 2000,
    • Polish Association of Science Teacher's annual meetings, 1994-2004.
  • Collaboration with Polish science teachers being the co-ordinator of international educational programme: Science Across Europe (within Science Across the World programme).
  • Being a partner of EU projects:
    • SOCRATES/STEDE on: "Science Teacher Education Development in Europe", co-ordinator: University of Louvain, Belgium.
    • SOCRATES/GRUNDTVIG on: "Auto-formation et Auto-évaluation: Compétences et Connaissances pour des Etudes Scientifiques Supérieures" co-ordinator: Université de Provence, Marseille, France.
    • SOCRATES/COMENIUS - EUCISE on: "European Union Co-operation on Integrated Science Education", co-ordinator: Institut für die Pedagogik der Naturwissenschaften,  Kiel, Germany.
    • SOCRATES/COMENIUS/EXPRESSTRAIN TEWISE 2.1 on: "Training Experimental Work in Science Education for teachers and teacher students", co-ordinator:  Pedagogical Institute Carinthia-Department for Grammar School Education, Klagenfurt, Austria.
    • SOCRATES/IP(Intensive Programme)/AIDA on: "Attention-Interest-Desire-Action", co-ordinator:  Pedagogische Akademie des Bundes in Wien, Austria.
    • SOCRATES/IP(Intensive Programme)/TFPC on: "Toward Fascinating Physics and Chemistry", co-ordinator: Pedagogische Akademie des Bundes in Wien, Austria.
    • SOCRATES/COMENIUS 2.1 EU-TRAIN on: "EU Train: European Training for student teachers in science"., co-ordinator: Helsingin Yliopisto (Uniwersytet Helsiński), Finlandia.
    • SOCRATES/COMENIUS 2.1 EU-ISE on: “Effective Use of ICT in Science Education“, co-ordinator: Univerzita Komenskeho, Bratislava, Slovakia.
    • SOCRATES/MINERVA EU-HOU (Hands-On Universe, Europe) on: "Bringing frontline interactive astronomy to the classroom"., co-ordinator: The University Pierre & Marie Curie, Paris, France.
Furthermore, the group members are also involved in the educational activities for teachers as: Postgraduate Course on Physics and IT, Postgraduate Course on Science,  Postgraduate Course on Environmental Studies, Postgraduate Course on IT in Science Education.