MASTER IDIFO (INNOVAZIONE DIDATTICA IN FISICA E ORIENTAMENTO): A COMMUNITY OF ITALIAN PHYSICS EDUCATION RESEARCHERS AND TEACHERS AS A MODEL FOR A RESEARCH BASED IN-SERVICE TEACHER DEVELOPMENT IN MODERN PHYSICS.

Since 2005, the Italian Universities have promoted initiatives for school-university cooperation in the framework of a national project (PLS) to face the problems of a substantial scienti c illiteracy in young people and a worrying decreasing interest in physics emerging from OCSE-PISA data. The project PLS is nanced by the Ministry for Education and Universities and coordinates 65 local university projects in mathematics, physics, chemistry and material science. The collaboration of Universities with teachers in the PLS physics section is an important goal realized in different ways. The Italian university Physics Education Research Unit (IPERU), cooperating with national research projects…