Chapter 8: Research Visits as Nuclei for Educational Programs

The Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel provides several programs, both for school students and teachers, to obtain insights and learn about modern research and analytical techniques. This chapter will provide an overview of three different programs and explore the approaches and their influence on the participating students (or teachers). The different programs differ in their goals and target population: religious students with no chemistry background, chemistry teachers and gifted students. The programs length varied from a two-day experience, two weeks in a research lab, or a year and eight months in a research lab for gifted students. We provide research results that helped us realize the different contributions of each program to the participants. Including three different programs in the same chapter provides the reader with different approaches of introducing students and teachers to active research chemistry laboratories that eventually support the outreach efforts of the research institute along with their educational contribution.