Bridging Students with Research Professions

Fostering Research Culture in Secondary Education: The Explora-IES Programme

The Explora-IES programme is tailored to ignite curiosity and foster creativity for research among secondary education (IES) students. Its dual objective aims to provide enriching opportunities and create inclusive environments where students can fully develop their scientific potential, while also fostering identification with research-related professions.

Explora-IES materializes through a range of research projects tailored to students' needs. One such collaboration involves the partnership between the 5Dculture project and the ILITURGI GENS project, focusing on "Conflict, Postwar, and Social Changes in the Landscape."

This collaborative activity engaged a group of 15-year-old students in three distinct phases spanning March to April: fieldwork in a simulated archaeological excavation, laboratory analysis, and interpretation. Within this framework, the 5Dculture project contributed by developing 3D models of projectile points of various sizes (see header image). These models were instrumental in simulating the excavation of a funerary context during the fieldwork phase and later utilized in the laboratory for material analysis.