Dissemination about natural radioactivity through work-based learning experiences

This work investigates the importance of Work-Based Learning experiences of Italian high school students and how some extracurricular basic knowledge may influence the student's intrinsic motivation. The Italian model, named Alternation School-Work (ASW), highlights the partnership between schools and workplaces or real life situations. So that, we consider the experience of about 120 students of three different schools located in Campania Region (South Italy). Our goal has been to educate students on topics such as environmental radioactivity and in particular about the public exposure to radioactivity of natural origin (cosmic rays, radon...), in the framework of Astroparticles' School of National Institute of Nuclear Physics, also introducing they in real measurement campaigns. Having improved knowledge about their country's geophysical features, the students have drawn up informative material and a simple survey to propose to the local population in order to understand the level of knowledge on the issue of radioactivity and the consequent perception of risk. The result has been that the students could know and deal with the problem, in a realistic way, from the point of view of scientific research, thanks also to the RadioLab project of National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN), through which measurements of the concentration of radon gas activity have been carried out in the buildings of their own school complexes.