University Centre for Research and Pedagogy Applied to the Sciences

The University Centre for Research and Pedagogy Applied to the Sciences, known as CURPAS, is the second research centre of the Institute of Applied Pedagogy. Its name deliberately combines two terms that institutions often keep apart: research and pedagogy. The centre does not only produce scientific knowledge, it works at the same time on the conditions for teaching it.

This dual requirement reflects the very nature of the Institute. Training science teachers requires two distinct but inseparable skills. The first is a real mastery of scientific content, which can only be fully acquired by doing research: handling equipment, measuring, making mistakes, starting again, interpreting data. The second is the ability to make this content accessible to pupils, which requires a specific process of didactic transposition. CURPAS organises its three laboratories according to this logic.

Two laboratories produce scientific knowledge in their own fields. The Laboratory of Exact and Applied Sciences, known as SEA, covers the fundamental sciences and their applications. The Laboratory of Applied Nutrition, Phytochemistry, Ecology and Environment, known as LNPEEA, works on natural resources, food and the environment. The third laboratory, the Laboratory for the Didactics of Sciences Applied to Teaching, known as DSAE, is responsible for carrying this knowledge into teaching.

The Laboratory of Exact and Applied Sciences covers the subject foundations of the sciences taught at the Institute: mathematics, physics and chemistry, approached both in their fundamental aspects and in their applications.

The fundamental side concerns the core objects of these disciplines: mathematical structures and proof, physical laws and the modelling of phenomena, chemical transformations and reaction mechanisms. This work ensures that teachers trained at the IPA understand the concepts they will teach beyond the level required by school curricula, a necessary condition for teaching with confidence and answering pupils' unexpected questions.

The applied side takes these disciplines to concrete problems. Applied physics addresses energy questions, a field in which the Institute is involved through the BRIGHTER project. Applied chemistry links up with the environmental and resource quality themes studied by the LNPEEA laboratory.

The laboratory's work directly supports the Master's programmes in Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry, providing students with a framework for carrying out advanced experimental and theoretical work.

The Laboratory of Applied Nutrition, Phytochemistry, Ecology and Environment brings together four research areas linked by a common subject: the natural resources of Burundi, their composition, their uses and the environments in which they are found.

Nutrition concerns the composition and nutritional quality of food, a question of particular importance in a country where food security and child nutrition directly affect school attendance and pupils' ability to learn. Research on food therefore links up with the Institute's educational mission.

Phytochemistry studies the chemical composition of plants, notably the active compounds of the local flora. Burundi has a diverse flora whose traditional uses, both as food and as medicine, form a body of knowledge that research can document, verify and give scientific value to.

Applied ecology and the applied environment concern ecosystems and their dynamics: biodiversity, ecosystem balance, soil and water quality, the effects of human pressure. In a context marked by population pressure on resources and dependence on wood, this work documents environmental realities whose understanding shapes public decisions.

These four areas support the Master's programmes in Biology and Chemistry, and offer students research fields rooted in concrete Burundian issues rather than in topics borrowed from other contexts.

The Laboratory for the Didactics of Sciences Applied to Teaching has a special position within the centre. Its subject is not a scientific discipline, but the transition between science and its teaching. It works on didactic transposition, the process by which scientific knowledge becomes teachable content without being distorted.

This role explains why it belongs to CURPAS rather than to the centre devoted to didactics. The laboratory works directly with the centre's two scientific laboratories: it takes the knowledge produced by SEA and LNPEEA as its material and examines how to make it accessible to secondary school pupils. The REDISEPA Laboratory of the CRDS approaches science didactics from a different angle, linking it with peace education. The two laboratories thus address science teaching from two complementary, not competing, perspectives.

The questions addressed by the DSAE are practical. How can a scientific concept be taught when the school lacks laboratory equipment? What experiments can be carried out with locally available materials? How can a progression be built that respects both scientific rigour and pupils' actual level? How can an experimental skill be assessed, and not just memorised knowledge?

The answers produced by the laboratory feed into the didactics courses of the Bachelor's and Master's programmes in the sciences, and into the teaching resources made available to in-service teachers.

CURPAS is the research infrastructure on which the Institute's four Master's in Sciences — Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics and Physics — are based. Students carry out their experimental work there, prepare their research thesis and encounter the scientific approach in its real working conditions.

What is at stake goes beyond acquiring techniques. A science teacher who has carried out research, formulated a hypothesis, built a protocol, faced contradictory results and revised their conclusions gives pupils an accurate picture of scientific activity. They teach science as a process of inquiry rather than as a set of results to memorise. It is this mindset that time in the centre's laboratories aims to instil.

The centre also contributes to producing research in the sciences, an objective explicitly assigned to the Institute, and to supporting reforms of school science curricula, by providing education authorities with documented work on the real conditions of science teaching in Burundian schools.