Establishment of Physical Science in Precarpathia: Events and Characters

Abstract

The question of the development of physical science in the Carpathian region (end of the 18th - beginning of the 21st century) was studied, starting from the Tsar's Royal Gymnasium, organized in 1784, to the creation of a teacher's institute in 1940 in the city of Stanislaviv (Ivano-Frankivsk) and its gradual transformation into Vasyl Stefanyk Precarpathian National University. The role of science education and especially physics in the formation of a cohort of modern specialists, necessary for the restoration of the country and its rapid technological development, is indicated. The progress of physical education in Stanislaviv (Ivano-Frankivsk) and the development of methodological and organizational foundations for the training of future physics teachers is considered against the background of the dramatic historical and political transformations of the region in the period under study. It is shown that the beginning of the development of learning and teaching of physics was already laid in the activities of numerous gymnasium-type educational institutions, which were organized in the city since the 18th century and became training bases for future teachers or scientists, in particular natural sciences. Special attention is focused on the defining role of outstanding characters of scientists and pedagogues-physicists who made a significant contribution to the formation of modern scientific and pedagogical schools and concepts: professors Viktor Dushchenko, Petr Kyrychka, Ivan Kucheruk, Dmytro Freik, Ivan Klymyshyn, Bohdan Ostafiychuk. Despite the initiation and development of scientific directions, Vasyl Stefanyk Precarpathian National University remains an important center for the development of pedagogical ideas and innovations in the field of natural sciences and comprehensively contributes to the improvement of the methodology and didactics of physics at various levels.