Cognitive and Emotional Dimensions Recorded when Implementing Specific Responsible Research and Innovation Aspects in Science Lessons

At the age when the mental processes involved in learning and the interest of students are at a high level of development, the school must find the opportunities and paths that are best suited for making their effective covering in practice. Teen-agers broaden their sphere of interest, explore the cognitive and practical skills, feel the need to engage in novel and valuable projects, and - in this respect - science lessons represent opportunities to manifest their abilities. The classical approach - in which there is little emphasis on making experiments, and the creation of contexts from which the student discovers, investigates, seeks solutions -, does not correspond to the cognitive, affective and motivational profile of nowadays students. Students do not like a passive role, they want to be actively involved in the process of knowledge, to initiate demarches, to be leaders and to be free to practice their creativity and inventiveness. Science disciplines should not be seen like abstracting of contents - far from the students’ knowledge interests - but should give them the opportunity to intervene directly in experiments, independently, stimulating in this way their desire to search and to seek answers. The student learns better by doing, not just by seeing or hearing. Responsible Research and Innovation - through its specific dimensions - is able to create proper frames for making students very interested in science, adapting the learning demarches by rethinking the lessons as opportunities to capitalize the cognitive and affective features of students’ personality in the learning process.