Educational programme of Regione Toscana (Italy) provides long term process of education starting from primary school throughout all the educational levels reaching university classes and, furthermore, going on up to the so called “third-age” class (over 65 years old people).
The Museum of Natural History of the University of Pisa established, more than 15 years ago, a C.E.A. (Centro di Educazione Ambientale = Centre for Environmental Education) that provides 33 specific educational and cultural programs involving most of primary and secondary classes (http://storianaturale.museo.unipi.it/images/depintsmall.jpg). The educational planning is usually coordinated with territorial organizations (i.e. municipality, province). It furthermore embraces open programs for university courses, for undergraduate, graduate and PhD students in most of the Biology and Natural Sciences topics (ecological, behavioural and systematic items).
Exhibition halls are open to visitors, but specific lessons are also provided, upon request, for groups of people wishing to discover the hidden misteries of the museum.
Two out of the various projects and activities may be of particular interest to describe and highlight main results of scientific research linked to education.

Learning to observe…wolf behaviour
A captive colony of adult wolves at the Zoo in Pistoia (Tuscany, Central Italy) has been monitored during a long term project involving undergraduate and PhD students, who collected data on play activity, social interaction and conciliatory patterns. Elisabetta Palagi, PhD (Curator for Zoology at the Museum and project leader of the Zoo-Museum partnership) and her collegue Giada Cordoni, PhD, involved also some high school classes to teach them the fundamental basis of behavioural research. Museum activities covered most of information on wolf’s biology (skull measurements, social plays, demographic structure in the wild, etc.) and standard protocol used in the field. At the zoo, students collected data and were introduced in using advanced mathematical techiques (non parametric statistics) to enhance, discuss, and interpret their results and observations. Research papers have been recently published on this issue (i.e.: Cordoni & Palagi, 2008, Ethology 114: 298-308).

Training course for technicians of natural history museums
A training course for 15 graduate student from Regione Sardegna (Central Italy) were hosted for 1.5 months in museum to improve basic and advanced techniques of museum items restoration, marketing, collection conservation, project learning, with particular focus on stuffed and anatomical items. They were also asked to participate in projecting new exhibition areas as well as to physically interact with primary and secondary school students during didactical activity in museum. Special seminaries were prepared to teach and inform them to the whole museum entity, basic and applied techniques, and integrated arguments of anatomy, biology, museography and educational aspects.