Despite nearly 30 years of efforts to engage girls in physical sciences and engineering, the gender gap continues in the scientific vocations. On the other hand, meanwhile the demand of graduates in those fields continues to grow, the scientific vocation among the young students is increasingly low. Answering to that need, the main objective of this project is to raise and share good science education practices for gender balance through an innovative Teacher Training programme. The programme will be tested and implemented in eight countries and disseminated in a digital toolkit format. Eight organizations participate as partners in the project. Elhuyar foundation as coordinator (Spain), Experimentarium science centre (Denmark), HISA science centre (Slovenia), Nemo science centre (Netherlands), European University Cyprus (Cyprus), Hacettepe University (Turkey), NTNU university (Norway) and St Mary's University College (United Kingdom). The consortium is formed by a science communication foundation, three science centres and four universities. All the partners have been involved in successful projects in the fields of science education, innovative methodologies, gender balance and/or Teacher Training. The project is also formed by the direct participation of sixteen schools and policy makers. The project will start with the development of the theoretical framework for the Teacher Training programme, and it will continue with the design of the first version. When the first version of the Teacher Training programme is ready, the Teacher Trainers will take part in an International training. The project will continue with the trained professionals celebrating eight local workshops with STEM teachers, head teachers, directors and policy makers. After that, sixteen schools of eight countries will take part in pilots to check the developed programme. The pilot will finish with an evaluation and preparation of the final version of the Teacher Training programme (Final Toolkit). In the third year all the partners will celebrate the final eight local events, using the final toolkit in multiplier events. Finally, the last version of the toolkit will be disseminated through several face to face and on-line actions. STING will share the developed Teacher Training programme toolkit via policy makers, teacher trainers and other stakeholders, even though it would be accessible to anyone interested though the digital toolkit version. The project will make a next step based in the outputs of several European project outputs, creating shared knowledge, reflected in a modular toolkit that will be tested and implemented locally and disseminated globally. In short-term the project should participate in the STEM Teacher Training policy and events. In long-term the outputs of the project should be transferred to the new policies and improved practices, and it should be a resource for other European initiatives related with gender issues in STEM education.
Despite nearly 30 years of efforts to engage girls in physical sciences and engineering, the gender gap continues in the scientific vocations. On the other hand, meanwhile the demand of graduates in those fields continues to grow, the scientific vocation among the young students is increasingly low. Answering to that need, the main objective of this project is to raise and share good science education practices for gender balance through an innovative Teacher Training programme. The programme has been tested and implemented in eight countries and disseminated in a digital toolkit format (http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/erasmus-plus/projects/eplus-project-details/#project/8765239d-c6c1-4bcb-804a-a938f5b583cf). The reason why the consortium prefered to disseminate the website of the toolkit and not directly the toolkit pdf file is that the developed toolkit has some web resources, that are included in the website: Final toolkit (English): https://stingeuproject.com/toolkit/ Web resources for the toolkit (English): https://stingeuproject.com/toolkit-web-resources/ It has a Basque version too: Final toolkit (Basque): https://sting2017.wordpress.com/tresna-sorta/ Web resources for the toolkit: https://sting2017.wordpress.com/baliabideak/ Eight organizations participated as partners in the project. Elhuyar foundation as coordinator (Spain), Experimentarium Science Museum (Denmark), Hiša eksperimentov Science Museum (Slovenia), Nemo Science Museum (Netherlands), European University Cyprus (Cyprus), Hacettepe University (Turkey), Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Norway) and St Mary's University College (United Kingdom). The consortium is formed by a science communication foundation, three science centres and four universities. The project started with the development of the theoretical framework for the Teacher Training programme, and continued with the design of the first version. When the first version of the Teacher Training programme was ready, the teacher trainers of the partner organisations took part in an international training (Amsterdam, November 2015). The project continued with the trained professionals celebrating nine local workshops with STEM teachers, head teachers, directors and policy makers. After that, teachers from eight countries tested the developed programme. The pilot finished with the preparation of the final version of the Teacher Training programme ("Final Toolkit"). STING shared the Teacher Training programme toolkit via workshops, conferences and face-to-face meetings with policy makers, teacher trainers and other stakeholders. Besides, it is accessible to anyone interested though the digital toolkit version (https://stingeuproject.com). The project made a next step based in the outputs of several European project outputs, creating shared knowledge, reflected in a modular toolkit that was tested and implemented locally and disseminated globally. In long-term the aims of the outputs of the project are to improve practices and new policies, being a resource for other European initiatives related with gender issues in STEM education.