In a highly specialized and technologized world, a critical and competent citizenship in science and technology is more needed than ever. STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) could be addressed since early childhood promoting an active and participative methodology, focused on inquiry-based learning and collaborative projects. Also, Educational Technology – such as robotics and code-learning - brings new opportunities for designing attractive approaches and tools to improve the engagement of kids, enhancing the academic outcomes in Science, Maths and Technology subjects and increase the scientific vocations. Although STEM programmes increase rapidly, these are focused on high schools and after-school activities. While these approaches are being considered by policy makers, still remains a lack of research in this field and its adaptation to Childhood and Primary Education. These stages are a crucial period for enhancing future careers and changing the societal misconceptions and prejudices against science and technology. The objective of BOTSTEM is to develop new tools by means of inquiry teaching, open robotics and code-learning for enhancing current didactics of STEM subjects. BOTSTEM is aimed and fully in-line with the formal education curricula and its purposes for childhood and primary schools. Specifically, BOTSTEM aims at 1) improving the acquisition and competencies and, thus, potential students' achievement in STEM, particularly in Natural Sciences and Maths, through innovative methodologies and resources, open source software/hardware, inquiry-based projects and code languages (IOs); 2) developing tools more appealing for pupils (educational games, open robots, playable code-learning and suitable methods for implementing them) ; 3) enhancing the quality and integration of Long-life training aimed at teachers through VLEs which allow a peer-learning more flexible and cost-effective; 5) optimising the public image and perception of Science and Technology, overcoming the prejudices that kids assume in their early childhood leading an early intervention in STEM integrated with a gender-based approach. BOTSTEM consortium brings together a multidisciplinary team with a wide geographical coverage: Spain, Sweden, Italy and Cyprus, reflecting a wide variety of cultural backgrounds and formal education systems. It is comprised by • University of Burgos and Kristianstad University, both experts in Education, STEM and robotics • Polo Europa and Ideodromio, non-profit organisations promoting the STEM education and Citizens’Science • Adele Robots, a highly-innovative SME working on social robots, artificial emotions and collaborative robotics • K-Veloce, experts on Social Impact Assessment, gender and Dissemination strategy. BOTSTEM aims to reach 14000 individuals during its lifecycle; 50000 at long-term. More than 1500 teachers, 600 researchers, 20 policy makers, 3000 families and more than 1500 children (4-8 years old) will be reached. The following Intellectual Outputs will be produced, sustained by an intensive dissemination activity and designed through a systematic and participatory research. O1) Toolkit for early STEM education by means of robotics and coding; O2) Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) and Knowledge Transfer Platform (KTP) aimed at teachers on STEM subjects for childhood and primary education; O3) Guidelines for policy makers: How to encourage scientific and technological vocations since early childhood. Two events will be organised: 1) Workshop on STEM Education, robotics and new technologies;2) I Conference on Integrated STEM with Robotics and Code-Learning for Childhood Education. BOTSTEM will substantially impact on the formal education system and the society as a whole. • Children (4-8 years old): Significant improvement in student achievement raising scientific vocations and gender inclusion at long-term • Teachers: Enhanced teaching and learning processes. Tools and resources appealing for pupils. Improved long-life education. • Policymakers: New approaches for STEM compatible with overcrowded classrooms and personalised learning. New cost-effective methodologies for reducing the early school leaving. Adaptation of the current curricula to the new technologies and its benefits. At long-term, students better prepared for the labour market. Increased STEM careers among vulnerable populations. Reduced gender gap • SMEs and industry: New market opportunities related to robotics and STEM education integrated into the curriculum of childhood and primary education. • Open Source Community: more visibility and enhancement of their outcomes. • Academic community: New research lines and wider samples. Better visibility of research into STEM education, robotics and code for kids • Associations and families: Increased of social awareness on STEM education. More interactive resources and appealing learning tools for out-of-school education.
STEM programmes are receiving increasing attention, and decision makers are becoming interested since these approaches are considered efficient for developing scientific literacy and increasing scientific and technological vocations. However, what can be understood as an integrated STEM approach is not clear: many different conceptions of curriculum integration for STEM coexist; there are few teaching models ; the didactical guidelines are often not specific enough for teachers’ implementation; and most initiatives are addressed to teenagers, although recent research points out that while children at early ages often have an intrinsic interest in STEM content areas, it declines as they grow up. Therefore, pre-primary and primary education stages constitute great opportunity for smoothing the way. The ERASMUS+ project Robotics and STEM education for children and primary schools has its focus in early education (children four-eight y.o). The project outputs were specifically aimed to provide in and pre-service teachers in Childhood and Primary Education with a new didactical model and research-based and tested integrated STEM activities involving robotics. botSTEM aimed to support educators in finding ground-breaking ways to adapt to the continuously changing reality. During the three years of the project the partners have been committed in developing high quality outputs to ensure botSTEM attractiveness and the potential scale-up of its practices. We developed a Toolkit, that won a prize at the Ciencia en acción 2019 competition, translated in 5 languages. It includes a new didactical model on a pedagogical basis and with methodologies for introducing STEM and computational thinking to young students; a selection of good practices in STEM education and robotics, produced and tested by teachers of different European countries; a group of new activities, designed within the model proposed, for developing STEM ideas and competences, making stepwise use of robotics, code learning, and physical Computation; and a selection of Open Educational Resources, useful for teachers wishing to introduce STEM approaches, collaborative inquiry teaching, code learning and programming. A free virtual learning platform, based on Moodle, was designed to help teachers to implement inclusive STEM + robotics practices for 4-8 y.o. The platform has educative videos, developed by the partners; complementary material, including guidelines for the assessment of STEM practices; an on-line quiz -- the botSTEM Game, to delve into aspects of what scientists and engineers do in HTML5-compliant application, suitable for most smartphones and tablet devices-- as well as different free STEM on-line games; guidelines to introduce role models strategies in science teaching to ensure visibility of women in science with biographies of women scientists and engineers from the partners’ countries; and the records of webinars developed during the project. This virtual learning platform is located at our website (https://www.botSTEM.eu/) where all the information and news about the project; the material produced; and recorded conferences can be found. The activities were implemented in schools of all the partners’ countries and studied in depth in Spain and Sweden, showing promising results in teachers and students. From these results, recommendations for stakeholders and for parents were produced in two different documents aimed to encourage scientific vocations already at early childhood education. Two events were organized. One in Verona, including conferences and workshops for researchers, teachers and students on 30th March 2019. The other, converted in an on-line event due to Covid 19 crisis, consisted in five talks, from 21st to 25th September 2020, given by renowned experts in STEM and robotics. The number of subjects reached by dissemination and implementation activities is valuable and far exceeds the foreseen impact: Teachers, researchers, professors and professionals: 8310 (foreseen 2170); researchers: 537 ; Associations and schools: 930 (foreseen 5); Policy makers and Decision makers: 778 (foreseen 15) ; Children and Families: 20035 (4540); Civil society: 63802 (foreseen 3740); Online communication activities: 13291407. The impact reached is high, in terms of participants and dissemination activities; results in schools; research developed (several final bachelor and master degree research projects; scientific publications and presentations in international conferences); and curricular modifications (introducing didactical strategies, from theoretical and practical perspectives, for integrated STEM, coding and inclusive robotics since early childhood) in the Bachelor degree of Pre-primary and Primary education at UBU and HKR preschools teachers’ programs. Finally, botSTEM model and practices inspired the writing of two KA3 Erasmus Plus projects for support of policy reform and one KA2 that have been funded by the European Commission.