We are witnessing a time where teachers are stepping out of their comfort zones and enriching their professional curriculum in favour of development, however not all communities have access to the same opportunities. European Islands share one specific trait that restrains their access to these opportunities. For their isolation and lack of human capital in general, islands are faced with lower socio-economic conditions and an underdeveloped educational system, experiencing a greater student disengagement and school dropout. Measures to improve European islands development include the promotion of new ICT technologies in education and the shift of human aspirations toward quality. IDiverSE is an innovative project that builds up on a previous Erasmus+ project (PLATON) where members of this team also collaborate together. It uses previously created and validated as well as new innovative methods for Inquiry Based Science Learning activities. The pilot stage of this project will include interdisciplinary collaborative Inquiry and a new methodology for the investigation of local culture. Components of ethnoscience will be applied throughout the whole project to enable students to find connections between the ancestral knowledge embedded in their cultural heritage and the classroom curricular contents thus participating in a more meaningful and valuable learning experience. Interdisciplinary and collaborative inquiry, local culture, ethnoscience and personal geography will be integrated to create a Science Trail where students will explore their natural environment starting from the Water, continuing to the Land and ending with the Skies. Altogether the results will provide students with a holistic view of the factors that influence their lives, as their culture, their environment and their geographical conditions. Working in cooperation with schools from different islands in Europe and worldwide, through an online platform, students will also realise that each island has a different network of influences creating a diversity that brings value and uniqueness to each student’s homeland. IDiverSE also stands for “I Diverse” and as such it aims to include an even deeper view of Diversity, integrating each student’s internal world as unique and precious, promoting awareness for civic and ethical issues for the respect of difference. In the end the Science Trails will become available to each island’s community and students will share their findings as well as raise their community’s awareness for the Diversity concepts learnt. The whole process will be transparent and inclusive, raising their community’s understanding of the importance of development and innovation in education. The project team will then produce a Roadmap handbook that will include the IDiverSE methodology, tools and Science Trail mapping as well as the lessons learnt during the pilot implementation phase, making it freely available to other European countries. IDiverSE is in line with the key competences for the 21st century skills for students and teachers. By promoting real scientific research and Inquiry Based activities, it challenges students to become more independent and proactive, developing their critical thinking and the capacity to find problem solving solutions. For the international cooperation component it promotes the development of social and communication skills, as well as tolerance and global citizenship. The project foresees the involvement of at least 20 Portuguese schools, 10 Spanish schools and 10 Greek schools, divided across Madeira, Azores, Canary, Balearic islands, and distributed over several other Greek islands as part of the Rural Wings network. The project is estimated to directly reach at least 120 teachers and 1000 students living on the islands. Teachers involve in the project will face a shift in their teaching practice, making it more student-centred and with a greater sense of interdisciplinarity and contextualization. They will be motivated to work in cooperation and to create a better and more meaningful relationship with their colleagues and students at a local and international level. By the end, teachers will be left with the project’s know-how and an enriched professional curriculum. Students, being the main target of this project will benefit from a better environment at school where cooperation is supported and motivated and with an increased feeling of involvement in the classroom. Students will discover new skills and strengths and at the same time learn to respect their own weaknesses. They will finish the project with a greater sense of self-efficacy and pride while at the same time having their work shared and recognised in and outside of their home islands. The creation of a network through ICT will be left as a bridge that stands in place of the physical connections that islands lack increasing the students’ and teachers’ international connections and opening their multicultural horizons.
It is known that education has the power to shape the future of generations. In such a rapidly evolving world, education must accelerate its development in order to lead development wisely and with respect for nature, environment and all living beings. Teachers are gathering at a European level to learn and update their practices and are developing European networks of best practices. However, not all teachers have the same access to such innovations. Teachers and students from islands have been isolated in many levels and innovation in education is no exception. IDiverSE was a project that focused on creating an innovative teaching and learning approach that was meaningful and accessible to teachers and students living on islands and in the mainland. It combined several innovative methodologies like Inquiry, Interdisciplinarity, Personal Geography, Design Thinking, international collaboration and innovative assessment, into one seamless learning approach that focused on Design Thinking in STEAM education. This method led students in the development of projects focusing on problems relevant to their communities locally but also globally, while learning their curricula content in a meaningful way. Through the four steps of design thinking - Feel, Imagine, Create and Share - students learned about the problems, communicated with their communities and together brainstormed, co-created and shared solutions to such problems. In other words, teachers and students became change-makers in their communities promoting awareness and development. Several training courses were provided to teachers where they became experienced in all the methodologies and innovations and constant support was given to them during the implementation. A total of 107 teachers and 1541 students from 1st to 12th grade implemented the project, developing over 140 community projects in their islands and mainland. The projects were implemented in 11 islands and mainland of 7 countries: Portugal, Spain, Greece, Ghana, Colombia, USA and Serbia. Students focused on several local and global problems like plastic pollution, marine litter, the extinction of pollinators, the dangers and importance of UV radiation for human health, reading habits of the community, the production of hygienic masks for covid, pollution around the school, musical heritage of the Azores islands, space exploration, etc. In all projects, students contacted with their community to evaluate their level of awareness about the topics and to create something meaningful to their particular community. During the four steps of the Design Thinking, students researched the problem in an Inquiry and Interdisciplinary approach and used their creativity to create solutions. Finally, students shared their creations with their communities. Several sharing actions were carried out by the students and teachers. Some groups created posters and leaflets that they distributed in their communities, an art exhibit about plastics in the ocean was presented in a public gallery, a group of students in Azores appeared in the local TV channel presenting their work and sharing their results, an exhibit was created for the whole school community to learn about the different problems and the solutions, several temporary science trails were created and a stationary one was built and opened for the community, school gardens were planted and open for the community to visit, pollinator hotels were built and installed, conferences were organized, etc. Teachers have also appeared on local TV and radio channels presenting the project. One additional initiative was developed by the IDiverSE team, called "Trail of Islands" that involved 4 schools from 4 islands in Greece and Portugal. Students from each island, prepared a treasure box with 6 items from their island and sent it to the other islands. The initiative included 4 additional activities related to natural disasters in the islands, however, due to COVID-19, this initiative got suspended after the boxes were sent. By the end of the project, teachers have showed a great satisfaction with the project, reporting an improvement in their students' engagement, motivation, skills development, attitudes in class, relationship with colleagues and teachers and final grades. Teachers also reported an improvement in their own teaching motivation and engagement, a better relationship between them and colleagues and with students and provided a very positive feedback, stating that they would remain innovating in their teaching. IDiverSE has been a very successful and fruitful project, overcoming all expectations. All the outputs, resources, tools, activities and reports can be seen on the project website: https://idiverse.eu/. The students' projects can be seen in the Open Schools for Open Societies portal: https://portal.opendiscoveryspace.eu/en/osos