We need to enrich our school curricula with activities that improved both students and teachers’ ability to engage with such debates, since they not only impart a knowledge of the content, but also a knowledge of ‘how science works’, an element which should be an essential component of any school science curriculum. When students get involved in such activities they appreciate the challenges and limitations of an experiment or observation and as a result develop a better understanding of the nature of scientific knowledge. There are a series of initiatives that are trying to bring frontier science to schools. These initiatives promote science teaching and learning as a process of inquiry as well as technological thinking as a process of problem solving. They act as the window onto live scientific experiments and phenomena, on-going scientific research, and the personalities and stories of working scientists across Europe and beyond. The FRONTIERS project aims to demonstrate how Nobel Prize winning science can be systematically integrated in the school curriculum. The demonstration of this integration will be realized through a monitored-for-impact use of innovative educational activities, the FRONTIERS Demonstrators, which will provide feedback for the take-up of such interventions in different countries, by presenting the main ways that frontier science experiments can leverage educational activities by a) Creating virtual global classrooms by interconnecting the schools and the research centers, b) making scientific and educational resources available worldwide through advanced repositories and effective search mechanisms c) supporting effective community building between researchers, teachers and students. More specifically the main objectives of this project are the following: • Select a series of scientific research outreach programs that successfully introduce the scientific methodology in school science education, by utilizing existing research infrastructures of frontier research institutions enriched with online tools • Integrate these initiatives under a common educational approach and develop the FRONTIERS Demonstrators that could be exploited and widely used from the educational communities in Europe and beyond • Create virtual learning communities of educators, students and researchers and involve them in extended episodes of playful learning. • Systematic validate the proposed approaches and activities in order to identify their impact in terms of the effectiveness and efficiency. • Design and implement a systematic raising awareness strategy that will contribute to the effective communication of the project’s results and outcomes. Bringing together expertise from frontier scientific research and educational research in formal and informal science learning, along with user communities across Europe, the FRONTIERS consortium aims to demonstrate how Europe’s scientific infrastructures could provide powerful tools for scaling-up current pilot implementations for effective introduction of frontier science in the school curriculum and development of effective outreach programs. The main results expected from the proposed project are: • The FRONTIERS Demonstrators, a series of innovative educational activities that offering access to unique scientific resources to teachers and students organized under a systematic pedagogical framework. • The FRONTIERS Community, a virtual learning community of teachers, students and researchers who will be involved in extended episodes of playful learning. • The FRONTIERS Community Support Environment will host the project’s communities while at the same time it will operate as a repository with unique educational resources. • The FRONTIERS Tool-Kit “Effective Ways of Introducing frontier science in Schools”, that will be available through the etwinning collaboration space to all European schools. To meet the proposed project's objectives we have established a team with significant experience in both pedagogy and scientific research outreach. The partners have been involved in numerous projects and initiatives and they have managed to implement numerous activities for school based work. The FRONTIERS consortium brings together key players in the field of Particle, Astroparticle and Gravitational Physics (IASA, EGO VIRGO, PCCP) and Astronomy and Space (NUCLIO) outreach that have invested major efforts to introduce frontier research issues into the school’s classrooms in Europe and beyond. Additionally the consortium includes a pedagogical team with strong background in the field of inquiry and STEM education (DCU, EA). The aim of the project is to mobilize 1,000 teachers and 10,000 students in the framework of the proposed activities. The development of the FRONTIERS users’ community will be based on the effective integration of already established strong educational communities.
Gaining students’ attention by presenting Nobel Prize winning ideas and offering activities using technology and everyday life is seen as one of the key ways to stimulate students and contribute to the discovery of the next generation of innovators. The project aims can only be accomplished with the full collaboration and engagement of teachers and their schools. The Frontiers project consortium, coordinated by Dublin City University included partners from Ireland, Greece, Italy, France and Portugal. Five project outputs included: 1. Select a series of scientific research outreach programmes that successfully introduce the scientific methodology in school science education, by utilizing existing research infrastructures of frontier research institutions enriched with online tools (data analysis tools, simulations & games) and web-interactive educational material (O1). 2. Integrate these initiatives under a common educational approach and develop the FRONTIERS Demonstrators that could be exploited and widely used from the educational communities in Europe and beyond (O2). 3. Create virtual learning communities of educators, students and researchers and involve them in extended episodes of playful learning. The proposed project will involve teachers, students and researchers in collaborative learning activities. The development of the virtual learning community will be enhanced by the FRONTIERS Community Support Environment (O3). 4. Systematic validate the proposed approaches and activities in order to identify their impact in terms of the effectiveness and efficiency. The project will be implemented in schools, science teacher training centres, and research centres in different countries and a detailed evaluation report will be prepared (O4). 5. Design and implement a systematic raising awareness strategy that will contribute to the effective communication of the project’s results and outcomes. A devoted Tool Kit (O5) will be developed that will be uploaded to the eTwinning collaboration space to act as a starting point for numerous collaborative projects between schools. The main results from the proposed project included the following: • The creation of 21 FRONTIERS inquiry based and technology enhanced demonstrators, a series of innovative educational activities in the fields of High Energy Physics, Astroparticle Physics, Astrophysics and Gravitational Wave Astronomy. The demonstrators were developed by experts and translated into 5 languages (English, Greek, French, Italian, Portuguese). Educators can utilize the educational resources on the Frontiers website at (http://www.frontiers-project.eu/frontiers-educational-resources) and then link to the full demonstrators on OSOS . • The creation of 20 educational activities by teachers who attended the Frontiers international teacher training events. The educational activities are linked to the school curricula (http://www.frontiers-project.eu/frontiers-educational-resources). • FRONTIERS Community, the following online FRONTIERS Project resources have been utilised Facebook, Website, Open Schools for Open Societies Platform, Summer and Winter Schools, Google Classroom. • To mobilise 1,000 teachers within the framework of the project. It has been demonstrated, through the range of activities and platforms employed by the project to engage and mobilise teachers (Output 4), the consortium has mobilised well in excess of the target figure. • 15 multiplier workshop events were held by the project partner countries (Ireland, Greece, Italy, France and Portugal). 303 workshop participants • International Summer and Winters schools, 277 participants fully completed the International e-Schools so far, with many others joining for virtual visits hosted as part of the e-School events. This group of teachers who have been engaged, trained and supported in integrating Nobel prize winning physics into their classes, is evidence of the active FRONTIERS Community of motivated teachers of physics across the EU and beyond. • 8 Masterclass events were organised by IASA, held both in-person and virtually, 405 students and 71 teachers took part. • 1,100 students and 192 teachers took part in 11 virtual visits, allowing access to real-world physics experiments and the research scientists that work there. • The student mobilisation was 10,000. This is based on the given ratio that the mobilisation of 1 teacher would deliver the mobilisation of 10 students. This equivalence is arrived at as teachers employ resources and training with students in the classroom, at a minimum of 10:1. As the FRONTIERS project achieved its goal of mobilising over the stated goal of 1,000 teachers, it can be stated that the project also achieved its stated aim of mobilising over 10,000 students. • The FRONTIERS Tool-Kit “Effective Ways of Introducing frontier science in Schools”, is available as Output 5 and through the etwinning collaboration space to all European schools.