For two decades innovative, project and inquiry based approaches have been targeted to be applied in education system. Nevertheless today's curriculums and education systems which consider science only like a school subject don't allow to use these targeted techniques. The traditional teaching environments have been causing teachers to be accessible information service for students and have led the students not to have creative thinking and problem solving abilities. STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) is necessary to provide students and teachers with the abilities of the 21st century skills such as collaboration and teamwork, creativity, critical thinking, problem solving, flexibility, leadership, initiative, responsibility, entrepreneurship and technology and to see teacher’s role in class as a guide. STEM is a curriculum based on the idea of educating students in four specific disciplines — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — in an interdisciplinary and applied approach. Rather than teach the four disciplines as separate and discrete subjects, STEM integrates them into a cohesive learning paradigm based on real-world applications, not an importer of ready knowledge. We all know that: "To succeed in this new information-based and highly technological society, students need to develop their capabilities in STEM to levels much beyond what was considered acceptable in the past” (National Science Foundation). We should realise that today’s students are tomorrow’s leaders. Occupations in STEM-related careers are some of the fastest growing and best paid of the 21st century, and they often have the greatest potential for job growth. Traditional teaching and learning techniques are blocking students innovative and creative thinking abilities and the last survey implemented among our students aged 15-17 has shown that the teaching and learning environments aren’t suitable enough to use STEM techniques. Our project aims to integrate STEM subject to the curriculums, to separate STEM from the traditional science and show students how the scientific method can be applied to everyday life by using blended learning environments. By working together (Poland, Turkey, England and Finland) collaboratively, it is aimed to make students and teachers be aware and have inspiration of STEM jobs at the areas of robotics, natural science, software, 3D printing, cloud based system, mobile applications, programming and coding, online science simulations, multiple intelligence, nanoscience etc. The main objectives of the project are to: - implement STEM modules in the regular curriculums in each school, - enable students to participate in science challange camps; - build an application called ARTEMIS (Art, Robotics, Technology, Engineering, Maths, Information Service) to be used to reach all of the students by letting students and teachers design the application. The project aims to increase the share of natural sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics in education and to focus on innovative education approaches such as phenomenon-based learning, inquiry method and problem solving method. We are going to include directly in the projects students aged 15-18 from each school and STEM teachers who will participate in interdisciplinary workshops and activities and exchange good practices. Our aim is to include as many teachers as possible from different fields, as well language teachers who can give us linguistic support and give language classes within the framework of CLIL method. In this way we can show how the phenomenon-based method works and improve the cooperation of the school teachers teams. During the 2-year project we are going to centre on STEM implementation in each school and encourage students to participate in STEM seminars and webinars, workshops and mobilities. We plan to organize 4 mobilities (LTTA) during which the students will participate in workshops about STEM and Science Challenge Camps. The host organization of each mobility will prepare activities of main STEM disciplines: it will be programming and design thinking method in Poland, mechanics and engineering in Turkey, technology and 3D printing in England and robotics and nature science in Finland. The principal aim of the project is to implement STEM discipline into the regular school curriculums to focus our students on future possible jobs in this field and give them an opportunity to act on the international level in the disciplines which are very often ignored in the school curriculums. Students and teachers are expected to gain knowledge, attitudes and skills to identify questions and problems in life situations, draw evidence-based conclusions about STEM related issues, awareness of intellectual and cultural environments and STEM jobs giving opportunities about innovative and global strengths for participants career plans thanks to the project outcomes and natural STEM learning environments.
The main goal of the project implemented by the Finnish school Hyvinkään Sveitsin lukio, the Turkish school Trabzon Fen Lisesi and the Polish school Zespół Szkół Da Vinci, which was also the project coordinator, was to familiarize students and teachers with the STEM methodology and to introduce innovative teaching methods in each school that would combine teaching of natural and mathematical sciences as a common paradigm based on the problems of the modern world, and not as separate school subjects. For this purpose, during the project implementation, we conducted a number of workshops, classes, smaller projects and challenges that helped to understand that school knowledge should be treated holistically. Our goal was also to develop 21st century skills among project participants, i.e. developing critical and analytical thinking, creativity, digital skills, teamwork, communication in an international team and leadership skills. Thanks to a very broad perspective and the diversification of activities carried out by the project participants for 30 months, we showed what employment opportunities are offered by the STEM area, what professions can be performed under this methodology, and we tried to convince participants that it is also a discipline for girls and not how it is widely believed that STEM is the most successful discipline of men. All activities carried out under the project concerned such STEM areas as: robotics, natural and mathematical sciences, software, mobile applications, programming and coding, nanotechnologies, natural language processing. Thanks to the project, the participants: - participated in cyclical STEM classes in each school - some of these classes were carried out together, others separately due to the specificity of the curricula and lesson plan, - participants had the opportunity to participate in 2 two-week STEM challenges - these activities were open to participants who took part directly in the project and other students who could prove themselves in the STEM discipline, - students from the partner school Trabzon Fen Lisesi built the ARTEMIS project application, - during the project, we conducted 5 project webinars, which were available to all interested students and teachers and concerned the use of STEM in school teaching, computer science and the phenomenon-based learning methodology widely used in the Finnish education system. Students aged 15-18 who were successfully recruited into the project were directly involved in the project, while most of the project activities were open to all students and teachers. As part of the project, we managed to implement one learning and teaching activity - mobility at the school of the project coordinator, which took place in May 2019. During this mobility, students had the opportunity to work in international teams by solving the Marshmallow Challenge task, designing a logo using the Design Thinking method, participating in coding and programming workshops, workshops on Industrial Design - Explosions about materials and their processing technology, visiting Imaginarium - Virtual Reality Center and by participating in the HackingSTEM workshops and building a model of the human hand. The outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic prevented us from organizing the remaining learning and teaching activities, but did not prevent the achievement of the project's objectives - all webinars and activities were held mainly online. We managed to achieve our project goals, meetings and activities took place online - either synchronously or asynchronously to allow even more participants to participate. We were also able to collect all the materials, activities, webinars, projects and other activities related to the project in the digital repository, which we made available to all interested people - both students and teachers from outside our schools, to show good practices and encourage a change in the perception of teaching of natural and mathematical sciences. In Zespol Szkol Da Vicni, a STEAM profile for high school students was created, which is very popular, while in partner schools modular classes on the STEM methodology were regularly organized, which were included in the work plan of both schools. Many teachers took part in project webinars, gained new skills and knowledge about conducting STEM classes, which they will use in the future. Thanks to the involvement of teachers and students, we will continue to cooperate as partner schools in the field of STEM, exchange experiences and good practices, and enable students to meet in virtual platforms.