Encourage “open schooling” where schools, in cooperation with other stakeholders, become an agent of community well-being; FAMILIES ARE ENCOURAGED TO BECOME REAL PARTNERS IN SCHOOL LIFE AND ACTIVITIES; professionals from enterprise, civil and wider society are actively involved in bringing real-life projects into the classroom. COMMISSION 2015, SCIENCE EDUCATION FOR RESPONSIBLE CITIZENSHIP In 2015, the international community signed the Agenda for Sustainable Development 2030 and set 17 bold goals to reach a better and equal society. The fourth goal was established to be Quality Education, aiming to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” (UNESCO, 2017). In our current society, in which digitalization and technologies transverse almost (if not all) dimensions of our everyday life, Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Maths (STEAM) abilities and digital competences become key factors for students to reach a good life. This scenario calls for a change in the school education paradigm. For this, there is a strong need to boost the interest in and retention of students in STEAM subjects. However, a recent trend shows young students in K12 developing resistance towards science learning and science careers. Moreover, global players such as the European Commission and the OECD as well as leading research communities agree that one of the biggest challenges to 21st century education is to engage and re-engage young student along their teenage years in science learning. One powerful way to practice to (re)engage young students in science learning connected to society demands is to include FAMILIES AND COMMUNITY IN OPEN REAL-LIFE ACTIVITIES, engaging students and their families in science in the local and virtual communities. Families, especially parents, have a crucial role at influencing students' engagement towards science learning. Therefore there is a substantial need to bring in innovative educational practices in partnership of the supporting community surrounding school. Hence, this project has 3 main objectives: 1) Encouraging families to become real partners in school life and activities through participatory design; 2) Co-creating ’science everywhere’ activities alongside teachers, students and families to support responsible science education; 3) Supporting the deployment of immersive Joint Science Missions involving the community as a whole so that schools become agents of community well-being. Our Family-based Open Science Schooling project is one of the first systematic European attempts to experiment with such challenges. The project’s most important mission is to develop practically useful guidance to secondary schools and science teachers on how to organize and facilitate family-based open science schooling with good quality, based on rich practical experimentation along the project and on co-creation with young students and their families. All project elements are directed towards producing such practically useful and attractive guidance to secondary schools and science teachers through participatory design with schools and families. The success of such initiatives is totally depending on the quality of the capacity building and empowerment of science teachers, schools and the surrounding school communities. Underpinning this basic innovation, the project’s work methods add considerable novelty to the initiatives, as the project organization, experimentation and results will involve students, teachers and families as co-creators, through well documented participatory design approach. The project innovation is therefore linked to the European re-thinking science education agenda, dedicated to find brand new ways to make science and science learning attractive to young students, precisely along the years in which they strongly build their identity, personality and professional intents. The project consortium comprehends two highly qualified knowledge partners (of which one is the project coordinator), five dedicated practice partners (secondary schools) from different countries and one quality assurance partner, covering in total eight quite different European member states, ranging from Finland to Portugal and from Poland to Turkey. From this project, it is expected that young students engage in real-life science in open collaborating community and family teams, creating dramatically new images of what applied science is and how it can be practiced among teenagers. At the same time this open schooling environment will provide a reliable context for building responsible science mindsets towards active citizenship. The project will yield 4 product outcomes expressed through four Intellectual Outputs (IOs), and process outcomes will result from the various project phases.
Despite the tremendous importance that STEAM and science education has in our digital society, we see a worrisome trend in youth disengagement from science learning and science related careers that are translating in a serious shortage of capable individuals in the labour market in Europe. On the other hand, it is also well-documented that family members can have a powerful impact on youth science learning by participating directly in STEAM activities with students. Building on these observations, the Family-based OSS project implementation envisioned 3 main objectives: a. Encouraging families to become real partners in school life and activities through participatory design, supporting the formation of a more positive view towards science learning and science careers in young students. b. Co-creating ’science everywhere’ activities alongside teachers, students and families to support responsible science education, supporting the awareness, importance and demystification of science. c. Deploying immersive Joint Science Missions involving teachers, students, family members and the local community, so that schools become agents of community well-being.
The EU Commission, as well as OECD and leading research communities jointly agree that one of the biggest challenges to 21st century education is to (re-) engage young teenage students in science learning, in a life in science, and in responsible science. The Family-based Open Science Schooling Project, therefore, answered the EC call to “Encourage “open schooling” where schools, in cooperation with other stakeholders, become an agent of community well-being; families are encouraged to become real partners in school life and activities; professionals from enterprise, civil and wider society are actively involved in bringing real-life projects into the classroom.” Commission 2015, Science Education for Responsible Citizenship. One powerful way to practice open science schooling (OSS) is to engage students and their families in real-life science discovery, under the motto ‘science is everywhere’. Therefore, the project addressed the need to experiment with innovative OSS practices, facilitating students to discover science in their daily lives, while at the same time establishing, supporting and strengthening home-school collaborative links, to enable students’ re-engagement and boosted motivation in science learning in new ways.