Based on the most studied group, i.e. the school-age population, the estimated percentage of highly gifted people ranges from 2 % to 15 %, 10% of the population (EESC.2013). Although high ability in the school and academic context tends to go hand in hand with good school results, school failure it is not uncommon. Students with high intellectual ability can struggle to succeed at school or feel ostracised or rejected by their peer group (EU, 2013). In disadvantaged social settings, giftedness is often masked by socio-economic shortcomings and difficulties. Looking at the current situation in the Member States, is clear that there is a need to improve educational practices and activities aimed at this type of students, something that is influenced by the scarcity of targeted teacher training in this area. Currently, most gifted children spend the majority of their time in regular classrooms without access to challenging coursework or teachers knowledgeable about the special learning needs of our most highly able learners. That is the reality in countries like UK, Ireland, Spain, Netherland or Turkey. STEAM education has an enormous potential to provide more challenging and motivating exercises to gifted and talented students. We can define STEAM education as Science and Technology, interpreted through Engineering and the Arts, all based in Mathematical elements. STEAM is not about spending less time on STEM subjects and more time on art, it’s about applying creative thinking to STEM projects, and sparking students’ imagination and creativity through the arts. Studies show that a quality STEAM education program is engaging, motivating, student-centered, innovative, collaborative, and applies real-world applications (J.C.2017). Despite much interest in STEAM it is often challenging for many teachers to integrate into their teaching of school subject matter. To help gifted students achieve STEAM excellence is necessary to: identify the competences that teachers need in order to provide challenging material to the most capable learners; train teachers to recognize giftedness; incorporate into teacher training the educational use of ICT and the encouragement of creativity, innovation and initiative; create specialized and innovative training and assessment methods, contents and tools in STEAM education for gifted students to support the professional practices of the teachers; expand the number of selective Schools that apply STEAM education for gifted in Europe. STEAM Stars project aims to design a European Framework of Competences in teaching STEAM education for gifted, promoting innovative methods and pedagogies addressed to gifted students and developing OER digital learning materials and tools in STEAM education for gifted. 7 European Universities, Educational authorities and educational experts from 5 countries (Ireland, Netherland, Spain, Turkey and UK) will work together defining common strategies design and carry out the following Outputs: - European Framework of Competences in teaching STEAM education for gifted students - STEAM Stars Open CAMPUS. Includes the following Open Educational Resources: (i) an Online Instructional Guide on Digital Competencies for Virtual Learning; (ii) a set of structured Training Modules (iii) Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) - STEAM Stars Mobile Assessment App - Guidelines to promote transparency and recognition of teaching STEAM education for gifted students School teachers, trainers and non-formal and informal educators are target users and beneficiaries. Gifted students are the main beneficiaries of the project. STEAM Stars will involve directly 78 School teachers, trainers and non-formal and informal educators (28 partners staff /30 experts involved / 20 target users in pilots), 100 gifted students (in pilots) and 535 stakeholders. At local, regional, national and European level the project will reach a minimum audience of 1000 recipients through the project dissemination activities. The project will use European frameworks of reference, such as EQF and ECTS, to promote new learning pathways and boost transparency, recognition and mobility in Europe. Key sectorial and School education associated partners and stakeholders involved in the project will support the dissemination of the project products and contribute to mainstream the final results. The project will have a direct positive impact in: (i) Schools and partner organizations and entities involved in the project activities; will improve their training methods and tools; the teaching skills and competencies (including digital skills) of their trainers and teachers; the quality and relevance of their School, VET and Higher Education courses and programmes (ii) the Gifted students will improve their motivation and educational performance, preventing School failure and drop out. The envisaged long term impact of the project will be a strengthening of the School Education system in Europe.
The primary objectives of the project were to improve awareness among formal, non-formal, and informal educators of giftedness in children and young people, and to increase the use of STEAM methodologies in the classroom to support and engage gifted students. The main practical achievement was the design and creation of an open online learning environment in which users can assess their knowledge and skills, and access training materials to help them to improve those skills.
There is a general lack of understanding about how best to support gifted children, both in the classroom and in informal/non-formal education situations. This is true across most European countries; though some provide specialist teacher training, the majority do not. STEAM education is extremely valuable for providing cross-disciplinary teaching and learning, and helping children to expand their skills into other areas (applying artistic and creative principles to science subjects, or vice versa). STEAM has only recently begun to be widely used in schools; though there has been a focus on STEM in recent years, the integration of the Arts into more scientific subjects is still a relatively underrepresented area. This project has sought to address the lack of specialist training by providing open source, freely available self-assessment and training resources for teachers and informal/non-formal educators, which is accessible and has a ‘drop in drop out’ design so that users can leave and return to their learning when it suits them. These learning materials provide an introduction to the ways in which gifted children may present, their educational and social needs, and how to best support them in educational settings.