Environment and sustainability have become key stakes in our society. Thanks to the mediatic interest and the wave of schools' strikes organized by young people, students are increasingly calling for their rights to guarantee a better preserved world for themselves and future generations. In this context, schools are called to play a role in educating future generations in being citizens who care for the planet and sustainable development. The key role of Environment Education (EE) has been largely recognized even by the UNESCO, but many uncertainties persist on how to integrate it in the school curricula. A survey carried out among teachers of our partner schools, revealed a need for better preparation and for developing updated methodologies to apply to this field. In the lack of an unanimous answer on the “how”, teachers themselves need a good training to be prepared on EE and to learn innovative ways to incorporate it within curricula. Moreover, project partners see EE as a complementary part of the broader STEM education and would like to promote an interdisciplinary teaching of STEM applied to environmental and climate issues. Inspired by this multidisciplinary approach, with an aim to propose and provide a global scientific view of a problem, the proposed activities and laboratories will be carried out from the different scientific perspectives (climate physics, ecobiology, chemistry, biotechnology). Starting from this context, we would like to create an exchange of best practices on environment, climate and their connection with the STEM field, between high schools with students aged 14-18 scientific organizations coming from 4 different countries. The main objectives of the project are: -prepare teachers to include and integrate EE at school and develop their competencies and methodologies in developing hands-on and interactive activities, that sparks imagination and unlocks innovation mindset; -exchange practices between formal and non formal education (schools and scientific organizations); -enhance experiential learning outside of the classroom to enable students to make connections and apply their learning in the real world; -promoting an interdisciplinary approach linked to STEM when incorporating EE in the curriculum; --make students more enthusiastic and engaged in learning STEM and develop their skills, like critical, creative thinking, investigating, civic skills, the capacity to create interconnections of social, ecological, economic and political issues. The expected results during the project and on its completion are the following: -organization of 4 learning-teaching-training activities (one in each country) to share the best practices and compare methodologies over environment education among teachers and experts working for scientific organizations. The organizations will try to address these problems (human pollution, water pollution, climate change etc) from an experimental scientific point of view, using information from scientific publications and through the setup of replicable experiments. -As a result of these LTTs, we will select 20 activities to help engage learners with practical lessons in STEM focusing on real-world challenges within the natural environment. The Scientific organizations will produce activity sheets with step-by-step procedures and guidelines to replicate such laboratories at school. The activity sheets will be collected within a “Report on best practices to introduce green education at school”. -In the meantime, teachers and students of the partner schools will be called to work at distance creating the etwinning page of the project. Students will work in a virtual collaboration and will create 5 video tutorials explaining and replicating the 5 activities proposed by one organization. We will have 20 video tutorials in total. -We will create implement a strong dissemination strategy to enlarge the beneficiaries of the project. In addition to the local dissemination promoted by each partner, we will create a Youtube Channel for the video tutorials as well as a page on Scientix to promote the results. All these activities are thought to: -increase knowledge and awareness over EE; -ensure better preparation to implement hands-on activities and laboratories on EE, advanced knowledge and experience on different options on how to conduct interesting environmental education activities and increased multidisciplinary approach of STEM subjects over environment education; -developed knowledge of how to implement an IBSE approach during class activities and during public scientific dissemination; -spread environmentally sustainable habits by accompanying every laboratory activity with a thematically-related, positive proposed actions. In the longer term, we expect: --more EU schools willing to take advantage of the results created in the project; -more EU teachers and students replicating the laboratories proposed in class.
The goals we have set were many and ambitious: - to prepare teachers to include and integrate environmental education at school and to develop their skills and methodologies in the development of practical and interactive activities that stimulate the imagination and unlock the mentality of innovation; - practical exchange between formal and non-formal education (schools and scientific organisations, research centers); - enhancing experiential learning outside the classroom to enable students to make connections with their environment and apply their learning in the real world they live in; - promote an interdisciplinary STEM-related approach when integrating environmental education into the curriculum; - make students more enthusiastic and engaged in STEM learning and develop their skills, like critical and creative thinking, enquiry, civic skills, and the ability to make interconnections of social, ecological, environmental, sustainable, economic and political issues
If it is true that the school is the place where tomorrow's citizens are formed, then the teaching of environmental education cannot be missing in the classrooms. Teaching young people respect for the environment, how to protect it, what renewable and non-renewable sources of energy are, how to waste fewer resources, is fundamental to forming future citizens who care about the good shape of the community. Many school teachers appear to have had little training in teaching environmental science and sometimes lack confidence in teaching sustainability topics. Due to the shortage of prepared teachers, many schools do not include in their educational paths experimental phases and inquiry-based methods. School staff needs to be trained in order to adopt inquiry-based and other proven methods for more effective environmental science teaching. This could help teachers in better preparing their pupils, involving them in different environmental topics affecting their daily lives and also making science more attractive for the students. The project also stems from the need to respond to the demands of young people who are increasingly claiming their rights to ensure a better preserved world for themselves and future generations.