MiniOpenLab – Open community and Hands-on approach to Sustainable Development and STEM Education
The main goal of the KA201-64272EB1 Erasmus+ project is to set up and test an open community and a hands-on approach to sustainable development and STEM education, founded on:
Education for sustainable development and STEM education are two major priorities for the EU. As climate change, overpopulation, and inequalities begin to take their toll on our planet and global human development, education for sustainable development (ESD) emerged as a response to change attitudes and behaviour and encourage people to act with regard to the objective of sustainability.
On the other hand, science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education is key for an increasingly complex knowledge-based society. Knowledge of and about science is integral to preparing our population to be actively engaged and responsible citizens, creative and innovative, able to work collaboratively, and fully aware of and knowledgeable about the complex challenges facing society (Science Education for Responsible Citizenship, EC, 2015).
Both sustainable development (SD) and STEM should be addressed from an early age. At school, children must be motivated to learn maths and science and imagine working in these fields and learn about sustainability and develop attitudes and behaviours that are in line with the UN’s SD Goals.
The dominant approach to STEM education and education for sustainable development in schools is still teacher-driven. This in part is responsible for students’ lack of interest in pursuing STEM studies and careers and for not exploring the genuine interest of children in SD topics to a greater length.
In this context, STEM education and teaching sustainable topics must take on new models with a higher prevalence of experiential learning and that can bring together schools and other stakeholders in the local community.
The MiniOpenLabs project proposes setting up and testing a different methodology with a higher prevalence of experiential learning and relies on collaboration between science and technology organisations, enterprises, and civil society to ensure relevant and meaningful engagement of all societal stakeholders with science and increase the uptake of science studies, citizen science initiatives, and science-based careers, employability, and competitiveness.
The main goal of the project is to set up and test an open community and a hands-on approach to sustainable development and STEM education for children (6–12 years old), comprising:
- MiniOpenLabs: the MiniOpenLabs are small laboratories that open to the local community where children, under the guidance of teachers or other educators (including parents), may engage in STEM-based projects on sustainable development.
- An activity book: this book will contain a set of STEM-based projects on sustainable development that may be carried out in the MiniOpenLabs.
- Workshops: involves creating guidelines and running different events to educate teachers on the MiniOpenLabs approach and involve the local community in STEM education activities.
- Contest and innovative practices booklet: this contest aims to recognise innovative practices in sustainable development and STEM education in schools, giving more visibility to the need for a change in learning approaches.
Basic information
MiniOpenLabs concept and working framework.
To establish the general concept of the MiniOpenLabs, a benchmark analysis and focus group was established. The purpose of the focus group was to get insights from end-users and experts, which are critical to creating a new concept of MiniOpenLabs that responds to specific needs in SD and STEM education in partner countries. A focus group was conducted in each partner country with a total of 24 participants.
Results were published and can be found here.
MiniOpenLabs activity book
The aim of this activity is to design a set of STEM-based activities on SD with different levels of complexity, materials, durations, and topics and gather them in a book to support teachers and other educators.
To complete this project, participants first created guidelines for activities. In addition, they generated ideas for activities and collaboratively created a list of 15 activities per partner country for the MiniOpenLabs workbook. Teacher guidelines and student worksheets were created for each activity. Five activities per country were preliminarily tested in classrooms by the participants in the project. Improvements for these activities were proposed and all activities will be tested and evaluated according to the evaluation plan of the project. All activities will be soon published on the project webpage in each partner country's language.