SPACE – Strategic Partnership - Agents for Change in Education
The SPACE project – which stands for 'Strategic Partnership: Agents of Change in Education' – brings innovative existing approaches, designed to provide Europe's future educators with the tools they need to exemplify how tomorrow's innovators act, interact, think, network and teach.
Science, technology, arts, entrepreneurship and innovation all meet in the SPACE project. By following the approach to “Write a Science Opera (WASO)”, the SPACE project extends the limits of that educational model in several ways, allowing it to encompass additional fields of learning and knowledge.
The project’s main objective is to establish an international entrepreneurial organisation that students run. The outcome is a network of student teachers who are trained in the delivery of innovative cross-disciplinary educational models in arts and sciences to primary students, based on the project’s collaboration with a leading European research and industry entity, namely the European Space Agency’s Technology Center (ESTEC). The project thus facilitates the implementation of innovative curriculum structures at the partnering institutions, based on experiences in the proposed methods.
The project is funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union and is run by a strategic partnership of European organisations, led by AP University College Antwerp, Belgium.
Basic information
The following research activities and reports are carried out as part of the SPACE project:
- Research into a pedagogy for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM) disciplines through three intensive programme weeks that bring together students from the project’s partnering institutions, to consider and explore various practices.
- Drafting and publication of a science opera guidebook.
- Exploration of the project’s guiding methodology.
- A digital toolkit for activities in STEAM education.
- A pedagogical framework for the SPACE methodology.
- A potential research paper from the academics involved in the project.
Teaching materials in the following areas are offered as part of the SPACE project. These materials are:
- A science opera guidebook for teachers to use in the classroom.
- A digital toolkit for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM) education that contains usable activities and lesson plans developed by students throughout the project’s period.
- A pedagogical framework that explores the links between Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and creative learning.
- A final symposium for teachers in Porto, Portugal, in 2019.