Objectives
The ISE Summer academy is specifically designed for teaching professionals in STEM disciplines (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). It will introduce teachers to unique collections of open digital educational resources and train them to link them with innovative pedagogical practices, implementing resource based and project-based approaches, in order to design educational scenarios by repurposing existing eLearning tools.
The overall goal of the academy is twofold:
- to acquaint participants with the significance and opportunities of inquiry-based science teaching through the use of open and online resources in STEM education;
- to enable teachers to successfully find, develop and apply the innovative tools and multidisciplinary teaching techniques that will help them create attractive science lessons and thus foster the interest of their students in science topics.
The offered resources and tools, although associated with a broad range of curriculum areas, do not impose a fixed curriculum but support a model that can be customized based on location and culture, as well as cross-disciplinary situations, being thus ideal to be used in the European context for differentiated instruction.
Consequently, the specific objectives of the courses are:
- Introducing STEM teachers to the concepts and skills of inquiry learning-design and demonstrating its various applications in inquiry-based learning activities in the science classroom taking into account different teaching and learning styles;
- Educating the teachers to bring into the classroom a unique collection of digital resources and tools that are based on real-world problems. The resources will lead teachers to involve students in finding their own problems, testing ideas (from small to big ideas in science), receiving feedback, and working collaboratively with other students or practitioners beyond the school classroom. Advanced eLearning tools will provide scaffolds that enhance learning, support thinking and problem solving, model activities and guide practice, represent data in different ways, and form part of a coherent and systemic educational approach.
- Training teachers to appropriately select and exploit freely available existing eLearning tools and resources in their educational scenarios that suit their own needs in terms of planning, implementing and sharing pedagogical ideas, managing their classroom and organizing the curriculum;
- Offering teachers more opportunities to evaluate the quality of their own thinking and products for feedback, reflection, and revision;
- Giving teachers the opportunity to interact with working scientists, receive feedback from multiple sources;
- Further expanding the ISE pan-European community where teachers, teacher trainers, education policy makers, parents, students, practicing scientists and other interested members of society are included in order to expand the learning environment beyond the school walls and expand opportunities for teachers’ professional development;
- Empowering participants to create effective project scenarios to use in the classroom, as well as in multiple environments such as face-to-face, online and other technology mediated learning;
- Introducing participants to the innovative concept “Big Ideas of Science” as means of building multidisciplinary activities and to strategies on how to embody and deploy it into the curriculum and their everyday science teaching practice;
- Fostering a creative and inspired working atmosphere as well as a culture of collaboration among teachers of different science disciplines in organizing multidisciplinary activities to commonly develop ideas for Erasmus+ Strategic Partnerships;
- Acquainting participants with the potential of popular social media tools, science outreach websites and teachers’ communities;
- Familiarizing participants with the concept of Universal learning design (UDL) and the application of the UDL framework and eLearning resources in the development of multidisciplinary lesson plans;
- Introducing the participants to the importance of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) and learning about successful RRI practices in education as well as the digital RRI toolkit.
By building a comprehensive open learning networks approach that allows teachers to access their colleagues' course materials, share their own and collaborate will enable all stakeholders to examine their own practices in the light of the best performing approaches. The Inspiring Science Education International Summer Academy is part of the ongoing effort to establish a European Science Education Academy which is supported by the European Physical Society (EPS).