science4girls – Making science attractive to female students through open science schooling focused on climate change Erasmus Project

Project Title

science4girls
– Making science attractive to female students through open science schooling focused on climate change

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Gender equality / equal opportunities; Environment and climate change; Pedagogy and didactics

Project Summary

NOTHING HAS WORKED!
THE CHALLENGE

For many years EU has tried to make science education more attractive to girls, and to encourage them to a life in science.
However, science education and science jobs are not attractive to most girls in the EU.

Several Erasmus+ have addressed this challenge; but many remain in what we can call “modernisation” of traditional science learning, including forms of “girlification”.
They mostly do not basically change female students’ images of science.

In 2020 we have a historic opportunity to go much deeper, to take the girls’ values seriously and start developing more fundamental changes in science learning.

This opportunity has two factors:
1.
The EU Commissions’ promotion of open science schooling (OSS as the most powerful innovation of science learning, including applying a responsible science approach.
2.
The urgency for all youth to address climate change at all educational levels.
For this, climate change education is now included as priority in the Erasmus+ programme.

The combination of: female values, OSS and climate change engagement is the most powerful opportunity to make science and a life in science attractive to girls.

RESPONSE TO THE CHALLENGE

– female values can be heard and integrated when working with real-life science challenges
– OSS offers to work critically with science, to address important science challenges, and to engage in collaboration with community players
– learning science through climate change prevention offers opportunities to create images of science presenting them as extremely useful to life and to protect new generations from imminent disasters.

The combination of and interplay between these factors creates a more powerful innovation than the mere addition of the 3 factors.

Interviews with female students suggest that working with science in this way might change many images of science and show them how science can be of extreme value.

This approach is sufficiently radical to change the negative conclusion of joint research: NOTHING HAS WORKED.

KEY ACCOMPLISHMENT

From the 3 key components values, OSS and climate change prevention the project has created an innovative methodology to make science learning in secondary school attractive to girls:
It will engage teams of teenage female students in science missions in their community, addressing climate change challenges.
They will learn science through this OSS methodology and through engaging deeply and long-term in local climate change missions, linking science topics and following their own passions.

Science teachers will organise time-outs during the missions for science knowledge creation when relevant: knowledge on demand and when needed, not when scheduled.

Girls will explore the community and identify what they, based on their values, consider the most important local climate change preventions; they will design their missions, and work with community resources to accomplish them.
During the missions they are encouraged to link the local climate challenges to similar global challenges and engage with youth from other parts of the world.

Teachers will build capacity to guide and support them, with 3-day teacher empowerment.

KEY INNOVATION

FEMALE VALUES IN SCIENCE EDUCATION
– In traditional classroom science teaching, female values and life preferences are never discussed nor visible.
– By opening up the doors to real-life science and climate change, girls are encouraged to develop critical views on science and to interact with community resources engaged in science and climate change.
– Girls will at the same time be able to create images of responsible science, discover how science and climate change affect citizens and create their own images of value-based science.

OSS
– OSS allows students to leave the traditional theoretical science instruction and work with real-life science and people.
– It allows to work in teams and to identify climate challenges in the community.
– Girls will learn science through real-life and climate change engagement that will now appear relevant.
– Through collaboration with community and climate change resources they will be able to work in their designed missions.
– Girls will create their own story-telling from the missions to create their voices.

CLIMATE CHANGE PREVENTION ENGAGEMENT
– Girls are typically much more interested in climate change prevention than other science topics.
– They will design their missions, based on open exploration of what climate change prevention might mean for themselves, their families, their children and community.
– Missions will allow them to immerse and link climate change to human, social, health and cultural factors.

RESULTS

THE TEACHER GUIDE T0 ATTRACTIVE SCIENCE ENGAGEMENTS FOR FEMALE TEENAGE STUDENTS

THE SCIENCE4GIRLS MOVIE

POLICY PAPER: POLICY SUPPORT TO ATTRACTIVE SCIENCE ENGAGEMENT FOR FEMALE TEENAGE STUDENTS

RESEARCH PAPER: TO MAKE SCIENCE ATTRACTIVE TO FEMALES TEENAGE STUDENTS

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 279110 Eur

Project Coordinator

LINNEUNIVERSITETET & Country: SE

Project Partners

• Working with Europe/Treballant amb Europa Associació
• UNIVERSIDADE DE LISBOA
• Scoala Gimnaziala Gheorghe Titeica
• Institut de Vilafant
• Lacko Internationella Grundskola AB
• Pasvalio Levens pagrindine mokykla
• ITA-SUOMEN YLIOPISTO