Sociology, philosophy and arts concerning extraterrestrial sciences Erasmus Project

Project Title

Sociology, philosophy and arts concerning extraterrestrial sciences

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 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation

Project Summary

The title of our project was “SPACES”: Sociology, philosophy and arts concerning extraterrestrial sciences. In this project, students aged 16 – 19 years old were introduced to the exploration of social, philosophical or artistic problems in the natural sciences as well as encouraged and supported in their interest. According to the European educational ideal of “scientific literacy”, which manifests itself in the PISA study, smaller projects on topics related to extraterrestrial sciences such as “Sustainable Energy Supply”, “Olbers’ Paradoxon”, “Transhumanism”, “Another Earth” were carried out. Three partner schools – Italy: Riva – Liceo Andrea Maffei; Hungary: Budapest – Bornemisza Péter Gimnázium; Germany : Dortmund – Stadtgymnasium Dortmund) cooperated when designing, organizing and carrying out the four projects. The preparation of the ‘subprojects’ was pre-structured in transnational project meetings and prepared in local workshops at partner schools together by both students and teachers. In planning the projects, particular emphasis was placed on self-regulated learning (SRL). Therefore, only proposals on topics were suggested by the teachers in advance. The projects themselves were open for the students’ ideas and wishes. Through a diverse range of perspectives on and approaches to problems in natural science the pupils were enabled to discover their skills and interests according to their own way of dealing with the challenges of the learning situation, but also to those of their social environment in the present and the future. The teachers supported them along the way with a special focus on their learning strategies. Creating products to present the results of the four smaller projects turned out to be a very individual and creative process with diverse results: a discussion, a theatre play, an internet magazine and posters, which were to be experienced with the help of expert talks to guide the visitors on their gallery walk. The following list serves as an overview of the four sub-projects of the SPACES project: – initiation open learning environments – motivation of students to work independently, yet in cooperative ways, keeping the product in mind – confronting students with a new role of a learner resulting in teaching modules concerning self-regulated learning – increase of self-efficacy resulting in higher marks on the appropriate scale of a questionnaire – reflection of working and learning strategies of self-regulated learning resulting in visible documentation in individual portfolios – cooperative learning of the teaching staff resulting in dedicated discussions and exchanges of experiences Each learning activity was imbedded into a programme which included visiting scientific institutes, in which students were introduced to fields of the scientific world outside school, with reference to working life and possible future perspectives. Pupils became aware of the fact that scientific knowledge is indispensable for dealing with socially relevant topics from the social sciences, philosophy and the arts and that consequently scientific literacy is a prerequisite for responsible behaviour in society. Working in a European project, the students experienced that this discussion and participation can only take place at a global scale: Both the acquisition of scientific knowledge and the impact of these findings on our lives need to be thought about in a global context. The products resulting from the projects and presented by the students in various ways were at the same time ambitious and attractive. In many cases the choice of the product forms made it possible for the school community to participate directly in the success of the sub-projects: students and staff were invited to visit the theater performance and take part in the gallery walk to study the posters. Thus the Erasmus + project SPACES could be enshrined as an attractive and profitable part of school life not only with those students and staff directly involved in the project ,but also with the school communities of the partner schools. The impact of the project on the participating teachers led to the realization that dealing with teaching methods of SRL offers interesting and enjoyable opportunities in teaching . The need for a more intensive study of the strategies of the SRL resulted in the wish for a continuation of the cooperation with an even stronger focus on didactic concepts in the follow-up project ROMY .

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 123407 Eur

Project Coordinator

Stadtgymnasium Dortmund & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Bornemisza Péter Gimnázium, Általános Iskola, Alapfokú Muvészeti Iskola, Óvoda és Sportiskola
• Liceo Andrea Maffei