STEM Teacher Training Innovation for Gender balance Erasmus Project

Project Title

STEM Teacher Training Innovation for Gender balance

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: Gender equality / equal opportunities; Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

Despite nearly 30 years of efforts to engage girls in physical sciences and engineering, the gender gap continues in the scientific
vocations. On the other hand, meanwhile the demand of graduates in those fields continues to grow, the scientific vocation
among the young students is increasingly low.

Answering to that need, the main objective of this project is to raise and share good science education practices for gender
balance through an innovative Teacher Training programme. The programme has been tested and implemented in eight
countries and disseminated in a digital toolkit format
(http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/erasmus-plus/projects/eplus-project-details/#project/8765239d-c6c1-4bcb-804a-a938f5b583cf).

The reason why the consortium prefered to disseminate the website of the toolkit and not directly the toolkit pdf file is that the
developed toolkit has some web resources, that are included in the website:
Final toolkit (English): https://stingeuproject.com/toolkit/
Web resources for the toolkit (English): https://stingeuproject.com/toolkit-web-resources/

It has a Basque version too:
Final toolkit (Basque): https://sting2017.wordpress.com/tresna-sorta/
Web resources for the toolkit: https://sting2017.wordpress.com/baliabideak/

Eight organizations participated as partners in the project. Elhuyar foundation as coordinator (Spain), Experimentarium Science
Museum (Denmark), Hiša eksperimentov Science Museum (Slovenia), Nemo Science Museum (Netherlands), European
University Cyprus (Cyprus), Hacettepe University (Turkey), Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Norway) and St
Mary’s University College (United Kingdom). The consortium is formed by a science communication foundation, three science
centres and four universities.

The project started with the development of the theoretical framework for the Teacher Training programme, and continued with
the design of the first version. When the first version of the Teacher Training programme was ready, the teacher trainers of the
partner organisations took part in an international training (Amsterdam, November 2015). The project continued with the trained professionals celebrating nine local workshops with STEM teachers, head teachers, directors and policy makers. After that, teachers from
eight countries tested the developed programme. The pilot finished with the preparation of the final version of the Teacher
Training programme (“Final Toolkit”).

STING shared the Teacher Training programme toolkit via workshops, conferences and face-to-face meetings with policy
makers, teacher trainers and other stakeholders. Besides, it is accessible to anyone interested though the digital toolkit version
(https://stingeuproject.com). The project made a next step based in the outputs of several European project outputs, creating
shared knowledge, reflected in a modular toolkit that was tested and implemented locally and disseminated globally. In long-term
the aims of the outputs of the project are to improve practices and new policies, being a resource for other European initiatives
related with gender issues in STEM education.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 342754 Eur

Project Coordinator

ELHUYAR FUNDAZIOA & Country: ES

Project Partners

• Stichting Nationaal Centrum voor Wetenschap en Technologie
• CENTER FOR FORMIDLING AF NATURVIDENSKAB OG MODERNE TEKNOLOGI FOND
• St Mary’s University College
• USTANOVA HISA EKSPERIMENTOV
• NORGES TEKNISK-NATURVITENSKAPELIGE UNIVERSITET NTNU
• HACETTEPE UNIVERSITESI
• EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY CYPRUS