POLAR STAR: Guiding the way towards STEAM through innovative learning approaches and contemporary science Erasmus Project

Project Title

POLAR STAR: Guiding the way towards STEAM through innovative learning approaches and contemporary science

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 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

In a world that is changing faster than ever, the needs of learners also change rapidly. Unlike common practices of the past, reproducing successfully content knowledge is not enough. Students need to be able to extrapolate and apply knowledge to new and different situations. Skills like critical thinking, problem solving, decision making, communication and collaboration are more important than ever. Student-centered approaches like inquiry learning have proved their effectiveness when it comes to developing students’ key skills and competences. These combined with interdisciplinary learning can greatly increase students’ knowledge retention, their critical thinking skills and their ability to combine facts and pieces of knowledge coming from different disciplines and apply them to new learning environments and contexts. Moreover, as the demands of today’s societies are strongly dependent on the advancement of science and technology, it is essential that students not only leave school with the proper skills to successfully innovate in such fields but also develop an understanding of the role of science in society and our everyday life and develop an appreciation of what science offers to the world through contemporary science achievements.

POLAR STAR aims to bring together state-of-the-art learning pedagogies and combine them with exciting activities that focus on contemporary science, thus helping teachers to introduce STEAM successfully in their class. At the same time the project will focus on the development of students’ key skills and competences as well as deepening their knowledge of fundamental science principles, increasing their appreciation of science and technology and their role in todays’ societies.

Our project will produce a methodology which will be comprised of two main strands; one about introducing student-centred learning approaches that focuses on developing students’ skills and competences, and one about introducing the ‘Science as a whole’ idea which promotes interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary learning. The project team will combine innovative learning techniques like inquiry learning and the design thinking approach along with other cutting-edge educational tools into one seamless methodology, that will allow teachers to shift towards a student-centred type of teaching. In addition, teachers will be able to learn how to introduce interdisciplinary learning into their class using an advanced cross-disciplinary methodology that goes beyond the traditional organization of science curricula and allows teachers and students to make connections between science disciplines and discover underlying connections between phenomena.

To introduce contemporary science into the science classroom, POLAR STAR will focus on two main scientific areas, polar research and astronomy. Although both fields of research have contributed greatly to the advancement of science and are directly linked to our everyday life and the development of societies, they are usually not seen as science disciplines with real impact on our lives and are largely left out of science curricula. However, both areas are enormously interdisciplinary and exciting for students (girls and boys alike) and thus make ideal vehicles to teach other sciences, very often considered less appealing, showcasing how such fields of research that might seem irrelevant to people’s needs have in fact a great impact on our lives.

The project team aims to implement POLAR STAR activities in 7 European countries and record schools’ achievements using the ‘My world of knowledge’ portfolios. The project aims to reach 140 teachers and 1750 students through training and implementation as well as 2500 teachers through dissemination events. To achieve that, the project aims to make numerous presentations and workshops in conferences and other related events reaching not only teachers but also educational stakeholders.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 314740 Eur

Project Coordinator

TURUN YLIOPISTO & Country: FI

Project Partners

• ELLINOGERMANIKI AGOGI SCHOLI PANAGEA SAVVA AE
• Instytut Geofizyki Polskiej Akademii Nauk
• UNIVERSIDAD DE LA IGLESIA DE DEUSTO ENTIDAD RELIGIOSA
• UNIVERSITY OF CYPRUS
• NUCLIO NUCLEO INTERACTIVO DE ASTRONOMIA ASSOCIACAO
• Cosmos Education CLG