Gender aware education and teaching Erasmus Project

Project Title

Gender aware education and teaching

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 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Gender equality / equal opportunities; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

Gender4STEM “Gender aware education and teaching”, is a co-funded Erasmus+ project, led by the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST). This project was launched in 2017 and gathered 6 partners, experts in gender, technological and learning issues, beside LIST: Consulio from Croatia, VHTO from the Netherlands, SMART VENICE from Italy, FUNDATIA POFESSIONAL from Romania and Women in Digital and LIST from Luxembourg. To spark greater interest in STEM disciplines among girls, the project Gender4STEM aims to support teachers in stepping up their gender fair teaching practices.
“Girls are not talented at science, science is for geeks and thus not for girls…” These are some persistent gender stereotypes in science education. We want to tackle this issue and therefore, we have developed a platform for teachers, to provide them with concrete tools for more gender-fair teaching practices. Our platform is called Gender4STEM Teaching Assistant (https://edu.gender4stem-project.eu/). STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. These are key drivers for innovation. The problem is that girls are still underrepresented in these disciplines. One of the reasons why STEM disciplines are unappealing to girls might be persistent gender stereotypes. Culture, education, training, labour market practises can be vectors of these stereotypes. Teachers are not always equipped to manage gender diversity in their classrooms. For example, there is little teacher training dealing with these issues. Likewise, teaching materials often lack female role models to stimulate interest of young girls in STEM.
Built on the survey of the common gender stereotypes in STEM education in EU (IO1) and the state of the art, as well as the creation of relevant teaching materials to counteract these stereotypes (IO2), the Gender4STEM platform (IO4) provides about 100 teaching materials to support them in stepping up gender-fair teaching practices:
a) quiz and tips to raise awareness on gender stereotypes and increase knowledge of women in STEM, b) guidelines to organize gender balance coding sessions or STEM female role model meetings, and
c) videos introducing inspiring women in STEM testimonials etc.
The Gender4STEM platform is primarily for teachers, but is also relevant for school psychologists and counsellors, as well as career guidance advisors of Secondary Level Education. How can it be used? This is straight forward: Teachers create an account and connect to the Gender4STEM Teaching Assistant platform. Then we recommend using the self-assessment tool (IO3) to find out how gender fair their teaching practices are and propose personalized recommendations of teaching materials (IO3) and experiment them in classrooms.
They can also attend the Gender4STEM hands-on blended training (IO5). If they want to know if they have gender-conscious or unconscious biases when teaching, they can participate in two training sessions. They discover the Gender4STEM Teaching Assistant and available teaching materials, with which they can experiment in classrooms, and they can share their difficulties and successes regarding the issue of gender fair in teaching.
Thanks to the Gender4STEM platform and training, teachers are fully equipped to get mote girls excited about STEM.
At the end of the project, the Gender4STEM community involved about 50 EU teachers, 100 EU students and 60 EU experts. 6 gender fair teaching projects were conducted in European Schools 2019 and 280 people from target groups participated in the multiplier events. More than 2200 people visited the Gender4STEM website (https://www.gender4stem-project.eu/) and about 160 follow the project Facebook page (Gender4stem.erasmus.project). We count 420 users of the Gender4STEM Teaching Assistant platform, among them about 70 have used the self-assessment tool and received recommendations of teaching materials to step up their gender fair teaching.
We’re also starting to plan for relevant applications of the self-assessment tool and the recommendations’ system in other areas, for examples: How to promote gender sensitivity among companies, in HR management practices (recruitment or careers’ mobility)? How to promote gender sensitivity in Science and Technology research and academic sector. Of course, the final objective is always to attract more girls and women in STEM!

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 256114,5 Eur

Project Coordinator

LUXEMBOURG INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY & Country: LU

Project Partners

• SMART VENICE SRL
• Consulio
• WOMEN IN DIGITAL INITIATIVES LUXEMBOURG ASBL
• Stichting VHTO
• FUNDATIA PROFESSIONAL