STEM Education Platform Erasmus Project

Project Title

STEM Education Platform

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: Cooperation between educational institutions and business; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

Nations invest in innovation to promote sustainable economic growth. While many countries are suffering from the effects of global economic difficulties, such as rising unemployment and soaring public debt, the role of labor input is decreasing in the 21st century economy. Only innovation-driven growth has the potential to create value-added jobs and industries. Because innovation is largely derived from advances in the STEM-disciplines, an increasing number of jobs at all levels require STEM knowledge. Innovation involves the integration of diverse STEM skills and transcends disciplines. Today, there is a clear consensus among stakeholders on the importance of STEM education to economic innovation. STEM education in European countries fosters interdisciplinary knowledge and skills that are relevant to life and prepare students for a knowledge-based economy. The overarching goal of STEM education is to raise the current generation with innovative mindsets. STEM education includes the knowledge, skills and beliefs that are collaboratively constructed at the intersection of more than one STEM subject area.The Bulgarian Ministry of Education and Science’s current priorities include: Involvement of the three interests’ parties in STEM skills intensification; funding for STEM education innovations and interdisciplinary projects development aimed at foster collaborations for sharing and co-creation of new knowledge among High Schools or/and Education Institutions; Better STEM through better STEM teachers: fostering change management in education and development of education change management strategies for each High School; Improvement and digitization of STEM infrastructure. To address these problems, many initiatives and programmes have been pursued in Europe, such as “The New Skills Agenda” initiative from the European Commission to focus on improving the quality and relevance of STEM skills development, to promote STEM studies and careers and to support teachers’ professional development. They are supplemented in some countries by national approaches to deal with STEM issues. According to the STEM Education policies report from October 2018 attracting more students and teachers to STEM education through a global approach from primary to adult education will better anticipate the skills needed for the society of the future.
The main idea of the project is to develop a Network of 7 Educational Hubs for students, aged between 13 and 19 years old working as a shared spaces. Our project aim is to empower the creative and entrepreneurial students and learners’ community by generating inspiring work spaces, increasing key competences and organizing educational and social events and providing personalized services to help members grow. It will work to foster innovative learning approaches, educational entrepreneurship and to stimulate educational innovations through STEM-Knowledge platform by creating opportunities for European cross-border networking. This web platform will be created in parallel to provide common open source resources and learning space for young people, teachers, educators, youth workers etc. Its structure will accommodate teaching, training and self-learning sections with various toolboxes and digital teaching, learning and self-assessment tools. It will be an open and collaborative platform for knowledge building and sharing aiming to help young people understand and study the STEM issues. Our collaborative co-working space will help the target groups to gain new knowledge and skills, raise their capacity and grow their ideas and ventures at any stage of their development. Mobilities and study visits to partner ICT companies will be organised. Increasing the motivation of the young people towards studying STEM subjects and raising achievement in these areas are important challenges faced by European education systems; the way STEM is approached in schools is key to addressing them. To complete the findings of the STEM Education the project will have focus also on collecting information about how STEM teachers throughout Europe organise their teaching practices. It will support the teacher education level, claiming that teachers were not prepared to address the needs of their profession.The STEM education model emphasizes the importance of integrated teaching knowledge to successfully transition from the departmentalized model of teaching to an integrated model that promotes innovation.
In order to achieve our goals, we believe that transnational cooperation is the only way forward, as only through sharing experience and best practice, we could ensure high quality results with great EU-added value. As it is evident from the partners’ descriptions, our consortium offers different expertise in various areas, which cannot be identified in one country, especially taking into account the project’s topic and its innovative approach.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 211995 Eur

Project Coordinator

High School of Mathematics Academician Kiril Popov & Country: BG

Project Partners

• VIESOJI ISTAIGA BALTIJOS EDUKACINIU TECHNOLOGIJU INSTITUTAS
• VIRTUAL CAMPUS LDA
• CREATIVE THINKING DEVELOPMENT
• Institute for Technology Transfer and Innovations
• EduCenter
• ISTITUTO EUROPEO PER LO SVILUPPO SOCIO ECONOMICO ASSOCIAZIONE
• CENTRE FOR ADVANCEMENT OF RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT IN EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY LTD-CARDET