MiniOpenLab: Open Community and Hands-On Approach to Sustainable Development and STEM Education – An Innovative Approach
Tharrenos Bratitsis, Iro Koliakou, Arcadio Sotto Díaz, Virginia Arvaniti, Teresa Sarmento, Nuria Olga León Tobajas, Ana Barroca
Copyright: © 2022
|Pages: 23
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-6684-3861-9.ch004
Abstract
Education for sustainable development and STEM education are two major EU priorities. Both should be addressed from an early age. At school, children must be motivated to learn maths and science and to imagine working in these fields, and to learn about sustainability and develop attitudes and behaviours that are in line with the UN's SD Goals. Over the past years, children have taken interest in SD and in some cases. By contrast, STEM is still regarded as difficult and unattractive by many children. Thus, it may be beneficial to couple both these fields. The project MiniOpenLabs proposes to set-up and test a different methodology with a higher prevalence of experiential learning and relying on the collaboration between science and technology organisations, enterprises, and civil society to ensure relevant and meaningful engagement of all societal actors with science and increase the uptake of science studies, citizen science initiatives and science-based careers, employability, and competitiveness.
TopBackground
In this section, a brief overview of the involved disciplinary areas and the corresponding terminology is presented. Two main pillars consist the background of the project, namely STEM Education and ESD.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Sustainable Development: An organizing principle for meeting human development goals while also sustaining the ability of natural systems to provide the natural resources and ecosystem services on which the economy and society depend.
MiniOpenLab: Small laboratory, open to the local community, where children (6-12 yo), under the guidance of teachers or other educators (including parents), may engage in STEM-based projects or activities about sustainable development topics.
STEM: An approach for addressing realistic problems, utilizing competences from the Science and Math domains, following the Engineering approach of solving problems and making use of Technological means.
SDGs: Are 17 goals with 169 targets that all UN Member States have agreed to work towards achieving by the year 2030.
Constructionism: A theory of learning, teaching and design which supports that knowledge is better gained when students construct it by themselves while they construct artifacts that can be shared and probed to the world.
Makerspace: Public workshop where makers can share tools and knowledge.
Education for Sustainable Development: Education that encourages changes in students’ competences (defined as sets of knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes) to enable a more sustainable and just society for all.