The final meeting of IN2STEAM as an occasion of exchanging good practices among partners

The 26-27th July 2022, the IN2STEAM project consortium gathered in presence in Palermo, at CESIE’s venue, for the final meeting of the project.

The meeting was an important opportunity to exchange the experiences and the good practices from the six project’s countries, covering the three years of the project, the objectives and targets achieved through the development of the project’s resources and tools.

The early phase of the project was dedicated to the desk research which lead to the production of the Report on the Value of STE(A)M in Girls’ Education with the involvement of teachers, parents, artists and STEM professional, who took part to different focus groups and shared their reflections on how STE(A)M subjects can be integrated into school curricula.

The results of the research were taken into account for the development of the Online Training Curriculum in STE(A)M learning and gender sensitive practices, directed to primary school teachers,  with methodologies and resources on how to integrate the STE(A)M approach in primary schools, with a focus on the gender gap and the involvement of girls in STEM disciplines.

After the completion of the Online training curriculum, teachers were involved in the IN2STE(A)M Labs, implemented in different primary schools of the six partners’ countures: the Labs were structured with activities and experiments carried out in classroom with students, focusing on the promotion of the project’s approaces related to the experiential learning, inquiry based learning, problem solving and critical thinking. In addition, artistic disciplines were integrated in the elaboration of the activities, in order to enhance the multidisciplinary approach and to facilitate the learning of STEM subjects in primary schools.

A special mention is given to the role models of the project: the female STEM professionals – 18 women involved the STEM field from all the partners’ countries – who helped during the research phase sharing their experiences and managed the Labs in schools, representing a positive model for students and specifically for female students.

The activities of the Labs were inspired from the Digital Teacher’s Toolkit (DTT) with STE(A)M Activity Kit for Primary School developed by the partners and structured with several ideas for teachers on how to improve the learning of STEM disciplines at primary school, and a series of interactive lesson plans directed to teachers and students, to be tested in classroom and at home. In addition, teachers have access to a Behavioural Assessment Model (BAM) useful to evaluate and monitor the acquisition of STE(A)M’s key competences by the students involved in the Labs.

The last few months have seen the partners engaged in the development of the “European Charter for STE(A)M Education” which will contain recommendations addressed to educational stakeholders and policy makers on how to involve more girls in STEM careers, supplemented by an “Impact Report” on the effects of the project’s experience in the different countries involved.

The project ends on the 31st of August 2022, however the partners will continue to work on disseminating the resources and methodologies promoted by the project among teachers, students, educational stakeholders and STEM professionals: the Online Training Curriculum will remain freely accessible and the DDT will be promoted in schools and STEM-related courses; the collaborations with schools will be maintained through the sharing of STEM-related updates. In addition, all the project’s dissemination tools will remain active beyond the end of the project (website and FB page) to allow the stakeholders to have an easy access to the project’s tools.