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STEM education is essential in our current society...in order to provide our students the skills to be more active and engaged citezens with more critical thinking and innovation leaders in tomorrow’s society.

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When we think about space exploration, an image that immediately pops up in our mind is that of an astronaut. This is, however, only one of the many careers related to space exploration. An astronaut travels in a spacecraft, wears a spacesuit, communicates with Earth, carries out scientiﬁc experiments, all of which are the result of the combined work of many other highly skilled professionals. There are experts who plan the mission, build the spacecraft, design the spacesuit, analyse scientiﬁc data, develop new materials, test the spacecraft, create new tools, perform medical tests, amongst many other functions. The majority of the people who work in space-related ﬁelds have a scientiﬁc or engineering background and have studied maths and natural sciences at school.

This booklet provides information about several exciting space-related careers. The English version of the booklet can be downloaded by clicking on this link. The booklet is also available in the following 8 languages: Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian and Spanish.

Also, the Space Awareness project has developed a Space Careers poster to emphasise the exciting career opportunities in the space sector. A high-resolution PDF of this poster can be downloaded through this link.

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When we think about space exploration, an image that immediately pops up in our mind is that of an astronaut. This is, however, only one of the many careers related to space exploration. An astronaut travels in a spacecraft, wears a spacesuit, communicates with Earth, carries out scientiﬁc experiments, all of which are the result of the combined work of many other highly skilled professionals.

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EU Space ICT tools in space and astronomy

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Sabem que o vosso computador pode contribuir para fazer progredir a investigação? Confiram agora.

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How do you currently use technology? What tools do you use? What works, doesn’t work for you in regards to technology in the classroom?

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How do you currently use technology? What tools do you use? What works, doesn’t work for you in regards to technology in the classroom?

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I currently use technology in classroom. I use:
- smart boards
- notebook software (smart board);
- moodle platform;
- eTwinning;
- padlets;
- virtual laboratories, such as Go-Lab;
- animations (phet).
What students prefer are the animations and the virtual laboratories. What doesn't work are the virtual laboratories as the internet connection isn't very good sometimes. The animations work always very well.

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What is your favorite space object or mission and why.

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What is your favorite space object or mission and why.

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The International Space Station (ISS) because it’s a joint project (collaborative work) with several space agencies (NASA, ESA, …), can be seen with naked eyes from earth and conducts different experiments in different areas, such as physics, astronomy, biology,..

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Every lesson can have a touch of inquiry?

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Every lesson can have a touch of inquiry?

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If we think about Inquiry Based Learning as the power of asking the right questions, every lesson can have a touch of inquiry. Inquiry is not a new technique although the classroom needs to shift from a teacher centered to a student centered environment, where students contribute to the questioning and generating hypotheses. In every lesson teachers can take time to let students linger in their conversations, encouraging them to think. Inquiry can be done by asking simple questions such as “Why do you think that?”, so my answer is YES, every lesson can have Inquiry.

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One of the greatest misconceptions in education today is that certain teachers have a higher natural aptitude in technology than others.

This inspirationalgraphic sets out to disprove that notion and remind the audience that external skills are only a function of the internal dispositions that allowed them to grow.
Printable PDF

Categories Tags Course 3 21st century, Infographic, modern learning

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One of the greatest misconceptions in education today is that certain teachers have a higher natural aptitude in technology than others. This inspirationalgraphic sets out to disprove that notion and remind the audience that external skills are only a function of the internal dispositions that allowed them to grow.

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Too Young to Learn?

The educational programme Universe Awareness is aimed at children as young as four years old. But can we expect infants to grasp astronomical topics in a way that will have a meaningful impact on their development? To investigate this important issue, here we present an overview of research into children's cognitive development.

Like any devoted parent, Professor George Miley, from Leiden University, took a keen interest in his children's education and volunteered to give talks about astronomy in their primary school. "It was marvellous to see how very young kids became excited when I showed them Hubble pictures and told them about the strange objects in our Universe," says Miley. In part inspired by his own experiences of introducing astronomy to young children, Miley founded the astronomy education programme Universe Awareness (UNAWE) in 2006. It has a target audience of 4-10 year old children, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds. But was he right to focus UNAWE's efforts solely on young children?

To answer these questions, we first need to understand the way in which children acquire scientific knowledge. Some development psychologists have hypothesised that young children form naïve theories about the Earth based on what they witness: The world around them appears flat and objects need a surface to stand on, therefore the Earth is flat and supported [1,2]. Proponents of this hypothesis, such as Stella Vosniadou and William Brewer, say that counter-intuitive scientific theories are difficult for young children to accept and that the role of educators is to challenge these naïve theories. They argue that scientific explanations about how the Universe works can only be introduced at a later stage of a child's education (around 10 years old), once they become aware that their naïve theories are wrong.

However, there is a growing body of work that disputes this hypothesis, claiming that children are "theory neutral". In these studies, development psychologists argue that children build-up a picture of the Earth in a fragmented fashion and there are no strong intuitions and misconceptions to overcome [3,4,5]. Therefore, children can gradually learn and accept scientific explanations of the world around them from a young age.

One of the proponents of the fragmented model, Dr Georgia Panagiotaki, a lecturer in Developmental Psychology at the University of East Anglia in the UK, says that children as young as four years old are able to understand basic scientific ideas. "Even though children are often not able to explain their ideas in great detail, scientific information and facts can be present from early on," Panagiotaki told UNAWE. "And children benefit enormously for appropriate instruction and educational activities aimed at teaching them basic facts."
Discovering age
Panagiotaki's conclusions are supported by research [6] conducted at the University of California, Berkeley. Professor of psychology Alison Gopnik found that young children actually think in the way scientists do, testing hypotheses against data and making causal inferences. They learn from statistics and informal experimentation, and from watching and listening to others, according to her publication in Science. This supports UNAWE's view that an early age is a perfect time for children to get in touch with science for the first time. Additionally, Gopnik's research shows that encouraging play and letting children search for explanations themselves, rather than solely explain things, incites scientific thinking. UNAWE's efforts to develop educational activities, in which children learn about the universe by means of exercises, are backed up by these findings.
An equal start in life
While the debate on this topic continues, away from the scientific arena, many charitable organisations have highlighted the importance of educating young children from disadvantaged backgrounds. UNICEF's Programming Experiences in Early Child Development 2006 report, for example, states that educating disadvantaged children in their earliest years offers the best opportunity to give them an equal start in life. "[This is] when children's brains are developing most rapidly, and the basis for their cognitive, social and emotional development is being formed," the report states.

However, early childhood care and education is often the responsibility of parents, and many families in underprivileged environment are not in a position to offer as much to their children as wealthier parents. "I regarded disadvantaged kids as the most important group for UNAWE to target, because they are least likely to be exposed to the excitement of astronomy," says Miley.

The High/Scope Perry Preschool Program (HSPP) is a much-cited example for what investing in the education of young, disadvantaged children can achieve in the long-term. Beginning in the 1960's, HSPP randomly divided 123 disadvantaged African-American children aged between 3 to 4 years old into a group that received a pre-school programme and a control group that received no intervention. HSPP maintained contact with the study's participants every year until the age of 11, and then conducted follow-up interviews at ages 14, 15, 19, 27 and 40.

In 2005, a study of 97% of the participants (then aged 40) revealed that those who had taken part in the pre-school programme achieved greater success in life than the control group, such as higher rates of graduation, better paid jobs and fewer criminal records [7]. "This report substantially bolsters the case for early interventions in disadvantaged populations," economist James Heckman, from the University of Chicago, said in a HSPP press release.

Yet, despite the greater successes in later life of the children in the HSPP pre-school group, these children didn't achieve higher IQ scores than the control group when they were tested at the age of 10. Those in the pre-school group, however, did achieve bigger successes in life, because they had improved noncognitive abilities, such as motivation and perseverance [8].

A further conclusion of the study was that the programme had also been an economic investment for society [11]. In constant 2000 US dollars, $15,166 had been spent on each participant in the pre-school programme, but the economic return to the general public was calculated to be an astounding $195,621 per individual - that's a $12.90 return per dollar invested. The vast majority of this pot of money (88%) was calculated to be the amount saved from a reduction in crime levels in the pre-school group.

According to Heckman, who has reviewed a large body of research into economics and development psychology, the rate of return would have been lower if the investment in education was instead made when the disadvantaged children were older. ( Figure 1 [12] plots Heckman's relationship between age of intervention and the benefit-to-cost ratio of an educational programme.) Heckman's work shows that investing in education in a child's earliest years is not only worthwhile, but also the best time to intervene.
Figure 1. Rates of return to human capital investment in disadvantaged children. Credit: Science Magazine / Heckman
However, while investing in educating young children is important, programmes like UNAWE need to be backed up with continued interventions at secondary school age, says Professor Susan Gelman, who researches child cognitive development at the University of Michigan. "Although I strongly endorse investing in primary education, I also believe in continued interventions, into and including secondary school," Gelman told UNAWE. "Education is not a single experience but rather a continuing process."
Crucial age
Education for young children comes at a crucial age, like the HSPP shows. Neuroscientist Martha Farah of the University of Pennsylvania reaches the same conclusion by looking at the development of children's brains. In her research [9], she shows that the 4-year old brain is extremely vulnerable to its environment. If children of this age grow up in an educational environment, including books and educational toys, their brain is affected in a significantly positive way. The researchers conclude that the thickness of two regions in the cortex is enhanced by such stimulating surroundings. At age 8, the impact on the brain is already much smaller. This shows that young kids in developing countries, living in less supportive environments, greatly benefit from UNAWE's programme. They learn about the universe, but the side effect is in this case perhaps even more important: by getting in touch with educational material, they develop their brains.
Creativity
Besides providing an environment for underprivileged children to develop their brains, UNAWE's program allows children from all societies to increase their creative thinking abilities by learning about the universe. Research from Nira Liberman [10], professor in social psychology at Tel Aviv University, shows that learning about distant objects promotes more abstract thought. When visualizing proximal objects, individuals tend to use concrete and detailed images, while picturing an object in a more abstract, decontextualized way when thinking about distal objects - either temporally distant (in the far future), hypothetically distant (unlikely), or spatially distant (actually far away). In astronomy, one often deals with these kinds of distal objects, especially the latter. Liberman found that after priming of spatial distance - compared with priming of spatial proximity - children are more creative in both fluency and originality. With her findings, she confirms previous theories, which state that psychological distance promotes abstract thought, which, in turn, promotes creativity.
Culture clash
UNAWE is a global programme that is active in 46 countries worldwide, so it is also important to note the impact that local cultures play in educating young children. In a background paper for the UNESCO Education For All Global Monitoring Report 2007, Arnold et al. claim that education programmes that aren't responsive to local cultures will suffer from lower levels of enrolment and retention [13]. The researchers argue that education programmes that are at odds with local cultures can be viewed by parents as having a damaging effect on the welfare of their children. UNAWE recognises the importance of considering local cultures and uses local experts to take charge of implementing its activities in each partner country, who understand the local cultural needs and histories.

Furthermore, astronomy has played an integral part in local cultures throughout history. Indeed, some of the misconceptions that children have about astronomy come from local cultural beliefs. For example, a recent study found that a large proportion of young Indian children think the Earth floats on water, which stems from indigenous Indian astronomy [14]. Therefore, knowledge about local cultures can also bring new insights into how children view the Universe.
Conclusion
There's no denying that educating young children about astronomy is challenging - especially in a global project that needs to consider many different local cultures. However, much of the current literature into children's cognitive development indicates that a project like UNAWE will be greatly beneficial to the youngsters that it reaches. Time and time again, a child's early years are shown to be the most crucial in determining their future prospects.

It will take many years before we can formally evaluate the impact of UNAWE. But in the meantime, it's important to remember why Miley founded UNAWE in the first place: he was inspired by the smiling faces of children, who sat captivated as they listened to him tell stories about our Universe.
References
[1] Vosniadou, 1994, Capturing and Modelling the Process of Conceptual Change

[2] Vosniadou & Brewer 1994, Mental Models of the Day/Night Cycle

[3] Nobes et al, 2003, Children's understanding of the earth in a multicultural community: mental models or fragments of knowledge?

[4] Michael Siegal, Gavin Nobes and Georgia Panagiotaki, Nature Geoscience, Vol4, March 2011, Children's understanding of the earth in a multicultural community: mental models or fragments of knowledge

[5] Panagiotaki, Nobes, & Patton, 2008, Mental models and other misconceptions in children's understanding of the earth

[6] Gopnik, September 2012, Scientific Thinking in Young Children: Theoretical Advances, Empirical Research, and Policy Implications

[7] Schweinhart et al., 2005, Lifetime Effects: The HighScope Perry Preschool Study Through Age 40

[8] Heckman, Moon, Pinto, Savelyev & Yavitz, 2008, The rate of return to the Perry Preschool program

[9] Farah, 2012, Books trim the brain

[10] Liberman, Polack, Hameiri, Blumenfeld, 2012, Priming of spatial distance enhances children's creative performance

[11] Schweinhart, Montie, Xiang, Barnett, Belfield & Nores, 2005, The High/Scope Perry Preschool Study Through Age 40: Summary, Conclusions, and Frequently Asked Questions

[12] Heckman, Science, Vol 312, June 2006, Skill Formation and the Economics of Investing in Disadvantaged Children

[13] Arnold, Bartlett, Gowani & Merali, 2006, Is everybody ready? Readiness, transition and continuity: lessons, reflections and moving forward

[14] Samarapungavan, Vosniadou & Brewer, 1998, Mental Models of the Earth, Sun and Moon: Indian Children's Cosmologies

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The educational programme Universe Awareness is aimed at children as young as four years old. But can we expect infants to grasp astronomical topics in a way that will have a meaningful impact on their development? To investigate this important issue, here we present an overview of research into children's cognitive development.

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5. How to introduce space careers to your students 

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5. How to introduce space careers to your students 

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4. How to Manage Diversity and Gender Balance in the Classroom

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4. How to Manage Diversity and Gender Balance in the Classroom

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Europe's knowledge economy developing and new technologies on the rise , skills in science, technology, engineering and mathematics will be need.
Guidelines
- Activelly challenge stereotypes
- actively target girls, but designed for boys and girls
- address women invisability in science
- promote mentors and provide role models
- target parents
- adopt participatory design approches (IBSE)
Inquiry Based Science Education (IBSE) approach can facilitate the increase of girls’ interest in space-related subjects. It is generally accepted that IBSE is beneficial to promoting girls’ interest and participation in science activities
Space captures the interest and excitement of children, and has the potential to stimulate a broader education.
- Why talk about diversity and gender balance through Space Sciences?
Astronomy it's inpirational for boys and girls, is related to our everyday life, foster global citizenship.

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3. Use of ICT Tools in the Science Classroom 

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3. Use of ICT Tools in the Science Classroom 

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21st century education/how technology should be use:
- student centered learning
- evaluating the legitimicy and accurecy of online contents are 21st skills, also ethical and moral issues;
- ethical in online behaviors
- student collaboration
- self esteem online
- create their own software
- beyond computers: digital cameras, digital microscopes, 3D printers, digital video cameras,...
_______________________
Citizen Science
engaging everyone in scientific research

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2. Working with Inquiry in the Science Classroom 

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2. Working with Inquiry in the Science Classroom 

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"Tell me and I forget, show me and I remember, involve me and I understand"
- actively involving students
- test and reflect on their learning
- active involvement
- construction of knowledge
- inquiry does not mean a hands on activity; hands on activity are not all inquiry
-providing equal opportunities does not mean giving equal time or same tasks to everyone
- mistery boxes !!!
- 5 steps of inquiry: presenting the subject (1orientation); linking to familiar concepts; makying hypothesis (2conceptualization); experimentation (3investigation); drawing conclusions (4Conclusion); discussion/reflection (5discussion);
-  1Orientation - stimulating curiosity
- 2Conceptualization - understanding concepts
- 3Investigation -
- 4Conclusion - compare hypothesis with their conclusions
- 5Discussion -

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-Unique combination of science, technology and culture;
- Vehicle for capturins the imagination of students;
- Oportunity to inspire students;
- Transdisciplinar topic;

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Colégio de São Miguel is a Catholic school situated in Fátima. There are 1287 students, some of them immigrants, other live in foster homes and 195 are in need of Special Education.
Our students' families are mainly low and middle-class ones. We have some students with migrant backgrounds and some students who live in foster homes. Besides many of our students' families don't have very high cultural perspectives, nor do they value education in their children's lives. However we are engaged in offering all our students a set of personalized pedagogical approaches, so that we can fight early school leaving by providing our students with technological courses. In fact, our upper secondary school students can follow different educational paths, such as scientific areas (STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) or technical and professional ones  - courses level IV - (Arts, Economics, Social Studies, Sports and New Technologies), to enable them to choose if they want to go into the university or enter the job market.