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8.6 Final P2P Activity: Organise a STEM career event or activity

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8.6 Final P2P Activity: Organise a STEM career event or activity

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In this activity, you have to write an event plan for organising a STEM careers event or activity and review the event plans of 3 course peers.

In order to complete this activity, please follow these steps:

1. Write your event plan. The event plan should integrate the ideas, tools, activities, etc. that have been covered on the course. Use this Word template to guide your drafting of the event plan (Open Office version here). The document will contain guidance and example answers to guide your drafting of the event plan. Your event plan has to be in English, otherwise it will not qualify.

2. Submit your event plan via the interface below. To provide some context to your event plan, also paste a link to your Learning Diary in the text box or write a short description of your school and class. Make sure you wait for the file to be fully uploaded before clicking the Submit button. The deadline to submit your file is Wednesday, 13 June 2018 at 23:59 CET. *

3. Review three other people's event plans. Wait 24 hours and then return to this page, where you will see the other plans you are asked to review. Provide feedback for each event plan you have been assigned using this checklist (Open Office version here, and read-only PDF here). Remember that your review is not anonymous. Once you have attached each checklist in its corresponding box, click the “Review” button for each review you have composed. The deadline to hand in your reviews is Wednesday, 20 June 2018 at 23:59 CET.*

* This means + 1 hour if you are located in Eastern Europe, i.e. Bulgaria, Finland, Greece and – 1 hour if you are located in Western Europe, UK, Ireland, Portugal, etc. You can check the time conversion with this online tool.

Please recall that after the 20th of June a "blackout" period of 1.5 weeks will follow, during which the course will not be accessible.

At the end of the course, you can return to this page to see the reviews that your fellow participants have written for your school plan.

If you made a mistake while handing in your task in Step 1, please click here to find out how to proceed.If the work you're supposed to review in Step 2 is missing / incomplete / plagiarised / of low quality / non-compliant with the instructions and criteria set out, please follow the instructions here.In general, if you have any questions or problems regarding the assessment process, please visit the course FAQ and click the "p2p" tag.

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Case study: The Teen Science Café experience in MaltaShare your thoughts on the Teen Science Café experience. What did you find most interesting? Do you know of any similar experiences? Has it inspired you to set up a similar activity in your school?

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Case study: The Teen Science Café experience in MaltaShare your thoughts on the Teen Science Café experience. What did you find most interesting? Do you know of any similar experiences? Has it inspired you to set up a similar activity in your school?

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I think it is a wonderful application. The disadvantage of this is that it requires a lot of effort and technical skills but, in fact, it is not impossible. A little time and effort will be the clue to apply it. Students will also be pleased with interacting with the scientist in a known area.

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8.5 Case study: The Teen Science Café experience in Malta

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8.5 Case study: The Teen Science Café experience in Malta

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As seen in previous sections, there are numerous types of events to support STEM careers induction. One that has not been brought up but which has increased in popularity over the last years is the Science Café format. Science Cafés are events that take place in informal settings and involve engaging, lively conversation with a scientist or a STEM professional about a specific topic. In this section, we will describe some experiences of the Teen Science Café in Malta.

The Teen Science Café is an initiative led by the Science Centre in Malta, offering young teenage students opportunities to encounter a number of professional experts in different STEM fields. The focus of these encounters is supporting interactive exchanges between professionals and students and engaging the latter in conversations about STEM topics and career paths, in an informal setting. The objectives of this project are to positively affect students' academic and career choices and to serve as an outreach exercise to promote careers in science and technology.

Science Cafés can entail numerous rewards for pupils, as they offer an excellent opportunity for students to engage with the science community. Furthermore, they are planned in a dynamic manner, involving two-way interactions between scientists and students. In this manner, students will feel empowered to learn and they will gain valuable perspectives from both the STEM professional and academic world.

Science Cafés need adequate planning to invite accomplished professionals, as the right choice of experts is key to ensuring effective and dynamic interaction. Ideally, Science Café activities will be held outside the typical class environment. The reason for this is securing the informal setting of the Science Cafés in order to facilitate interaction and engagement. Take a sneak peek at the activities of the Teen Science Café initiative through the following video.

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8.4STEM careers fair organisation. Strategies for successPick ONE main task for each of the phases (Planning - Implementation – Post-event activities) and tell us why you think it is important.

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8.4STEM careers fair organisation. Strategies for successPick ONE main task for each of the phases (Planning - Implementation – Post-event activities) and tell us why you think it is important.

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8.4 STEM careers fair organisation. Strategies for success

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8.4 STEM careers fair organisation. Strategies for success

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Planning > >

Organising a job fair takes substantial time and effort. Most efforts occur during the planning stage, were organisers are busy laying the groundwork (from establishing objectives to targeting an audience or planning a budget). Indeed, the specifics of organising career events are manifold and attention to detail is key. Watch the video below to find out the key steps you should follow in the planning phase of a STEM career event.
Implementation > >

Once the planning stages are completed, the event will start coming to life. However, it is important not to miss a trick and to keep in mind that there are still many duties to carry out, specifically related to the event implementation and during the event itself. From risk assessment to logistics, it will be essential to draw a masterplan that keeps the team and its activities together. Watch the video below to learn about the main tasks in the implementation phase.
Post-Event Activities > >

Last but not least, it is essential to complete a number of post-event actions, not only as follow-up activities with different stakeholders, but also as a way to disseminate the main outcomes of the event and, most importantly, to evaluate its results.
Useful tipEvaluation activities will be essential to recognize any mistakes done, to correct them and improve them. Check out the pilot study developed by European Schoolnet and Intel on the European Science Fairs Evaluation Framework. The aim of this evaluation exercise was to show the data that could be obtained from the evaluation tool developed. In the study, you will be able to see the main findings from students and from teachers and maybe even get inspired to develop a tool of your own!

Organising fairs will become easier over time as one gains experience, establishes procedures, amasses contacts, and implements improvements. To get an idea of what fair organisation entails, in the words of an experienced professional, check out the Scientix Opening Minds to STEM Careers newsletter.

In the newsletter, we feature an interview with Audrey Anne Bella Bondin, Head of the Science Department in a public secondary college, in Malta. Audrey Anne is responsible for setting up annual science fairs involving interactive experiments with the aim of promoting and popularising science in her home country.

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7.4 Case study: Internship placement in Portugal

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7.4 Case study: Internship placement in Portugal

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We will now look at a case study of a secondary, vocational school in Portugal which collaborates with a local company, OGMA, to offer students the opportunity to be placed in internships in the company during their study years. Although this is a particular case, where the school is mandated to assure these internships, it is nonetheless a good example of the benefits of such placements.

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School-to-work transitionAre there any training opportunities or companies in your country providing programmes from which your students can benefit?

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School-to-work transitionAre there any training opportunities or companies in your country providing programmes from which your students can benefit?

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I think etwinning platform is an alternative for my students to train themselves. It is not a programme but it helps students to improve their technological skills.

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An interesting takeaway from Mapping youth transitions in Europe by Eurofund (the tripartite EU agency providing knowledge to assist in the development of better social, employment and work-related policies) is that

“those countries with quicker and more successful school-to-work transitions are those where young people leave home earlier. In this regard, seven common patterns were identified among Member States. At one end of the spectrum, the ‘Nordic’ and ‘Apprenticeship’ (Austria and Germany) models are characterised by a more rapid transition to adulthood and a quicker transition from school to work. At the other end of the spectrum, in the ‘Eastern European’ and ‘Mediterranean’ models, difficult and problematic school-to-work transitions are associated with very slow and late transitions to independence and autonomy.”

This issue is certainly a complex one and cannot be solved by just one organisation or school. Industry is, or should be, an active partner in this process of change as well. Very big enterprises rarely stand, with arms crossed, waiting for bright and trained students to reach the steps of their companies. They also take a step forward and do their part in making sure that they attract the right candidates and help the young generation to achieve the skills neccesary for the business environment.

For that purpose, in an effort to invest in training and skills development for their current and future employees, companies (mainly large enterprises) are rolling out various training programmes and initiatives for students and/or graduates to smooth out work transitions or to develop the skills needed to succeed in the business environment.

Here we will see two examples of these opportunities provided by companies and which students can benefit from.

A first type of opportunity is the one provided by Amgen Scholars, a program where “undergraduate participants benefit from undertaking a research project under top faculty, being part of a cohort-based experience of seminars and networking events, and taking part in a symposium in their respective region (U.S., Europe or Japan) where they meet their peers, learn about biotechnology, and hear from leading scientists”.

Another way in which companies cover this skills gap is via Microsoft’s Careers, where there is an entire section dedicated to students and graduates. This section features live events or webinars on how to prepare for a job at Microsoft, international opportunities like apprenticeships, and even high-school summer bootcamps!

Therefore, there are resources and opportunities out there from which students can benefit. So how can you search for these kinds of programmes? Some practical steps:

1. Check out which are some of the big industry or corporate players in your town/city/country.

2. Usually, they should have a department/area of their organisation allocated towards Corporate Social Responsibility (for example, Amgen has the Amgen Foundation, which offers the Amgem Scholars programme) or a section on Careers, which almost always provides assistance to students/graduates who might be interested in a job with that company (like Microsoft for example). This information should normally be available on the company’s website.

3. See what types of activities they provide: these can be live ones, like trainings or workshops at their headquarters or live webinars. If they offer extracurricular study programmes (like an Academy) see what their aims, objectives, conditions and timeline are.

4. Facilitate the connection with your students, either in one-on-one discussions, in the classroom, or by directing your students to that website.

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Connect with the communityAfter you have read these steps to connect with your local community, share with us what are some ways in which you can connect with the business community in your town or city: what professionals can you bring to your school and how can you involve them?

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Connect with the communityAfter you have read these steps to connect with your local community, share with us what are some ways in which you can connect with the business community in your town or city: what professionals can you bring to your school and how can you involve them?

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As I am in a small town, I cannot manage to contact with someone that can be real learner partners. But if I had the chance, I would get in touch with them through the means of communication. They can be either employers or graduate students.

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Sometimes, our actions as teachers are quite limited, in particular when the wider educational context (tight curriculums, limited school resources, scheduling incompatibilities, etc.) does not allow much room for creativity or for implementing innovative activities with our students.

Fortunately, there are always simple actions which can be taken in order to ensure career readiness for students. In terms of business and education collaboration, a first place to look at is the community itself. Who are the organisations, the people you can bring to your classroom who are able to enrich lessons and connect students to real-life work opportunities?

In the Community Partners: Making Student Learning Relevant article, Edutopia (2016) presents a great case study of a school in the United States where teachers work with community partnersto enrich student learning and to give them real-life skills.
In this case study, these community partners are defined as “an expert in the community or somebody who can help us take our learning from the classroom and apply it into the real world”. The exact term used in the article to define them is “learning partner”. The school uses these learning partners to enrich lessons and to co-teach, but also for teachers to learn from them, as experts in their field, through individual talks, before teaching a particular lesson. Another way these partners are used is to give authenticity to lessons and to connect students to real-life individuals who are experts in the specific area students are practising or learning about during a lesson.

So, how do you reach these learning partners? The article suggests several ways: from googling the nearest expert, to collaborating with parents or connecting with teachers from other schools. More interesting approaches are (for the teacher) to:

join local talks or workshops: networking and learning what others are doing and how you can tap into their expertise is a great strategy;

contact local museums, government agencies, local expertise institutions(which usually have an Education Department).

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Business and education collaborationBased on this graph, where do you think your students are placed? What is their level of access and desire for employability? What are some actions you can take to improve the situation?

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Business and education collaborationBased on this graph, where do you think your students are placed? What is their level of access and desire for employability? What are some actions you can take to improve the situation?

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My students are between 15-18 years old. Based on this graph my students are dreamers: medium desire of employability and medium access. There should be a greater link between the students' and employability needs and school curricula. And also employers should take part in teaching the real life.

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Module 7: Benefits of external school-to-work programmes

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Module 7: Benefits of external school-to-work programmes

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7.1 Business and education collaboration
What happens when this collaboration does not take place? It should not be too hard to imagine, as unfortunately, in many cases, it is the reality we are facing today. Very few countries manage to achieve high levels of collaboration between schools and industry. Moreover, this collaboration is often only achieved in resource-rich schools or in those schools were it happens by fortune, and not necessarily through a guided, school-centred or policy-directed approach.

The Education to employment: Getting Europe’s youth into work report by McKinsey & Company (Mourshed, Patel, & Suder, 2014) points out that there is a “failure of employers, education providers, and young people to understand one another”. Although education providers are confident that students are being adequately prepared for transition to employment, in reality, employers are complaining that they do not find workers with the right skills.

Emphasising that youths are not to blame, the report goes on to outline three hurdles that youth face in the path from education to employment (E2E): (1) enrolling in post-secondary education, (2) building the right skills and (3) finding a suitable job. Overall, the report mentions that students face great financial costs to pursue higher education options. It also stresses they are not learning enough soft skills in schools (or not the right soft skills) and that they lack support and career information in their transition to work.

So, how can we solve this? One of the solutions proposed in the McKinsey & Company report is a stronger collaboration between education providers and employers. This can be developed through designing school curricula together, engaging professionals in teaching, creating opportunities for students to experiment real-life work in companies, and accessing training academies offered by larger companies. We will explore all of these throughout this module.
Read the article Education to employment: Getting Europe’s youth into work and study Exhibit 1, “Few young people have a successful journey to employment”. There are three dimensions you need to look at:

Access (vertical axis),

Desire for employability (horizontal axis) and

Degree of success (4 segments, from green to blue).

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Think about your discussions with the parents of your students: are they encouraging their children to enter STEM careers? What is their general attitude towards STEM careers? Reflect on this section and share your thoughts here. Additionally, share some ideas you will keep in mind from now on, in your work with parents.

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Think about your discussions with the parents of your students: are they encouraging their children to enter STEM careers? What is their general attitude towards STEM careers? Reflect on this section and share your thoughts here. Additionally, share some ideas you will keep in mind from now on, in your work with parents.

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My students' parents do want their children to enter STEM careers,their attitude is positive towards STEM but they don't know the deep meaning of STEM career and what it requires. (Subcounciously they encourage their children.)

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If you’re keen to get your kid interested in STEM, we’ve got 6 strategies to help you open their eyes to the wonders of science and technology! According to STEM education advocacy group Change the Equation, just 56 percent of high schools offer a computer science class of any sort. The situation with science isn’t much better.

“On average, students in kindergarten through third grade spend 19 minutes a day on science and 89 minutes per day on language arts. This abbreviated exposure reduces time students spend solving open-ended problems and investigating, experimenting, and observing the world,” reveals Vanessa Stratton, Vice President of Programs at Project Lead The Way. “Young people begin to see science, technology, engineering, and math [STEM] as a series of discrete facts that have no connection to their lives.”

“Science class is not well connected to broader, relevant things in the workplace and to life after school,” agrees Claus Von Zastrow, director of research at Change the Equation. No wonder by the time they get to high school, only 37 percent of students tell pollsters they like science class.

So what do you do if, as a parent, you’re convinced this just isn’t good enough? How can you nudge your own kids towards an interest in STEM?

The good news is you have a lot to work with. First, kids are naturally curious about the world. The same poll that found a minority of kids like studying science in school, also found that 81 percent liked science itself. Second, there are a ton of resources at parents’ disposal to help you open your kids’ eyes to the wonders of STEM.

1. Explore the world together.

In fact, the world itself can be seen as one huge laboratory for your kids to explore. Encourage them to ask questions and find their own answers. “Instead of answering questions such as, ‘Why do leaves change color in the fall?; turn the question around and ask them what they think,” Stratton advises parents.

Von Zastrow has an even more specific suggestion: Science Buddies, a website that offers thousands of ideas for at-home experiments. Or check out citizen science projects that allow young people to take part in actual, ongoing studies in which real-life researchers deputize the public to help sift through or provide data, from examining silt for micro-fossils to photographing lady bugs for entomologists. Scientific American has a list of ongoing projects. Online coding classes and programs are a good bet as well – you can check out this list of free websites that teach kids coding.

2. Introduce them to STEM professionals.

This tip may be easier for parents who work in a STEM field themselves, but introducing your children to real-life scientists and technologists can go a long way to proving STEM leads to viable and fascinating career options. If that’s a stretch given your location or social circle, your local library may be your next best bet.

“Many books now exist for primary students including non-fiction offerings such as Ada Byron Lovelace and the Thinking Machine by Laurie Wallmark and The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer; and fictional offerings such as Rosie Revere, Engineer by Andrea Beaty,” Stratton points out.

3. Provide the right kind of toys.

Children’s books and web resources can help parents spark a love of science, but so can the right kind of toys. And today, thankfully, there are more great options than ever before. Focus on multi-functional toys that allow for open-ended play, suggests Stratton. “Some of my sons’ favorite activities over the years have included Magna-Tiles, GoldieBlox building sets, and Minecraft,” she says.

Or just stick with old standbys from a time when childhood was less structured and more imaginative. “I would also encourage parents to supply their children with basic supplies and unstructured time to allow them opportunities to explore the outdoors, observe insects and wildlife, and build structures with cardboard, sticks, and other recycled items,” Stratton adds.

4. Explain that STEM is for everyone.

While there are excellent toys out there for budding scientists, there are also some offerings at your local toy store that send exactly the wrong message, especially for girls. Von Zastrow suggests that while books or toys that portray space exploration or dinosaurs as “for boys” and ironing and fashion as “for girls” are highly annoying (and still all too common), they also offer parents a perfect teaching moment.

“Intentionally talk to your kids about what they’re seeing and explain why, if it’s ridiculous, it’s ridiculous,” Von Stratton tells parents. “Kids soak it up,” he says of this sort of stereotype-busting talk, “but it’s going to be a constant fight.”

For more resources to encourage your little girl to get excited about STEM, check out GoldieBlox, Black Girls Code, EngineerGirl, Girls Who Code, Yellow Scope, RoboGabby and A Mighty Girl for games, books, tutorials, events and more!

5. Find the science in your kid’s hobby.

Another approach to encourage a love of science and tech is to enter through the back door. Rather than pushing STEM directly, figure out what your kids are already passionate about already and highlight how that connects to technology and science. There’s a link for almost any interest you can imagine.

“Computer science is becoming infused into all areas of our lives. I would encourage parents of kids who might feel like science isn’t for them to look closely at a hobby or interest of theirs and find the science, technology, engineering, and math involved,” suggests Stratton. “Hobbies such as sports, fashion, art, and music involve STEM. In short, find the hobby and look for the science.”

6. Be persistent.

Finally, just keep chipping away at it. “So many people led to my decision to become a NASA engineer,” says real-life rocket scientist Jenny Moss. “It wasn’t one particular moment that set me off in that direction. It was a progression of support that led to my career.”

“I’ve learned it takes an army to keep people moving forward, especially women in engineering. They need encouragement and nudges in the right direction all along the way,” agrees aerospace engineer Jamie Krakover.

“The most important thing a parent can do to encourage a love of science in their child is to provide support and encouragement,” concludes Stratton, who points to research showing that encouragement from family and peers is the key to getting kids interested in STEM and keeping them hooked.

In other words, you really do have the power to shape your kids’ feelings about science and technology. Now go exercise it wisely.

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Seven simple things you can do to encourage your kids in STEM

1. Go ahead, get dirty

Next time your little ones are shaking a bottle of pop to see what happens…let them! Okay, maybe take them outside. But you get the gist: curiosity begets curiosity. So in the name of science, let your kids get a little dirty when they play.

2. Play with their toys

There are tons of STEM toys that encourage kids to be curious about the world around them. But kids love to have someone to play with, so choose toys that sound like fun to you, too. If you buy a microscope but it doesn't turn your crank, chances are it'll be gathering dust in the corner in no time. Find cool STEM toys.

3. Send 'em to camp

There's a lot of competition to get a spot in some coveted summer camps, but did you know that there are over 100 organizations in Canada that offer day programs, summer camps, robotics clubs and university mini-courses in STEM? Two great places to get started? Actua and Camps.ca

4. Have the (ahem) talk

The science talk, that is. With science classes being optional in some high schools, talk to your children about how choosing a science class now can open up possibilities later.

5. Share the housework

Turning everyday tasks and chores such as cleaning, cooking and gardening into a scientific learning experience can have a big impact! Baking is chemistry (why does a cake rise when baked?), and growing a tomato is biology and botany in action! Spending time explaining how mixing certain ingredients or how cleaners work around the house can ignite your child's curiosity—and you get an enthusiastic helper!

6. Ask why

We all know that kids love to ask why. And it can drive some people crazy. But think about it…why is the sun yellow? It's a pretty interesting question, and finding the answer together can be a great journey. Maybe you can come up with a few challenging questions of your own that you can solve together!

7. Blow their minds

Lots of ordinary things that we see and do every day are connected to science, technology, engineering and math. So blow your kids' minds. Here are 10 great conversation starters to get the ball rolling:

#10: You really can invent anything you want. Scientists in the U.K. have used pee to charge a mobile phone!
Source: BBC News

#9: Your kids probably recognize smells all the time—good smells, bad smells and weird smells! How many smells do you think the human nose can detect? The answer might surprise you. Here's a hint: it's more than 1,000—a lot more!
Source: National Geographic

#8: What's smaller than you but has more bones? A baby! While mom and dad have 206 bones, babies start out with about 300 bones and cartilage. So where do all those extra bones go?
Source: How Stuff Works

#7: When you see a sunset, you're actually looking into the past. Light from the sun takes 8.3 minutes to travel to Earth, so even though you're just seeing the sun slip below the horizon now, the sunset actually happened 8 minutes ago.
Source: Quora

#6: About 63 light years away, there is a planet with a temperature of over 1000 degrees Celsius, and it rains glass, sideways, in howling 7000 km/h winds. Think about this the next time it rains.
Source: Hubble Space Telescope

#5: Ever had a dinosaur burger for dinner? No? Think again. Chickens are technically dinosaurs.
Source: DinoBuzz

#4: Right now, Earth is spinning at 1000 miles per hour! So how come we're not dizzy all the time? Because we're all spinning at the same speed. What would happen if we all decided to spin in the opposite direction?
Source: NASA SpacePlace

#3: Upset tummy? It's understandable. Stomach acid is strong enough to dissolve metal. In fact, your stomach lining has to completely replace itself every 4 days!
Source: FEEL guide

#2: You might be XX years old, but some parts of your body aren't. Your eyes are as old as you are, but your taste buds? They're only about 10 days old! Still, they work together to make your cake taste as good as it looks! How old do you think your skin is?
Source: Daily Mail Online

#1: Those clouds might look light and fluffy, but the average cumulus cloud weighs about 1.1 million pounds. That's like a herd of 100 elephants! In the sky!
Source: The USGS Water Science School

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6.4 Bringing parents into career counseling

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6.4 Bringing parents into career counseling

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Parents are an important pillar in how children shape their vision for the future and their choice of careers. Indeed, research has proven that parental encouragement is a decisive factor for a student to pursue higher education and choose a major in a STEM field (Michigan State University, 2010).
Parents also play an important role in the STEM career choices of girls and boys. Numerous studies have shown that if parents provide both boys and girls with opportunities to explore STEM starting at a young age, and if they avoid labelling STEM activities as male activities, this will foster children's interest in science (Wang & Degol, 2013).

So, then, what are some practical tips you can give to parents, so that they can increase their children’s interest in STEM at home? In this article, it is suggested that parents and children explore the world together while providing children with the right kind of toys. In another very interesting article, activities like science summer camps are suggested as means to encourage kids to enter STEM careers. Also check out this short video of Neil DeGrasse Tyson with his very amusing advice for parents.
Finally, if you want to suggest some activities for parents to do at home, this article sums up some interesting ones!

In short, as teachers you will have to work together with parents in the students' best interests. A lot of times, although parents have the best intentions, they may actually do more harm than good without realising it. Therefore, it is important to understand what role parents play in their children's career choices, what are some of the barriers that they may unknowingly instill in them, and what you, as a teacher, can do in this relationship.
Once you have done that, read the guidelines below, for educators to keep in mind when working with parents.

1. Tackle gender stereotypes with parents. Make sure they encourage girls and boys equally and, when possible, challenge any possible stereotypes they may be harbouring.

2. Help parents see their children’s experiments and curiosity as a natural scientific attitude. Encourage them to be tolerant and welcoming in that curiosity, and to let their children explore, regardless of the mess they may be making at home: noise, breaking, pulling apart things.

3. Facilitate the involvement of parents in their children's STEM activities. Inform them of activities they can do together with their children, events in which they can participate together and activities they can put in practice at home to foster their children’s interests in STEM.

4. Financial constraints in a household can be an impediment to parents' exposing their children to science opportunities – in a lot of cases, it will be up to you as a teacher to take extra steps to inform students and give them extra guidance for these opportunities.

5. Finally, remember to practice what you preach. If parents do not see you putting into practice what you tell them to do, they will not be convinced!

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Reflect on your upcoming lessons and plans for your students – which professional of your town/country could you bring in to supplement your teaching activity?

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Reflect on your upcoming lessons and plans for your students – which professional of your town/country could you bring in to supplement your teaching activity?

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We had learned how to code on CodeWeek and I can go on coding with them in terms of STEM. My students and I can follow different profession groups online and get real-life information and experience through the group.

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James Branam gives lectures at local high schools in Prague, focusing mostly on two topics: his journey in the IT world in a 60-minute slideshow and a lecture about the things he has encountered in his life, about all the choices he has had to make for his career, documenting his non-traditional journey in IT. He also lectures on various jobs in IT, starting with the traditional software engineer position, but also covering a lot of jobs that students are not aware of, like support engineers, sales consults, digital sales consultants, even HR representatives. He tries to open students’ eyes that a career in the IT world is not just programming, it can be many more things. Another thing he has done, within a group, is conducting Lego workshops, where students learn the value of working together, in an Agile environment.

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Can you identify a STEM role model of your country who could be suited to discussing STEM careers with your students? Explain how this person fits with what you’ve learned in this activity and share at least one idea about how you would integrate him/her in a lesson with your students.

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Can you identify a STEM role model of your country who could be suited to discussing STEM careers with your students? Explain how this person fits with what you’ve learned in this activity and share at least one idea about how you would integrate him/her in a lesson with your students.

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A STEM role model of my country is of course Aziz Sancar. His studies and the things he did during the studies can guide my students in terms of STEM.

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Read pages 20-28 from the study presented above and reflect on the following: Which roles do you use actively, which do you use less and why? Are there any roles you are not doing but want to do? Name at least one you would like to exercise more.

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Read pages 20-28 from the study presented above and reflect on the following: Which roles do you use actively, which do you use less and why? Are there any roles you are not doing but want to do? Name at least one you would like to exercise more.

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I use the role of career informant because of my position in my school. I have never been the Leading Cell.

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Module 6: Balancing the roles of teachers, mentors, and parents

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Module 6: Balancing the roles of teachers, mentors, and parents

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6.1 Role of teachers in career counselling

In the process of choosing a future career, there are several persons of importance in a student’s decisions: parents, teachers and career counsellors. These, of course, can vary on an individual basis, but for the purpose of this course, we will address just these three. In addition to this, we will also discuss the importance of role models and professionals with whom the students can identify with and feel inspired by.

We will start our exploration of these roles, with the teacher in focus, by looking at the study Teachers and Careers: The role of school teachers in delivering career and employability learning, where the authors, Hooley, Watts and Andrews (2015), propose six distinct, but connected, roles that teachers play in delivering Career and Employability Learning (CEL). Although these were proposed for UK schools and some aspects may not be applicable to other countries, we believe this framework provides a good starting point for us to better understand what the roles and responsibilities of a teacher providing career guidance/CEL to students should be.

1. Tutorial roles

1. Career informant: In this role, teachers provide students with a model, an approach of thinking about a career, and help students shape their own way to view career choices by using their own experience as an example, but without offering it as the only way to do this. The report lists some tasks that a teacher in this role might perform: “talking about their decisions and how they made them, talking about their career-building (including discussing challenges and regrets”, and many more.

2. Pastoral support: This refers to the teacher as a first contact point for students, who may approach him/her with conversations they need to have with a trusted adult. These can be related purely to career choices / guidance, and sometimes they may appear related to careers, but in reality the issue the students are having may be, for example, health-related. In this role, the teacher helps the students in line with his/her capabilities, but also directs the students to other professionals who can help. A task the teacher can perform in this role: “acting as facilitator and advocate for students to help them to have career conversations with other staff, parents and employers.”

2. Teaching roles

1. Within-subject: In this role, the teacher has two opportunities to provide CEL: within or beside the curriculum. For some subjects, it may be more straightforward to discuss careers (e.g., Economics or Politics versus Physiscs, where more direct connections have to be made), and teaching approaches can also vary. If career information has to be provided outside the curriculum (e.g. STEM subjects), then the report proposes a team-teaching approach, involving employers and other enrichment activities. Some tasks teachers can perform in this role: “explaining to pupils the progression routes open in continued learning in their subject area, using the curriculum to develop core employability skills”, “arranging visits to relevant workplaces”, “organising a programme of visiting speakers from business”.

2. Delivering CEL: This role refers to the teacher being involved, where it is possible and where it exists (as it depends on the curriculum set-up), in CEL as a separate, standalone subject of the curriculum. A task teachers can perform in this role: “contributing particular CEL inputs related to subject expertise”.

3. Leadership roles

1. Leading CEL: A teacher leading CEL can have a teaching background or not, but s/he needs to be familiar with and be able to coordinate various stakeholders involved in providing CEL to the school. Therefore, a teacher in this role would be someone in a middle leader position, and a career co-ordinator / careers leader / head of careers.

2. Senior leadership: This role is normally taken up by a member of the school’s senior leadership team. In this role, the person would “connect CEL to the school’s mission and ethos, identify resourcing for CEL programmes, appointing and managing the school career’s leader” and other tasks.

As mentioned initially, these roles were proposed in a study for UK schools and some aspects may not be applicable to other countries, but they should facilitate a first reflection.

As an optional activity, if you want to better understand the nuances of role-overlapping between teachers and career counsellors, read pages 28-31 of the report (including Table 2) to see how these responsibilities might be shared.

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Share information about any project, awareness campaign or initiative related to STEM and gender equality. If you need any help, you can also search in the Scientix project repository: http://www.scientix.eu/projects

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Share information about any project, awareness campaign or initiative related to STEM and gender equality. If you need any help, you can also search in the Scientix project repository: http://www.scientix.eu/projects

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In Turkey, you can find campaign and activities related to STEM with the link
' www.turkiyeninmuhendiskizlari.com ' and universal coding ' www.codeitlikeagirl '

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5.4 Projects about gender equality in STEM

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5.4 Projects about gender equality in STEM

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Public institutions, educational organisations, businesses and other organisms have not stayed quiet about the gender gap in STEM. On the contrary, several initiatives and campaigns have been put in place to promote gender-inclusive STEM education and to encourage girls to take on STEM careers. Below we present a few recent initiatives. Feel free to explore them and share any other that you may know of through the activity below.

Stemettes

Stemettes is an award-winning social enterprise that mainly operates across the UK and Ireland to motivate and support young women going into STEM careers. Among other activities, the project runs panel events, hackathons and the Student to Stemette mentoring programme.

Hypathia

In the Hypatia project, science centres and museums work together with schools, industries and academics to promote gender-inclusive STEM education and communication. The initiative offers an accessible, practical and ready-to-use digital collection of activities for teachers, researchers or informal learning organisations. Moreover, to deliver a sustainable basis for these activities to be carried out in different educational systems throughout Europe, the project has created national hubs, led by science centres and museums.

Mind the Gap

The Mind the Gap project works with both STEM teachers and girls between 16 and 18 years old, who are studying STEM subjects or who have dropped out or who have completed their studies but not entered STEM jobs. The main aims of the project are:

To help teachers in each participating country to recruit and retain more girls in their STEM courses;

To support girls and inspire them to continue their STEM education and to pursue STEM careers by helping them develop different soft skills needed to work in male-dominated environments.

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Who is your favourite female scientist of all time and why?

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Who is your favourite female scientist of all time and why?

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Marie Curie because I consider the Nobel as a sign of extreme success.

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Throughout history, women have actively contributed to the development of scientific knowledge and have made groundbreaking discoveries in science. However, too many of them have not been given credit for their achievements, resulting in their disappearance from mainstream audiences.

As mentioned in this article, throughout their careers, many female scientists have been denied recognition. “Having had to work as 'volunteer' faculty members, seen credit for significant discoveries they've made assigned to male colleagues, and been written out of textbooks (…) they typically had paltry resources and fought uphill battles to achieve what they did, only to have the credit attributed to their husbands or male colleagues."

Just think about the famous

Marie Skłodowska-Curie (1867-1934), one of the most iconic scientists of all times. The first female professor at the University of Paris, she was among the first scientists to realise the importance of quantum theory and the first person to win not one, but two Nobel Prizes. However, her entrance in the French Academy of Sciences was denied, due to her gender.

While nowadays, bias against female scientists is not as explicit, it has not gone away entirely. For that reason, in this section we want to honor all those female scientists who have contributed greatly to science history.

We should start with one of the most notable female scientists of all time:

Ada Lovelace (1815 - 1852). Considered the mother of all computer nerds, Ada is widely regarded as the world’s first computer programmer. Even though no functioning computers were built throughout her life, she continuously worked on a general-purpose computer called the Analytical Engine. More particularly, Ada described how this processer was capable of computing general information and insisted on its ability to be programmed. In fact, in recognition of her contribution to software programming, the Ada high-level computer language was named after her.

Jocelyn Bell Burnell (1943 - present) is one of the biggest names in astronomy. Jocelyn discovered pulsars, the remnants of massive stars gone supernova. And she did it while analyzing data printed out on paper from a radio telescope she helped assemble. This finding resulted in a Nobel Prize in physics, a prize that went to Anthony Hewish (Bell Burnell's supervisor) and Martin Ryle a radio astronomer at Cambridge University.

Rosalind Franklin (1920 - 1958) focused her work on determining the structure of DNA, using x-ray experiments to take a picture of the DNA molecule. This image became key to decode its structure: Franklin had discovered that DNA consisted of two chains and a phosphate backbone. However, it was James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins who received, in 1962, the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for a report published with all oF Franklin’s findings.

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5.2 Gender equality in the job market and in the classroom

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5.2 Gender equality in the job market and in the classroom

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1. Consider your interactions with students

Establishing a healthy, gender-bias-free environment in the class will make teachers more capable of handling issues regarding gender differences.

For that, it is very important to guarantee equal and fair student participation. This can be ensured by rotating “who answers, how often, and when”, making sure that students from both genders contribute equally.

It is also essential to provide enough waiting time after asking students a question. This will allow everybody enough time to think. A further step could be the teacher stopping any students from raising their hands until requested.

Lastly, provide various ways to respond, different from just speaking in front of the class. These could be the discussion of materials in small groups or even explaining ideas in a journal.

2. Implement inclusive group practices

Use diverse student-centred teaching methods to ensure a safe classroom environment. In particular, make use of students’ mixed abilities and promote collaborative group work. If possible, frame classroom activities in real world and interdisciplinary contexts. Incorporate holistic investigation tasks and projects, and place responsibility for thinking and learning on the students themselves.

Moreover, use monitored mixed-gender groups and rotate them frequently. Also, try not to have girls and boys competing against each other.

Lastly, use hands-on methodologies and ensure equal access to material resources. You can arrange tasks so that both girls and boys manipulate STEM equipment (like science lab equipment, calculators or computers) in an equal way.

3. Use gender-sensitive instructional materials

Avoid using materials that reinforce stereotyped roles (including not only books but also drawings, pictures or accompanying texts). Stereotyped roles can refer to different things (including traditionally gendered roles, e.g. girls are nurses, boys are mechanics) or assigning productive and active roles to males and relegating passive and supportive roles to females.

In general, materials used in the classroom should mirror our current plural society. For that, the number of female achievers in texts as well as in the examples cited in class should be increased, as they tend not to be representative of today’s society (UNESCO, 2015).

For more comprehensive guidelines to ensure gender equality in the classroom, check UNESCO’s A Guide for Gender Equality in Teacher Education Policy and Practices.

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Please discuss the gender gap in STEM in your country. Are your female students interested in STEM areas? Are there many women in research careers? Share your insight!

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Please discuss the gender gap in STEM in your country. Are your female students interested in STEM areas? Are there many women in research careers? Share your insight!

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In Turkey, there are many girls in many fields but in some regions, unfortunately, families don't let their daughters study even in primary schools.

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Module 5: Gender stereotypes in STEM education

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Module 5: Gender stereotypes in STEM education

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While individual interest is decisive in choosing a particular career, this interest will also be conditioned by other factors, some of which were already mentioned in the video above. For instance, the (often-inaccurate) perception of our own abilities (thinking oneself not gifted enough) is a frequent cause for girls’ not pursuing STEM degrees.

In addition, societal perceptions and expectations, including the stereotyped image of the roles of men and women, will play a crucial factor. Up to this day, men are still often perceived as having qualities associated to leadership, being knowledgeable or having a technical brain, while women are still seen as emotional or caring. While these are generalisations that normally come with little evidence, they can affect the choosing of a career. Indeed, the common belief that men are natural leaders while women are intrinsically caregivers is a plausible reason why women are more likely to work in health care occupations rather than in research or in business enterprises.

A particular example of how stereotypes can affect career choices in STEM fields is the draw-a-scientist test. This activity is based on an experiment carried out in 1957, when two anthropologists did a nationwide study in the US to examine how 35,000 high school students from different backgrounds viewed a scientist. The most popular image drawn was that of a man, characterised with glasses, white hair and a white beard, wearing a white laboratory coat. The most striking fact was that it came from very diverse children, from very diverse backgrounds, who were drawing the same stereotyped image. Thus, there is no doubt we need to move away from these stereotypes, by providing the next generations of STEM professionals with a gender-sensitive education.

However, a gender-sensitive education should start at a very early stage, as early socialisation plays a huge role in kids’ mindsets. In the video Inspiring the next generation of female engineers, Debbie Sterling (founder and CEO of GoldieBlox, a toy company that produces construction toys for girls) explains how one of her motives for creating the company was her realisation – after failing a 3D drawing assessment in an engineering drawing class – that kids who scored better at spatial skills were those who grew up playing with construction toys. Seeing as those toys were usually marketed at boys, she decided to start designing construction games designed at girls so they could be inspired to pursue engineering careers too.

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Please share 3 practices you already use and 3 practices which you are NOT currently using but would like to implement in your classroom/school.

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Please share 3 practices you already use and 3 practices which you are NOT currently using but would like to implement in your classroom/school.

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I have already used career materials in science texts/journals/articles and personal experiences. I will probably implement guest speaker, authentic research and map out career paths in my classroom.

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4.3 STEM career activities: teacher practices

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4.3 STEM career activities: teacher practices

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We come back to The Emerging Role of Science Teachers in Facilitating STEM Career Awareness (Cohen & Patterson, 2012) study, to Exhibit 1, presenting a series of replicable teacher practices which can be used with the four strategies we previously mentioned. Below you will find a summary of these main practices. You can consult Exhibit 1 of the study for full examples.

1. Utilise career materials in science texts/journals/articles: Consult these sources and extract/incorporate articles or supplemental readings in your lessons.​​​​​​

2. Integrate experiential activities in the classroom: Role-playing or designing research posters.

3. Incorporate authentic research: Give students the opportunity to participate in real research projects.​​​​​​​

4. Invite guest speakers: Ask speakers from a variety of careers to talk to your students, to present their educational and career pathway. Also invite parents engaged in STEM fields to speak.​​​​​​​

5. Research science careers / map out career paths: Assign homework where students have to research various careers, and support them in building resumes or analysing their skills.

6. Support inclusion of science careers in school career fairs.

7. Informally weave career information into lessons: Try to frame or open your lessons with career information, or as you work through a particular chapter or unit, make sure you point out career aspects where relevant.​​​​​​​

8. Share personal experiences: Share your own experience of working in STEM fields, participate in professional development opportunities, and share your own educational and career pathway.​​​​​​​

9. Expose students to worksites and outside opportunities: Take students on visits to various STEM centers (companies, research centers, etc.), prepare them beforehand, seek funding, and see how you can bridge the education-industry gap for your students.​​​​​​​

10. Be a mentor/advocate.

The full details of these practices can be found in the study The Emerging Role of Science Teachers in Facilitating STEM Career Awareness (Cohen & Patterson, 2012).

In the next videos, we will watch presentations from two teachers and Scientix Ambassadors, Jose Viñas and Teresita Gravina, explaining how they implement some of the teacher practices mentioned above to foster career awareness in the classroom: specifically Citizen Science and online laboratories.

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4.2 STEM career activities: types and uses

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4.2 STEM career activities: types and uses

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In the first part of this presentation, guest lectures and guest speakers are mentioned. It’s not always easy to reach STEM professionals and bring them to your classroom. For this, the STEM Alliance has developed different tools, such as the Professionals Go Back to School scheme, that encourages volunteers from STEM industry (technicians, scientist, engineers, researchers or employment and recruiting managers) and teachers to organise career talks and collaborative activities in schools.

The STEM Alliance also organizes periodical online events (webinars and chat discussions) and produces career sheets that aim to promote STEM careers with role models. Representatives from companies – partners of the STEM Alliance – are invited to give online presentations to inform teachers about possible careers in their companies.

Check out this online chat about Engineer Careers in the Petrochemical Industry and read the following information in these "career sheets" about what does a Category Manager and a Commercial Manager do and how to become one, in the petrochemical industry. side from online chats, there is a multitude of materials and activities available to use with your students, and we are sure a lot of you know and use them regularly. Therefore, we would like to give you the chance to collaboratively build a database of resources (including lesson plans, activities, games, webinar recordings, information about competitions, etc.) ready to use to introduce STEM careers in the classroom.

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Choose a strategy from this section, choose a career material/activity/tool, and write how you would combine these two in a lesson (also adding any relevant links, information, etc.).

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Choose a strategy from this section, choose a career material/activity/tool, and write how you would combine these two in a lesson (also adding any relevant links, information, etc.).

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As a mismatching tool, I like OPENSKMR very much, I would use it in my lessons.  it is about the  matching between talents, and jobs, so I would easily implement it to my studentsin order to make my students understand their necessary learning as a way to support themselves in creating personal career paths.

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4.1 STEM career activities: how to use them?

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4.1 STEM career activities: how to use them?

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In Module 1, section 1.3, we briefly presented four teaching strategies which foster STEM awareness from The Emerging Role of Science Teachers in Facilitating STEM Career Awareness (Cohen & Patterson, 2012). Here they are again:

1. Incorporate both formal and informal approaches: Constantly bring career awareness into your activities and do not keep it as a separate unit.

2. Help students see scientists as real people: Students may have difficulty imagining themselves as scientists because they cannot see that scientists have a normal life, just like them. They have hobbies, families and various interests.

3. Connect the dots: It is not enough to just expose students to career information; the teacher also has to directly connect career information with whatever the students are learning at that moment. This can mean clarifying the connections between their lessons and the real-life use of subjects, or giving examples of how their lessons connect to scientific jobs. The students will not be always capable of making these connections themselves, and you will have to do it for them.

4. Embed reflection: To make sure that information sticks with students, embed reflection to drive a deeper understanding. Otherwise, a lot of the information can be lost over time if reflection is not used to “glue” it.

In this module, we will be building on these strategies by adding very concrete, specific activities and materials which you can use to introduce STEM careers to your students.

We will start with some brief interviews with participants of the 13th Science Projects Workshop in the Future Classroom Lab, for primary and/or secondary school career counsellors and/or STEM teachers acting as career counsellors in their centres, organised by Scientix in collaboration with the STEM Alliance and OPENSKIMR. In this video, participants explain what tools, materials and activities they use to introduce STEM careers to their students.

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Explain which of the matchmaking tools presented is most interesting and the reasons for it. Do you have any such tools in your country? Post your links in this Padlet!

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Explain which of the matchmaking tools presented is most interesting and the reasons for it. Do you have any such tools in your country? Post your links in this Padlet!

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I think OPEMSKMR is the most interesting because it is about the  matching between talents, and jobs and the necessary learning as a way to support students in creating personal career paths.

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3.5 STEM skills and STEM careers. Tools for matchmaking

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3.5 STEM skills and STEM careers. Tools for matchmaking

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Most students possess a variety of skills, competences and interests, which can make choosing a career path quite a difficult job. As we saw in previous modules, it is also necessary to develop tools that help improve matching between skills and labour market needs. For that reason, some initiatives have arisen to help students connect skills and interests with specific academic or career paths, or even with possible future jobs.

Below, you will find a curated list of skill/career-path matchmaking tools in different STEM fields. In the form of online tests, games or self-assessment platforms, these tools have the potential to help students understand how their interests and abilities can connect to a possible future career.

It’s of course difficult to build such a tool. We’ve seen that there is no commonly agreed-upon classification of STEM jobs, as skills and academic paths vary from country to country, but at the same time, these tools can provide a possible first step in the activity of STEM career counselling for students.

Read this document, try out some of the tools, and comment on their usability by following the last activity of this module.

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Share your thoughts on pedagogical approaches or classroom tools you can use in the classroom to promote STEM or soft skills. Which is the best one? What tools are you using? Share your experiences, success stories and challenges!

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Share your thoughts on pedagogical approaches or classroom tools you can use in the classroom to promote STEM or soft skills. Which is the best one? What tools are you using? Share your experiences, success stories and challenges!

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I think project based and problem solving techniques are the best ones for promoting STEM skills. As tools, I use kahoot, quizlet, learningapps, powtoon, biteable and so on...

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Finally, find below a summary of tools mentioned in the video “Development of hard and soft STEM skills for your students”, which (combined with the above approaches) can help boost skills in the classroom.

Kahoot is a free game-based learning platform that helps educators create a collection of questions on specific topics while creating a game-like learning environment. Through this platform, you can create quizzes, discussions and surveys about any topic of your choice.

Classflow is a cloud-based platform that allows teachers to create interactive lessons in a single place, while (at the same time) pulling in resources from anywhere.

PhET simulations are free, interactive, research-based science and mathematics simulations. These are written in Java, Flash or HTML5, and can be run online or downloaded from any computer. PhET is designed to encourage scientific inquiry and to provide interactivity among students.

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3.4 Classroom methodologies to promote STEM skills

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3.4 Classroom methodologies to promote STEM skills

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In previous sections, we saw the difficulties in agreeing on a definition of STEM skills, while exploring some of the most relevant STEM skills and soft skills.

In this section, we will learn about the relevance of promoting these skills in schools, and about which role you should take on – as an educator – while exploring strategies to promote STEM skills in the classroom. Start by watching the video below, to get a first impression of how to stimulate STEM skills and soft skills in the classroom.
As mentioned in the above video, STEM skills can be promoted through different pedagogies and educational methodologies. Below, we will show a number of different approaches (some of them based on A conceptual framework for integrated STEM education by Todd R. Kelley and J. Geoff Knowles, 2016). We encourage you to read them and to reflect how you would implement these approaches in classroom activities in any STEM field.

1. Engineering design: Engineering design is a methodology to promote the inclusion of engineering practices into the existing STEM curriculum (through the design and construction of a specific object/prototype).

2. This design will provide students with a context for learning through mathematical processes. The analytical element of these processes will also allow students to use science inquiry to create and conduct experiments. These experiments will inform the learner about the function and performance of potential design solutions for the construction of their object/prototype. Students can benefit from this design, as it provides them with a systematic approach to solving problems in the STEM fields. Finally, it will allow students to build upon their own experiences and provide them with opportunities to construct new science and math knowledge through design analysis and scientific investigation.

3. ✓ Do you want to know how you can put this engineering design approach in practice? Watch the video Foundations of Learning: Building STEM Skills. You will understand how to build up STEM skills through block play, and how block play is used as a type of engineering design activity for the youngest learners.

4. Scientific inquiry / Inquiry-based science education (IBSE): An inquiry-based approach to instruction requires teachers to “encourage and model the skills of scientific inquiry, as well as the curiosity, openness to new ideas, and skepticism that characterise science”. Scientific inquiry prepares students to think and act like real scientists, ask questions, hypothesise, and conduct investigations using standard science practices. However, an inquiry-based approach involves a high level of knowledge and engagement on the part of the teachers and students. Teachers often feel unprepared because they are lacking authentic scientific research and inquiry experiences themselves. However, through IBSE, students will be able to construct their own questions related to the science content they are investigating, while becoming drivers of their learning.

5. ✓ Watch the video Inquiry-Based Learning in the Science Classroom (secondary level) and Inquiry-Based Learning: From Teacher-Guided to Student-Driven (primary level) to understand how you can structure your STEM lesson through an inquiry-based approach.

6. Project-based learning (PBL): The project-based learning approach can be defined as “the ongoing act of learning about different subjects simultaneously”. When engaged in project-based learning, students will be assigned a project or a number of projects guiding them to identify, through research, a real-world problem and to develop its solution using evidence to support the claim. This approach usually requires students to use diverse skills (such as researching, writing, interviewing, working in teams, speaking in public, etc.) to produce different pieces of work (like research papers following experiment results, multimedia presentations or video documentaries, among others).

7. ✓ Watch this Introduction to Project-Based Learning to learn the basics to this approach and the video on Five keys to Project-Based Learning to learn how to implement it properly.

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Share the 3 soft skills you think are most important within STEM fields and explain, in your own words, how you would address them in the classroom.

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Share the 3 soft skills you think are most important within STEM fields and explain, in your own words, how you would address them in the classroom.

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I think decision making, problem solving and creativity are the most important soft skills within stem fields because stem is also concerned with them. These can be taught through pair or group work or problem based learning activities in the classroom.

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Read the article The 7 Most Important STEM Skills We Should Be Teaching Our Kids, where some essential soft skills in the STEM areas are mentioned, and follow the activity below:Since most educational policies and systems prioritise the provision of knowledge, adapting existing school curriculums (in order to include activities that promote soft skills) is quite the difficult job. For that reason, it is advisable that teachers start promoting soft skills when designing courses or lessons plans. But how should they do that?Soft skills such as resilience, self-control and time management can be incorporated through pedagogical approaches like project-based learning and inquiry-based science education (which will be further explained in the coming sections).In general, group work activities are always an opportunity to integrate soft skills in the classroom. Problem-solving tasks can be a chance for pupils to engage in social skills. The freedom of working in groups will help students to develop time management and self-control abilities, emphasising the notion of self-regulation and time-on-task. Lastly, working in small groups can also encourage quiet students to express their thoughts in a more comfortable manner (Concordia University, 2016).Incorporating student self-assessment into lessons is another way to promote soft skills. While students can measure their knowledge attainment through tests, they do not always take time to reflect on their own work, on what is challenging them and in what areas they are succeeding. Having students review their own work will also help them develop resilience and add a goal-setting approach to their educational experiences (Concordia University, 2016).

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Read the article The 7 Most Important STEM Skills We Should Be Teaching Our Kids, where some essential soft skills in the STEM areas are mentioned, and follow the activity below:Since most educational policies and systems prioritise the provision of knowledge, adapting existing school curriculums (in order to include activities that promote soft skills) is quite the difficult job. For that reason, it is advisable that teachers start promoting soft skills when designing courses or lessons plans. But how should they do that?Soft skills such as resilience, self-control and time management can be incorporated through pedagogical approaches like project-based learning and inquiry-based science education (which will be further explained in the coming sections).In general, group work activities are always an opportunity to integrate soft skills in the classroom. Problem-solving tasks can be a chance for pupils to engage in social skills. The freedom of working in groups will help students to develop time management and self-control abilities, emphasising the notion of self-regulation and time-on-task. Lastly, working in small groups can also encourage quiet students to express their thoughts in a more comfortable manner (Concordia University, 2016).Incorporating student self-assessment into lessons is another way to promote soft skills. While students can measure their knowledge attainment through tests, they do not always take time to reflect on their own work, on what is challenging them and in what areas they are succeeding. Having students review their own work will also help them develop resilience and add a goal-setting approach to their educational experiences (Concordia University, 2016).

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The transition to becoming an efficient professional entails much more than the academic knowledge attained through the schooling system. It also requires the development of key soft skills necessary within the business environment. Future STEM professionals will also be progressively required to have greatly advanced ‘soft’ skills, such as project management skills, communication aptitudes and problem-solving abilities.

Watch the interview below, where Gabrielle Ferguson, Talent Development Partner at CA Technologies, gives a definition of soft skills and explains why these are important in pursuing a STEM career. In the video above, Gabrielle Ferguson mentioned an array of soft skills (including communication, adaptation, time management, collaborative working, agile working, adaptation to change, response to change or presentation skills) that are relevant in STEM study fields and STEM careers.

The acquisition of these skills will not only benefit students academically, but it can also facilitate their entry and performance in the business world. Candidates with soft skills are rare but highly valued by employers; partly because soft skills are transferable to a wide array of jobs and professional areas, but also because the acquisition of soft skills can help to improve relationship-building and networking, and to create a professional workforce culture.

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1. Are you using technology in the classroom? 2. How would you develop digital skills in the classroom?

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1. Are you using technology in the classroom? 2. How would you develop digital skills in the classroom?

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1. Yes, of course. 2. With taking my students' interests to the digital applications and web 2.0 tools.

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3.2 STEM skills of the future. In focus: ICT and digital skills

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3.2 STEM skills of the future. In focus: ICT and digital skills

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1. In your opinion, which is the best definition of STEM skills and why? 2. Provide at least one example of non-STEM professions that use STEM skills.

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1. In your opinion, which is the best definition of STEM skills and why? 2. Provide at least one example of non-STEM professions that use STEM skills.

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1.  stem skills is the ability to generate, understand and analyse information in terms of understanding life... 2.mosaic, music or film artists...

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While, in the video above, we saw a pedagogically oriented definition of STEM skills, it is important to be aware of the many descriptions available. For instance, in Analytical highlight. Focus on: Science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) skills, STEM skills are defined as “those skills expected to be held by people with a tertiary-education level degree in the subjects of science, technology, engineering and maths”  (EU Skills Panorama (2014) STEM skills Analytical Highlight, prepared by ICF and Cedefop for the European Commission). Still, this definition could be considered incomplete, as it specifically refers to those skills achieved through an academic progression to tertiary education, somehow dismissing STEM skills that can be achieved through other academic paths, such as vocational technical education.

In any case, how can we recognise those skills classified under STEM disciplines?

1. An easy way to identify them is by linking STEM skills to qualifications attained in STEM subjects. For instance, Mathematics, Chemistry, Computer Science, Biology or Physics are easily classified as core STEM skills. However, it is not as easy as it seems, as the variety and type of qualifications vary from country to country, especially in tertiary education (EU Skills Panorama (2014) STEM skills Analytical Highlight, prepared by ICF and Cedefop for the European Commission).

2. Another way of defining STEM skills is by linking them to STEM occupations. For instance, this study identified 30 STEM occupations (concerning those that most utilise STEM skills). The results ranged from mathematicians, chemists, civil engineers (among many kinds of engineers), to statisticians or agricultural technicians.

Nonetheless, one must keep in mind that there are non-STEM professions that use STEM skills. There are also many STEM degree holders working in a non-STEM occupation who might still be using their STEM skills at work. For example, marketing employees in a chemical company might be graduates in chemical degrees. And why is that? Well, if you need to sell your product from business to business, you might as well hire someone who will have enough understanding and knowledge in the chemistry field (Bosworth, Lyonette, & Wilson, 2013).

For that reason, we need to show students how the acquisition of STEM skills will open the door to a variety of professions (both inside and outside of the STEM fields). In the Future Morph website, you will find a series of videos on how different professionals use maths and science in STEM and non-STEM jobs. From a bakery manager to a glass artist, you can use these videos to show your students that STEM skills and knowledge are valuable in almost any career.

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What are other sources do you use to learn about STEM jobs? Share your answers here.

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What are other sources do you use to learn about STEM jobs? Share your answers here.

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webinars, europeanschoolnetacademy, online tutorials, etwinning portal, tedtalks

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In this section we will go into more detail on actual career paths to various STEM industries. It is impossible to present all of the jobs in STEM industries here, but we have curated some of the relevant resources you can use to build your knowledge of STEM jobs.

To start, you can have a look at what the Florida Polytechnic University has done on their website. They have created a glossary of both established and emerging STEM careers, which can be linked with various academic degrees.

One of the three projects building this course, the STEM Alliance, had a great chat on chemistry and supply chain career paths organised in collaboration with EPCA (the European Petrochemical Association). The goal of this chat was to bring experts in the field closer to schools and share information on their careers. See summary here.

This interactive guide on future technology careers provides a career path based on age and interests, and supplies additional information at every step of the way.

Do you have students who are passionate about a career in space? Watch this recent Space Awareness webinar with Dr. Frank Danesy, Head of Business Unit Control and Senior Financial Controller, Directorate of Operations at the European Space Agency. The Career Hub of the Space Awareness project also features a great series of interviews and career cards in space and astronomy, perfect to share and use in your lessons with students.

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The demand for STEM careers in specific fields can vary between geographical regions. What do you think are the most highly sought-after career paths in your regions? Reflect: what qualifications would the applicants need in order to secure those jobs?

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The demand for STEM careers in specific fields can vary between geographical regions. What do you think are the most highly sought-after career paths in your regions? Reflect: what qualifications would the applicants need in order to secure those jobs?

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In our region, students learn science or maths only to get high marks and pass the exam in order to enter a university. So, they should be taught how to adopt STEM to their lives and future career and then canalised to STEM careers.

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2.4 Current STEM industries and professions

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2.4 Current STEM industries and professions

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In Module 1, we saw that STEM is an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths. While breaking down STEM in this manner may seem to lead to a specific definition, in fact there is little consensus regarding which specific subjects are covered by STEM. These differences may vary not only from country to country, but conflicting definitions can be given by different organisations within the same country! For instance, the UK’s House of Lords report on Higher Education in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, published in June 2012, acknowledges that some disciplines commonly related to STEM, such as medicine and associated subjects, sports science, psychology or archaeological science, may not be seen as such by all British organisations.

And things tend to look even more complicated when referring to STEM professions. The US Department of Commerce, for instance, also identifies a lack of consensus on whether educators, managers, technicians, healthcare professionals or social scientists can be regarded as STEM professionals.

Drawing a clear line between STEM and non-STEM related professions is clearly a difficult task, but generally, in the data collected at the EU level, STEM fields include natural sciences (i.e. physics, biology or chemistry), mathematics, engineering, architecture and computing, but other fields such as medicine or social sciences tend not to be included. STEM fields provide challenging and rewarding careers. Moreover, a study produced for the European Parliament’s Committee on Employment and Social Affairs (EMPL) shows that, starting from 2000, at EU level, unemployment rates in STEM professions have been very low, and much below the total unemployment rate, indicating a consistent demand for highly qualified STEM professionals, even in periods of economic hardship (Maria CAPRILE, Rachel PALMÉ, Pablo SANZ, and Giancarlo DENTE. Encouraging STEM Studies for the Labour Market. Report. European Parliament. Mar. 2015).

Moreover, employment in STEM professions (which are knowledge-intensive, usually requiring high-level qualifications) is expected to increase significantly by 2025, and a slight increase is also forecasted for STEM-associated professions (technical occupations, usually holding medium-level qualifications), for the whole of the European Union.

The study also points to an increase in demand for high qualifications in the STEM sectors to cover the increase in job openings for STEM professionals. Moreover, more and more of the traditionally lower-qualified STEM-related occupations are also expected to require higher qualifications. Teachers play an important role in encouraging the uptake of STEM studies, often also acting as career advisors for their students. While classroom methods directed at encouraging the uptake of STEM may be easier to adopt, as we’ve seen in the study on “The Emerging Role of Science Teachers in Facilitating STEM Career Awareness” (Cohen & Patterson, 2012), being connected to emerging professions is one of the more difficult challenges teachers face.

One way of overcoming this challenge is by establishing links with industries. This will not only ensure that STEM subjects are contextualised in a real-life environment, but you can also learn more about the possible demands for STEM subjects in your local area! We will see how you can effectively do this in future modules.

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What do you think are some of the future STEM jobs we should start preparing for? 

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What do you think are some of the future STEM jobs we should start preparing for? 

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I think firstly we have to learn how to say 'hi' to the future jobs. Coding in Labs could be a future stem job...

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The Future of Jobs report was compiled by the World Economic Forum (2016) and based on an extensive survey of Chief Human Resources Officers and other senior talent and strategy executives of leading global employers from over 9 industries in 15 developed and emerging economies and regional economic areas. In this report, a series of trends are identified and categorised over a time span of approximately 4 years, according to their impact. For example, rapid urbanisation and cloud technology are already making their presence felt, whereas it will take a few more years for biotechnology and autonomous transport to seriously affect our lives. This means that there are already several key trends in our current world, which are rapidly changing the work environment and, in essence, affecting the requirements expected from potential employees. This means that by the time secondary school students will have graduated, employers will expect very different skills and mindsets from them.

How, then, do these trends translate into actual jobs? In another very interesting report by The Future Laboratory and Microsoft, Future Proof Yourself, these two organisations present 10 jobs of the future which at first may resemble sci-fi but, upon closer examination, are not that far away. Some of the jobs you can expect, according to them, are Ethical Technology Advocate, Human Body Designer, and even Space Tour Guide! They may not be recruiting tomorrow for them, but in a few years, these or similar jobs will become more and more in demand.

If you want to find out more about future careers in engineering, check out this brief article on the Scientix Blog by Scott Rhodes who leads enrolment and recruitment strategies for Florida Polytechnic University. In his article, Scott talks about how engineering is at the core of sustainability advancements, big data management, and how it can support health care endeavours.

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If machines continue to take over a large part of our jobs, what do you think are the skills and activities that humans need to focus on in order to continue having relevant and fulfilling careers?

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If machines continue to take over a large part of our jobs, what do you think are the skills and activities that humans need to focus on in order to continue having relevant and fulfilling careers?

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Humans need to focus on themselves as individuals. They must also keep up with the improving technology.They are also going to teach humans who are going to use the technology.

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In the previous section, we saw that a big challenge within the Fourth Industrial Revolution is the risk of inequality in the labour market. In the same article of Schwab (2016), he uses the phrase “low-skill/low-pay” and “high-skill/high-pay” to describe how the job market will evolve.We are back at the idea that education is one of the most important pillars and that teachers need to be prepared to train pupils for the future of the workforce. A key idea derived from what we have seen so far is that it is critical for pupils to pursue higher education.

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The Fourth Industrial Revolution/ Artificial intelligence, integrated energy supply chains, neurotechnological brain enhancements, genome modification… Can you name other advancements you think this revolution will entail? How do you think it will affect your everyday life?

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The Fourth Industrial Revolution/ Artificial intelligence, integrated energy supply chains, neurotechnological brain enhancements, genome modification… Can you name other advancements you think this revolution will entail? How do you think it will affect your everyday life?

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It will bring people advantages and also disadvantages. There will be discrimination among people. On the other hand, it will be very effective for the students that need technological advancement for their learning.

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In the article The Fourth Industrial Revolution: What It Means, How to Respond, Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of The World Economic Forum (a world leading nonprofit organization which “engages the foremost political, business and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas”) explains how the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolutionwill merge technology, biology and the physical world. This revolution will capitalise on trends we already see today (nanotechnology, biotechnology, 3-D printing, materials science, etc.) to completely reshape and redesign the way we do business, govern countries, interact and conduct our lives. The author goes on to present the major challenges and opportunities this revolution brings: increased growth, prosperity and efficiency, but at the same time, a very high risk of inequality, and a shift in the labour market that a large part of the population may not be able to keep up with.

If we are already seeing mass disappearance of jobs due to automation, then how can we prepare for this total reorganisation of our lives? How can we make sure that future generations are prepared and ready to ‘ride the waves’ of this revolution, and even more, to contribute and support the shift towards a more prosperous future?

One of the answers, as you can guess, is education. Teachers represent a critical ingredient in preparing the human resources of the future - in making sure that by the time the students have left school, they are able to enter the work field.

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STEAM career guidance in schoolsRead Section 3, “Challenges and solutions to infusing career information into the science classroom”, from the report presented in this section (1.3), and name which of those challenges are most present in your daily professional activities and how you overcome them.

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STEAM career guidance in schoolsRead Section 3, “Challenges and solutions to infusing career information into the science classroom”, from the report presented in this section (1.3), and name which of those challenges are most present in your daily professional activities and how you overcome them.

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In our country, the exam system is the challenge . The pupils are expected to answer the question coreectly, not think critically or solve their daily problems with the information they learn.

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When we apply this to the STEM subjects, some particularities arise. In the study entitled The Emerging Role of Science Teachers in Facilitating STEM Career Awareness (Cohen & Patterson, 2012), based on a review of existing literature, the author outlines four cognitive-behaviour dimensions as the pillars of career development:

1. Awareness (students are aware and know the variety of STEM careers available)

2. Relevance (they see the connection between the subject they are studying and day-to-day life)

3. Engagement (students show direct interest and motivation to interact with the subject matter)

4. Self-efficacy (students are comfortable with using tools of science)

The report also goes on to outline four teaching strategies, which foster STEM careers awareness, derived from a series of interviews with science teachers:

1. Incorporate both formal and informal approaches: Constantly bring career awareness in your activities and do not keep it as a separate unit.

2. Help students see scientists as real people: Students may have difficulty imagining themselves as scientists because they cannot see that scientists have a normal life, just like them. They have hobbies, families and various interests.

3. Connect the dots: It is not enough to just expose students to career information, the teacher also has to directly connect career information with whatever the student is learning at that moment. This can refer to making clear connections to the real-life use of subjects, to giving examples of how it connects to jobs of scientists. The student will not be always capable of making these connections themselves, and you will have to do that for him.

4. Embed reflection: To make sure that information sticks with students, and to drive a deeper understanding. Otherwise, a lot of the information can be lost over time if reflection is not used to “glue” it.

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two articles discussing the concept and possible impact of the STEM skills gap in Europe:

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two articles discussing the concept and possible impact of the STEM skills gap in Europe:

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http://www.europeanschoolnetacademy.eu/documents/4469700/4742780/Analysing-the-evidence.pdf/3e0993f8-da38-4b7e-ac0c-3b5894e794e2

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1.2 STEM careers in the job market

As explained in the first section, a multitude of sources have provided evidence that European industries face difficulties in finding skilled workers, causing what is known as the STEM skills gap. However, there are disagreements on the causes of such recruitment difficulties.

Some argue that employers’ problems in filling vacancies are related to the fact that young graduates are not prepared for the skills currently on demand.

Others believe the skills gap in the labour market is caused by structural economic shifts. These shifts have made the skills of individuals insufficient or irrelevant for the demands of the current markets.

What is more, others question whether this skills gap exists at all, arguing that there are other reasons for not being able to find suitable workers.

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describe why (and if) for you, as a teacher, STEM education is essential in our current society.

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describe why (and if) for you, as a teacher, STEM education is essential in our current society.

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STEM is the 21st century innovation. It includes every part of one's life. Once STEM is taught effectively, one can use it in his future carreer and also for the society as well.

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As you already know, it is crucial to be at the forefront of the efforts done to attract more pupils to scientific and technological careers so they may later embark on related professions.

To make outstanding performers in the field, you need high-quality and multidisciplinary education in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. This will drive the current innovative economy forward and sustain a knowledge-driven society, supported by skilled, responsible and inspired young people.

While the number of graduates with science and technology qualifications keeps falling, recent reports estimate the need for a high number of scientists and researchers within Europe. Watch the video below to further explore and understand the difficulties European economies are facing in order to recruit the next generation of scientists.

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My name is Aynur Korkmaz. I am 33 years old and have been a teacher for 2 years. I am teaching English in Besikdüzü Anatolian High School. I am married and have 2 pretty daughters 😊