• 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.   

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)

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.

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.

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.

• 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.

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.  

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.

• Stemettes

• Hypathia

• Mind the Gap

• 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.

1. 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.” 

1. 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”.   

1. 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.

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! 

• #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

• Access (vertical axis),
• Desire for employability (horizontal axis) and
• Degree of success (4 segments, from green to blue).

• 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). 

“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.”

• 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! 

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.

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.*