Project`s sustainability
The project Instem brought together key-actors in Science education all involved in several European projects and all of them very well connected to key-actors in practice and policy. These exchange between different European projects never happened before and will have a long lasting impact on the cooperation which has been initiated through Instem. Our networking activities, our connections will continue to support the implementation of innovation in STEM education.
INSTEM is sustainable because for the first time, a meta-level overview of previous activity in STEM projects is available. This should help in the design of future projects and the planning of calls and work programmes. This overview highlights basic principles, challenges and solutions, especially regarding inquiry-based learning, and therefore complements the specific results of individual projects.
INSTEM is also sustainable because it shows that meta-level overviews can be developed and updated at relatively low cost. INSTEM thus demonstrates the feasibility of a long-term mechanism or structure for monitoring, collating and building upon project activities. In particular
By our final synthesis report collating knowledge of a large number of projects, which will be available after the end of the project through a maintained website and Wiki, to which future projects can add their knowledge;
By our state-of-the-art report describing case studies and analysing possibilities for enabling national working groups to make use of the synthesized project knowledge so as to ensure the widest possible exploitation in and beyond partnership countries. The case studies offer excellent insight in how innovations in STEM education can be supported.
This work of INSTEM enabled partners and other academics (beyond the consortium) to build on this knowledge in their future work.
We also have embedded innovative teaching practices in the work of teachers through the national working groups, potentially reinforced by future local projects. Their work as inspired by Instem will continue.
We also liased with national work groups and encouraged them to continue their work driven by their joint enterprise to implement educational innovation after the end of INSTEM.
Summing up, we having established will go on to continuously enlarge a network of networks which will be used for dissemination processes during and after the end of INSTEM, in particular for the meta-level overviews and reports as described above.