STRATEGY FIVE: REPORTS
(A) Structured summarizing report about project knowledge
A major aim of INSTEM was to gather and collate knowledge, experience and products around inquiry-based teaching produced in recent Comenius projects, networks and FP7 projects into a single synthesis document, available online and in print.
This report has stimulated the work in the national working groups tremendously. The report provides information on a meta-level condensed into recommendations for the EU policy as well as for the national policy. The report was disseminated continuously via all national and international activities, face-to-face meetings and in particular on 20+ major events, for instance ECER 2013 (Istanbul), EC gender workshop (Brussels), Scientix 2 launch meeting (Brussels), Creative Little Scientists Conference (Athens) as well as the conference on Educating the Educators-international approaches to scaling-up professional development in maths and science education (Essen).
(B) Analysis of the current state of the art (INSTEM state of the art report)
One of the major achievements of the first 9 months was a state-of-the-art report based on an analysis of EC funded inquiry-based learning (IBSE) educational innovation including inquiry-based teaching, gender issues, science career information and on the exploitation of project knowledge beyond the lifetime of projects across the partnership nations. This state-of-the-art itself allowed us to contact important target groups and stakeholders from the very beginning as its content was attractive for them and in consequence was a good starting point for our communication within large networks.
The report was sent to 88 policy making related people and organisations on an international level. Dissemination also took place through PROCONET, the IOSTE Conference and brokerage event, the INSTEM national workshops (483 participants), NEON and the SiS Catalyst Platform. It was also distributed among the INSTEM network which consist of 11 Universities, 3 schools and 56 associated partners. The outstanding quality of the report is also shown by the fact that it was quoted in the new European Commission’s report on Science education “Science education for Responsible Citizenship” (Hazelkorn et al. 2015).
Reference
Hazelkorn, E., Ryan, C., Beernaert, Y., Constantinou, C., Deca, L., Grangeat, M., Karikorpi, M., Lazoudis, A., Casulleras, R., Welzel-Breuer, M. (2015). Science education for Responsible Citizenship. http://ec.europa.eu/research/swafs/pdf/pub_science_education/KI-NA-26-893-EN-N.pdf. Accessed 09 March 2015.