EU

According to the forecasts, assuming a slow but steady recovery, up to 2020, the European economy will create some eight million new jobs. However, nearly 10 times as many jobs, around 75 million, will need to be filled as people retire or leave the workforce. Although there will be job openings for all types of occupations, most new jobs will be at the higher and lower end of the skill spectrum bringing a risk of job polarisation. Weak employment growth indicates that there may be an oversupply of people with high-level qualifications in the short term, but by 2020, Europe will have the most highly-qualified workforce in its history. This publication provides the data behind these trends and discusses the challenges they pose for policy-makers.

A first chapter of the ARTIFEX e-book is now ready and open to the public. You can find it on this website in the download zone here. This chapter consists of a number of interviews with STEM professionals from different European countries. Each interview was used to zoom in on a specific (set of) competences required for successful careers in STEM sectors. At the end of the chapter, you will find a summary of the transversal skills mentioned by the interviewees together with some advice for young people and the main challenges for education. 

The ARTIFEX e-book is still work in progress. The second part of the ARTIFEX BOOK will detail the STEM education competences needed by teachers and educators to build a STEM literacy of learners in the context of a FabLab or Makerspace (or any innovative learning environment). The research is currently running in three European countries. In the final part of the e-book we will provide some strategies to bring together schools, out of school programs, businesses, institutions of higher education and STEM-rich institutions, based on the description of some regional good practices from all over Europe.

The 'Why STEM?'-infographic (click 'Download' for full document) was developed in de context of the EU-funded project “Teachers and pupils STEM competence development in elementary school”. The project focused on the importance of STEM promotion. The infographic provides an overview of relevant statistics about the need of STEM skilled people in the labour market as well as the current state of affairs (gender differences, etc.). 

More information about the project can be found on the project website (link).

Children and youths may find many opportunities to gain programming skills outside school but they often look in vain for digital challenges in the classroom. The reason may be that their teacher does not know how to code. Therefore, Science on Stage and SAP SE are supporting educators of all school levels with the new teaching brochure ‘Coding in STEM Education’. Developed from teachers for teachers, the material offers concrete ideas and concepts about how to implement coding in science lessons. Acquiring this 21st century key competence enables young people to create digital content and shape their surroundings. The publication was presented last Friday at SAP Austria in Vienna.

"Many teachers are afraid of coding as they have only little programming knowledge. With our brochure we want to make it easier for them to get started and show that you do not have to be an IT expert to realise great projects in STEM classes with microcontrollers like Arduino and Raspberry Pi," says project main coordinator Dr Jörg Gutschank.

For nearly two years, 23 teachers from seven European countries worked together on ‘Coding in STEM Education’. With simple tasks and practical advice for implementation, STEM teachers will develop their programming skills. Together with their students, they can build a robot to clean water reservoirs, program an automatic plant watering system or develop a glove for temperature measurements. Teachers and students alike are motivated by a quick sense of achievement and by improving their coding skills.

The project ‘Coding in STEM Education’ was proudly supported by SAP SE. The promotion of digital skills of children and young people is very important to the software company:

"Around 65 percent of children who start primary school today will work in professions that do not even exist yet. Teachers play a key role in preparing them for this future. By supporting projects such as ‘Coding in STEM Education’ we support the educators to equip their students with the necessary digital and technical skills," says Michael Kleinemeier, member of the Executive Board of SAP SE.

The publication of the brochure marks the start of a new collaboration project of Science on Stage and SAP SE. In the ‘European Code League’, teachers and their students are invited to develop innovative coding projects. The publication serves as inspiration and is available for free in German and English. Further language versions will follow.

inGenious was a multi-stakeholder initiative in STEM education launched by European Schoolnet and the European Roundtable of Industrialists (ERT) with an aim of increasing the links between science education and careers. This €8 million European programme in STEM education involved more than 40 partner organisations representing European industry, policy makers and STEM educators and was jointly funded by the grant from the European Commission's 7th Framework Programme and by project industry partners.

The project, which overarching aim was to foster young people’s interest in STEM education and careers, was launched in spring 2011 and finished in autumn 2014. To this purpose inGenious facilitated existing school-industry partnerships and supported the development and dissemination throughout Europe of innovative STEM educational practices designed by industry partners.

The value proposition was a tool used in the development of new STEM platforms and approaches.

ROSE, The Relevance of Science Education, is an international comparative project meant to shed light on affective factors of importance to the learning of science and technology. Key international research institutions and individuals work jointly on the development of theoretical perspectives, research instruments, data collection and analysis.

The target population is students towards the end of secondary school (age 15). The research instrument is a questionnaire mostly consisting of closed questions with four-point Likert scales. The rationale behind the project, including the questionnaire development, theoretical background, procedures for data collection, etc. is described in a publication available in pdf or print format: