Teachers

The national program 'Building a School STEM Environment' aims to create new school centers - an integrated set of specially created and equipped learning spaces with a focus on the study and application of competencies in the field of natural sciences and mathematics in state and municipal schools in the country. Each school center will include the following elements:

• physical environment (improvement of the interior architecture and furnishing of existing spaces)
• technology (equipment)
• learning content,
• teaching methods
• management of the educational process.

The main objective of the programme is to create an integrated learning environment for a new generation in Bulgarian schools, which will encourage and support educational innovations in teaching and learning in the field of STEM, creativity and research. The investments will support the introduction of new teaching methods, raising the qualification of pedagogical specialists and creating new educational content in the direction of integrating the subject areas of STEM. The Program is in line with Bulgaria's Digital transformation Policy and National Science Strategy 2017-2030.

To achieve this, the programme is aimed at schools with (already) innovative practices and those with the potential to develop innovations in science, digital technology, engineering thinking and mathematics (STEM). The national program will create "models" in some Bulgarian schools for successfully investing in a comprehensive idea, including learning environment, technology, management, integrated content, qualifications and teaching methods. The 'Education of Bulgarians Abroad and School Network'-directorate is responsible for the implementation of the programmme.

STEM is a very large field of work and exploration. With the ARTIFEX project and through the learning platform (see link above), the project attempts to help educators identify their personal strengths and weaknesses with regard to teaching STEM, and to assist them in improving their skills and competences by providing ready-to-use practical workshops. The learning platform offers the following components.

• Self-assessment tool for teachers and educators
  Our ARTIFEX SAT was built and tested by university researchers of Antwerp University and Karlstad University and it helps teachers and practitioners who wish to integrate STEM in their classes and workshops better understand their strengths and weaknesses with regard to teaching STEM in relation to the 21st Century Skills. Based on a short questionnaire, the tool will recommend personalized workshop scripts and instructions tailored to the specific competences and activity areas which an educator chooses to improve. This tool is available in different languages.
   
• Workshops
  The project partners have designed and tested a collection of STEM workshops. Each workshop comes with a set of instructions - difficulty level, group size, materials, activities, timing. STEM is a fun way for students to learn an important set of skills and be better prepared for their future workplace. With the help of the Assessment Tool, teachers can improve their competences.
   
• Good practices, some ideas for policy makers
  Successful STEM education typically requires cooperation between schools, teachers, students, local authorities and communities, and the business. The project has collected interesting cooperation models from different EU countries to help policy makers understand the variety of possibilities when designing STEM policies on a local or a regional level.
   
• Insights
  Read what people who currently hold STEM-related occupations say about their work, their vision for the future of their jobs and sectors, and the challenges ahead. Our go to the website to read about the ARTIFEX research. In a collaboration between the University of Antwerp and the University of Karlstad, Belgian and Swedish teachers were asked about their feelings of competence, and their concerns regarding working in a high-tech informal learning environment.

As students and teachers continue to navigate the challenges presented by COVID 19, the collaborative platform Together 4 STEM, coordinated by CSR Europe, has launched STEM@Home: a digital learning platform with a rich collection of free, multi-lingual courses on STEM. The platform’s partners Amgen, IBM, and Johnson & Johnson, currently offer resources in English, French, Italian and Spanish, and cover age groups from 6 to early 20s.

The materials will support students and teachers with easily accessible world-class resources.  From “Elephant Toothpaste”, a course that helps explain chemical reactions to kids between the ages of 11 and 14 all the way through to  “Gene editing with CRISPR-Cas9”, or  “Cybersecurity Fundamentals”, teachers and students are one click away from building, developing and sharpening their STEM skills (see programme website for more information about the activities mentioned).

STEM@Home will continue to add new resources and expand beyond the pandemic to become a long-term reference point for digital education and effective remote learning.

Coding becomes more and more important in our society. To help increase the level of knowledge on a wide scale Science on Stage focuses on the teachers. They first need to be familiar with coding before introducing their students to this topic.

With our teacher project 'Coding in STEM Education' 22 teachers from seven European countries develop concrete examples and practical advice not only about how to practice coding skills using Arduino, Raspberry Pi & Co. in computer sciences but also in subjects such as biology, chemistry, technology, mathematics, and physics - even if you are no IT expert.

The results were published in 2019 in form of a teaching brochure. The project is proudly supported by SAP.

Every two years, Science on Stage organises Europes biggest educational festival from and for STEM teachers. Each time hosted by a different country, the event brings together up to 450 STEM teachers from over 30 countries to share and exchange their ideas and concepts for a successful science education from primary to secondary school.

Every participant presents his or her good-practice teaching examples to their international colleagues at stands, in workshops and in on-stage-presentations. Following the principle 'from teachers for teachers' the festival supports the professional development of the educators. Furthermore the most innovative best-practice teaching concepts find their way to teacher trainings, brochures and teaching materials after the event.

Teachers are competitively selected to be part of their country’s delegation through rigorous application processes and national events.

The next European Science on Stage festival takes place will take place from 24-27 March 2022 in Prague, Czech Republic.

UNICOOS is an online digital platform for teaching several STEM subjects. The platform is an initiative David Calle - YouTube teacher of 2016 by Bitácoras and amongst Top 10 top finalist in the 2016 Global Teacher Prize.

UNICOOS currently has 300k registered users and more than 1M followers and subscribers on various social networks. It is a fully functional platform which responds to an average of 500 concurrent users daily, reaching an average volume of 4,500 visits per day. Through dynamic functionalities and gamification, users of the platform "self-monitor" and enhance the contributions of other users. 

From its beginning to the present day, UNICOOS has been focused on answering to the most frequent asked questions and needs of its users. The queries are mostly related to secondary & high school courses, to which most of the content is aimed.

The demosciences conference is focused on training professors in the latest industrial- and ICT technologies. As a result, they will be able to use these technologies in the classroom during their lectures and experimental activities, with their students. Each conference is focused on a specific theme (e.g. computer science).

ICSTEng is the international Conference of Science, Technology and Engineering. It is organised each yearly for professors and industry. During the sessions, the professors and the industrial partners exchange their point of view on the development of education for industries. The conference is organised around a specific theme (e.g. energy).

The conference features presentations by industry and researchers, company visits and in-depth debates allowing teachers, industry, students, parents and decision-makers to assess the relevance of science education. 

The conference is broadcasted live on the Canal C2 website. Previous broadcasts are availabe on the UPSTI website.

On 13 May 2013, over 60 parties signed the National Technology Pact 2020 in an effort to structurally improve alignment between education and the technology job market and reduce the shortage of technically trained staff. Since the official signing of the Technology Pact, all the involved partners have made concerted and dedicated efforts to implement the necessary measures on the basis of an integrated approach entitled ‘Choosing, learning and working in technology’. The Technology Pact is characterised by a regional approach with a national support infrastructure. 

As the results clearly show, the approach has proven effective and is now being emulated at international level: in the wake of Estonia and Flanders, Denmark is also set to introduce its own Technology Pact later this year.

The Technology Pact was updated three years after its original signing in order to evolve in pace with the inevitable social changes as a result of ongoing technological developments. A new structure has been defined on the basis of twelve objectives, offering room to continue ongoing measures from the original Technology Pact and formulate relevant new goals. The overarching ambitions for the Technology Pact 2016–2020 will remain unchanged: developing a structural approach to ensure a well-trained workforce with enough smart and capable technicians for the jobs of today and tomorrow.

An English version of the document can be downloaded here.

STEM Teacher Academy is a programme of the Dutch national STEM platform aimed at improving the content of STEM courses (and the way it is taught) in secondary education through cooperation with industry. The programme was launched in 2014 for a three year period and contributes to objectives set in the Dutch national Technology Pact and several government programmes aimed at reducing teacher shortages. 

The programme's main ambition is to provide the most up-to-date teaching tools to STEM teachers in secondary education, now and in the future. This ambition is implemented through various activities, including guest-lectures by industry professionals and short-term 'internships' for teachers in technology companies. The programme is structured to build lasting links between technology companies and classroom and builds on existing regionalised networks and programmes, including the VO-HO netwerken (pre-university secondary education) and Toptechniek in Bedrijf (VET).