MAKING STEM EDUCATION ATTRACTIVE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE BY PRESENTING KEY SCIENTIFIC CHALLENGES AND THEIR IMPACT ON OUR LIFE AND CAREER PERSPECTIVES

This article presents an approach to STEM education for secondary and high school students proposed by currently ongoing STEM4youth project . The approach is a result of cooperation and a joint research of 10 European organizations, having deep expertise in science education and science promotion. The ultimate project ambition is to develop educational content and teaching scenarios which in effect will make science education and scientific career more attractive for young peoples. To meet this goal, the project places the STEM education in a broader societal and economy context claiming that education should primarily response to the labor market demands and address concrete societal challenges not directly associated with science.

The project seeks to produce a comprehensive, multidisciplinary series of educational content courses presenting key STEM disciplines’ topics to support young people formal and informal education (extracurriculum activities, science festivals, university organized lectures and open, web-accessible selfstudy materials). The content is organized around 6 STEM disciplines: Mathematics, Physics, Astronomy, Chemistry, Engineering and Medicine. For each discipline 7-9 challenges (1-2 hours lessons/lectures/ demonstrations / hands-on activities) are being developed, which were identified as the most important to boost the creativity, competitiveness and innovativeness.

The challenges will be largely presented through their practical applications and their impact on our everyday life and work. A range of formal and informal methodologies and tools are being employed to present the scientific challenges in an attractive way (learning by experiment, gaming, citizen science at schools) Also it will be shown which specific skills and competence STEM education develops and how these skills address the current and future European labour market needs. In the effect, the project provides a helicopter view of STEM disciplines and job characteristics associated with these disciplines to help young people in taking conscious decisions on their future (a subject of interest, field of study and finally career path to pursue). The article presents how the abovementioned general ideas could be practically implemented in STEM education proposing how to harmonize educational content from different areas, how to structure the courses and finally how to provide practical guidelines for teachers to help them to conduct multidisciplinary lessons in a responsive, interactive manner.