LEARNING ABOUT STEAM THROUGH THE RESOLUTION OF REAL PROBLEMS AND THE INVOLVEMENT OF LOCAL STAKEHOLDERS

Abstract

Many innovative initiatives serve to transform the way our students learn. However, not all the proposed initiatives interest our students because they do not address real problems or because they are disconnected from the reality of their environment. Through the Islands Diversity for Science Education project, students from islands around the world will be able to collaborate and learn relevant content by applying the scientific method and analysing local and global data. It's an innovative, collaborative, experiential, and durable way to learn science. Islands Diversity for Science Education (http://idiverse.eu/) is an educational project, co-funded by the European Erasmus + Agency, which proposes an innovative methodology focusing on scientific knowledge and bringing students to the heart of their community to raise important issues and create relevant and directly applicable solutions with lasting effect. The aim of this project is to offer a methodology for teaching scientific areas based on the exploration of the environment, in the identification of real problems related to biology, geology, astronomy, or physics, for example, so that students can gather information to better understand the problem, advance in knowledge and even propose creative solutions. To achieve this objective the project provide training and educational resources to schools to become open schools, as well as a set of activities based on scientific areas where students develop projects that address the real needs of their community and their environment, following the Design Thinking methodology in an interdisciplinary and Inquiry-based approach. One important pillar of the project and a central objective of the methodology is the inclusion of an assessment protocol focused on the development of 21st century skills. This assessment protocol focuses on the collection of evidence, observation by the teacher, and the integration of data extracted from the technologies themselves (a contribution from the field of Learning Analytics). This article presents the assessment protocol designed for the project’s methodological approach. This assessment protocol makes possible to assess, based on evidence, the research activities carried out by the students and their development of critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity skills. Since the development of competencies and the application of the scientific method are learning objectives common to all these disciplines. The implementation of this methodological approach is being widely welcomed by science teachers for the interdisciplinarity of learning activities, and by students for the authenticity of learning experiences. In addition, external stakeholders such as families, associations or local companies have also shown their interest in the project and have positively valued the opportunity to be part of these learning experiences. There are already several kindergarten, primary, secondary, baccalaureate and even vocational schools in Portugal, Greece and Spain, among others, that are implementing the IDiverSE methodology. This article presents the assessment protocol designed for the project and a series of examples of good practices from schools that are successfully implementing this methodology in their islands and that are succeeding in involving stakeholders of their environment in projects to find solutions to real problems that affect students, and their communities.