On 1 July 2020, the European Commission presented a new Skills Agenda setting ambitious objectives for upskilling and reskilling for the next five years.

The Agenda has 12 actions that focus on skills for jobs by partnering up with Member States, companies and social partners to work together for change, by empowering people to embark on lifelong learning, and by using the EU budget as a catalyst to unlock public and private investment in people’s skills.

The aim is to ensure that the right to training and lifelong learning, enshrined in the European Pillar of Social Rights, becomes a reality all across Europe, from cities to remote and rural areas, to the benefit of everyone.

• Communication on the European Skills Agenda
• Factsheet on the European Skills Agenda
• Press release on the European Skills Agenda

The STEAMonEdu project consortium is especially pleased to see that Action 7 is focused on STEM:

Increasing STEM graduates and fostering entrepreneurial and transversal skill

According to the Communication, to contribute to the required increase of STEM graduates the Commission will:

• raise the attractiveness of STEM studies and careers, with focused actions to attract girls and women, and by encouraging a cross-disciplinary and innovative teaching and learning approach in schools, VET and higher education.
• as part of the European Education Area Communication, introduce activities for teachers, helping address the shortage of STEM teachers in EU countries and regions.
• foster science education in research and innovation actions such as through the development of key competence and assessment framework; dissemination of research results on science education in partnership with the European SchoolNet; and use of socially empowered portals bringing together schools from different European countries, notably those that have experience with the open schooling culture.
• promote an integrated framework and learning continuum inter alia between secondary and higher education systems, education and business in partnership with business professionals, and further pursue open schooling and research-based methods, contests, and citizen science.

The Communication (p.13) states that high level of STEM skills is crucial to foster innovation in cutting-edge ICT areas such as AI or cybersecurity. However, only one in five young people in Europe graduates from STEM tertiary education, less than two million STEM graduates every year. This number needs to increase, which could be achieved by promoting STEM pathways in particular among young women. Currently, only half as many women as men are graduating in STEM fields in the EU, although with huge variations across Member States. There is a need to better explain to young learners, and notably to girls, the opportunities offered by the choice of a STEM pathway.

Our STEAMonEdu project definitely contributes to this action, as our objective is to increase the attractiveness of STE(A)M education, especially among girls. We believe that thanks to the developed methodology and all the training tools, the involved teachers will be better equipped to promote STE(A)M education. If you would like to be part of it, join our STEAMonEdu community!

The actual Romanian education system needs new STE(A)M challenges and approaches that could revive interest in studying disciplines such as science, technology, engineering and mathematics. It is necessary for these disciplines to become more challenging, to arouse the imagination and inspiration of today’s students, the citizens of tomorrow’s world. In Romania, STE(A)M education is at very beginning, and a lot of efforts should be done in order to develop these educational practices at national level.

STE(A)M approach is based on the idea of educating students with the help of five different disciplines: science, technology, arts, engineering and mathematics – in an interdisciplinary and applied approach. The five disciplines are not studied differently and separately, STE(A)M model integrates them in a cohesive learning paradigm, based on real world demands. What differentiates the STE(A)M model from traditional education is cohesive learning, which shows students how the scientific method can be applied in everyday life, by developing the type of thinking based on problem solving by applying real life solutions.

STE(A)M education is a concept that has started to be talked about in Romania quite recently, but which is believed to become a key point in preparing the young generations for the future. To achieve the integration of STE(A)M approach in the Romanian educational system, Ministry of Education developed in 2019 an “Action plan for education in Romania 2019 – 2030” aiming at increasing the quality of public education by improving the well-being of school communities.

Among the various objectives and actions included in this plan, there is a group referring to the implementation of a new STEM/STE(A)M curriculum. This will bring a new approach to mathematical skills, creative thinking skills, computational thinking and coding, engineering and technological innovation modernization of the student assessment system, as well as a calibration of the assessment of learning outcomes according to individual pathways and clearly defined standards.

The results of implementing the “Action plan for education in Romania 2019 – 2030” will be:

• Elaboration of a new STE(A)M curriculum, based on a trans-disciplinary approach
• Creation of OERs (Open Educational Resources) to support the implementation of the STE(A)M curriculum
• Implementation of an updated competences framework for educators from the STE(A)M field
• Phasing the implementation of the new curriculum at all school levels
• Ongoing monitoring, impact evaluation, and adjustment of resources and indicators for reaching maximum impact.

Although STE(A)M practices are not yet very widely spread in Romania at the moment, there are a few organizations and initiatives which promote and implement STE(A)M education practices and programmes.

This include Asociatia CRESTEM, an innovative non-profit organization whose purpose is creating, developing and promoting an educational ecosystem capable of providing children and students with a complete, balanced and quality education, which will allow them to make informed decisions that will have an impact on the world and how they will live. Main objectives of CRESTEM association are:

• Creating an educational framework, STE(A)M type, adapted to the Romanian educational system;
• Creating, adapting and promoting STE(A)M educational programs (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) adapted to the context and specifics of the Romanian education system;
• Supporting the adoption of STE(A)M programs by public and private educational institutions;
• Supporting the creation of extracurricular activities such as robotics clubs, computer circles, etc., which use the STE(A)M approach; Organizing high quality contests and competitions that promote the STE(A)M approach. Their programmes are very well received by kids, youngsters, and students.

Besides the organizations and initiatives implementing STE(A)M education and practices in Romania, there are also a significant number of teachers who attended STEM/STE(A)M training programmes and now are using STE(A)M practices with their students in the classroom as part of their teaching process. Most of these teachers are also members of the SCIENTIX community and eTwinning community and platforms. This two communities help them in developing their skill to use STE(A) approach within the teaching system.

Another great resource for STE(A)M approach in Romania, that many teachers are using is School Education Gateway platform – European online platform dedicated to pre-university education is a great resource. Available in 23 European languages, the School Education Gateway portal is an online platform for teachers, school principals, researchers, trainers, decision makers and other specialists in pre-university education. On this portal one can find a lot of resources, materials and opportunities related to development of STE(A)M practices and programmes.

STEAMonEdu and Fundatia EOS – Educating for an Open Society

STEAMonEdu project partner – Fundatia EOS – Educating for an Open Society, has collected recently various best practices implemented by Romanian schools, of which we mention the following: “RoboCodeTech and Coding in Scrath from Matei Basarab High School Craiova”, “Let’s code the Micro:bit and Minecraft voyage from Nicolae Titulescu Theoretical High School Slatina”, “Scratch și…… Gool! from Association Pro Teodor Murăşanu Turda”. Content of this practices and all Romanian practices that were collected can be found on our STEAMonEdu platform.

We are confident that our participation in the STEAMonEdu project will contribute to the development of STE(A)M practices in Romania and will bring more experiences in this field at national level.

By EOS Romania

The European Commission has launched a public consultation to gather the views of citizens and stakeholders on the future of digital education during the COVID-19 recovery period and beyond.

The public consultation seeks to gather the views and experiences of all citizens, institutions and organisations from the public and private sectors on the unprecedented coronavirus crisis, the disruption on education and training systems, the related switch to distance and online learning, their expectations until the end of the crisis and in the recovery period. The consultation concludes with a set of questions on respondents’ vision for digital education in Europe.

The public consultation will be open until 4 September 2020.

All interested citizens and organisations are welcome to participate in this consultation. In particular, the consultation seeks the views of learners, educators, education staff, parents/carers/family members of learners, as well as representatives of education and training institutions. Governmental and non-governmental organisations (international, European, national, regional and local) as well as representatives from the public sector and industry are also encouraged to respond.

The consultation will help to inform the Commission’s proposal for a renewed Digital Education Action Plan, expected in September 2020.

Digital transformation is one of the Commission’s priorities as set out in its flagship strategy, A Europe fit for the digital age. The new Action Plan will be an important part of the Next Generation EU recovery instrument, supporting Member States, education and training institutions as well as citizens in their efforts to deal with the digital change.

Source: European Commission

The Government of Catalonia, some universities and some jointly private initiatives are promoting STE(A)M education through different initiatives at Catalonia. Supporting teachers and learners, creating and developing activities and generating new communities are the main strategies developed.

In Spain, the educational competences of the formal levels of education are divided between the state government (Ministry of Education and Professional Training) and the regional governments (Councils or Departments of Education). In this way, the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training establishes the common contents and assessable learning standards of core subjects and sets the minimum number of hours for core subjects. The Departments for Education of the Autonomous Communities complement the contents of core subjects, and they establish the contents of specific subjects and the subjects that are freely structured by the Autonomous Communities. Accordingly, the regional government makes methodological recommendations to educational institutions within their remit.

Thus, everything that is related to formal education in the field of STE(A)M is the responsibility of regional governments. Let’s focus on Catalonia, where Colectic, the STEAMonEdu partner, is implementing this project.

First it was STEM, then it was STE(A)M. Public initiatives.

In 2009, the government established that the Catalan Department of Education should favor initiatives for the development of pedagogical and curricular innovation projects that aim to stimulate the capacity, learning, personal skills and potential of educators, the school success of all students, the improvement of educational activity, and the development of educational projects of the educational centers. It also stated that these projects may refer to one or more centers and involve, where appropriate, links with universities, economic sector or other organizations. The two decrees – Decree 119/2015 of 23 June on the organization of primary education and Decree 187/2015 of 25 August on the organization of compulsory secondary education – determined the competences in the scientific, technological and mathematical fields and their evaluation.

In 2016, in relation to the STEM disciplines (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths), the Parliament of Catalonia urged the educational authorities to take the necessary actions to ensure that all students achieve, during primary education, the necessary basic skills to be, in addition to consumers, creators of technological solutions in the digital society, taking into account the digital competence that students must develop at this stage Therefore, the mandate implies that programming and educational robotics activities should be developed at school from of the first courses of compulsory education.

Subsequently, by Government Agreement on 2017, the STEMcat interdepartmental working group was created, with the aim of drawing up and monitoring a plan to promote scientific and technological vocations in engineering and mathematics with students in Catalonia (STEMcat), which includes, among its priority lines, the promotion of scientific, technological and mathematical skills among students in compulsory education.

SteamCAT and Bitbot: the government leadership

A big step was taken a little bit later: with the aim of promoting the scientific, technological, engineering and mathematical vocations through creativity, design and art in students in Catalonia, the STEAMcat pedagogical innovation programme was created in 2018 (see the official government document). The programme is part of the support for innovation and research, which is one of the lines of action in relation to the specific objectives mentioned, and which must also contribute to the overall improvement of the other actions of the STEMcat Plan.

STEAMcat community of centers – Comunitat STEAMcat

The joint work of active, participatory and learning methodologies, the competence work of the contents of the different STEM disciplines and the regulatory evaluation of learning in the extension of the center, together with the educational orientation, must contribute to the promotion of STEM vocations and also to achieving the increase of these vocations among women. At first, 40 educational centers were selected (20 Infant and Primary Education centers and 20 Compulsory Secondary Education centers) to be part of the STEAMcat pedagogical innovation programme from the 2018-2019 academic year. Nowadays, 51 educational centers are part of the community.

In Catalonia, the formal network of STEAMcat educational centers emphasize the relevance of equity and promotion of the scientific-technological vocations among women and in disadvantaged social contexts.

The STEAMcat programme aims to boost the development of teachers’ professional skills and the application of methodologies that promote in students an improvement in the understanding of the world, based on scientific, technological, mathematical and engineering contents, from creativity, the arts and the humanist vision that critical thinking entails. (Source)

 Their detailed objectives are to:

• Increase the scientific-technological and mathematical vocations especially in women and disadvantaged social contexts.
• Reinforce the process of orientation of the students towards the studies and professions of the field STEM in terms of equity and in all the educational stages.
• Improve the ability to understand and interpret a scientific-technological and mathematical world.
• Improve the social perception of STE(A)M areas.
• Improve the personal attitude towards the learning of the scientific-technical and mathematical areas, in the group of the students from the infantile education to baccalaureate.
• Increase the application of transversal learning methodologies, generators and vehicles of shared knowledge between the different scientific, technological, artistic and mathematical fields that encourage critical thinking and creativity.
• Promote the creation of alliances between the educational centers, the agents of the scientific-technological field and the near surroundings by means of the realization of activities related with socially relevant problems.
• Share research as teachers and reflective practice among members of the STEAMcat community.

Screenshot of the STEAMcat website

The STEAMcat pedagogical innovation programme consists of supporting the centers through advice, the creation of the STEAMcat Community, training and resources. Taking advantage of the distributed leadership of the educational centers, the methodologies, perspectives and technologies appropriate to the classroom and the transversal work of the teaching staff, the critical thinking of the students is encouraged, and the social perception of science is improved, to bring about an increase of the selection of post-compulsory STEM studies for a positive change in students’ self-perception towards these disciplines. (Source)

 A complementary but really relevant action was taken by the Secretariat for Digital Policies, in collaboration with the Department of Education: creation and promotion of the Bitbot programme to increase the extracurricular offer of activities in the field of programming and educational robotics in Catalonia. This programme stimulate and promote the private initiative in order to achieve one goal: to have more STE(A)M activities in the after-schools programmes.

STE(A)M: universities and private initiatives

Some Universities have also created similar initiatives. For example, Aquí STEAM (Here STEAM) is an initiative of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) specifically aimed at girls between 9 and 14 years old in Catalonia to attract female talent to study technology and engineering. The programme aims to break the stereotypes and gender roles established in society and to make visible new female references in an attractive and close way for girls.

Screenshot of the Aqui Steam website

Another great example is the new STEAM en acción (STEAM in Action) that will be developed by La Fundació Aigües de Manresa – Junta de la Sèquia, the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) and financed by the bank BBVA. It is a transversal educational proposal that aims to educate students from day-to-day experiences. In addition to one exhibition, “Mathematics and life”, multidisciplinary and interactive activities have been designed, aimed at an audience ranging from 3 to 18 years old, all of them thought and developed by UPC members.

Fundació Catalana per a la Recerca i la Innovació (Catalan Foundation for Research and Innovation,a private entity funded with public sources ) develop the Open STEAM teaching innovation workshops, offering support and updating to teachers for the introduction of the scientific method in primary, secondary and high school classrooms. Its content provides a practical approach to encourage teacher training in scientific experimentation activities, aimed at these educational levels.

At a national level, Inspira STEAM is a pioneer project for the promotion of the scientific-technological vocation among girls, based on awareness-raising and orientation actions taught by professional women from the world of research, science and technology. This is the first time that the group mentoring technique has been used in a project to promote STE(A)M (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Maths) among elementary school students. It is held by the Universidad de Deusto, with the cooperation of Innobasque in Euskadi, Edenway and the Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Catalonia, CIONET in Madrid, UCA and Universidad de Jaén in Andalusia, Universidad de Vigo and the Universidade da Coruña in Galicia, the Universidad de Oviedo in Asturias, the UCAM in Murcia and with the cooperation of companies as BBK, Roche, Barcelona Activa, Silk, HP Foundation among other companies. Tons of talent and a supra-territorial vision to make this initiative possible.

Screenshot of the Inspira STEAM website

Conclusions

The initiatives highlighted in this article, and some others that complement them, are promoted at different levels by private and public initiatives. In Catalonia, the STE(A)M is in the classrooms.

By Colectic

Featured image from Pixabay

Romania is facing a lack of policies and action plans in the field of STE(A)M education at central and regional level. This is one of the reasons why EOS Romania Foundation together with eight other organizations promoting digital education, decided to create the Coalition for Digital Education (CED).

CED aims to support the development of quality digital education in Romania and the adaptation of the educational offer, so that it prepares children and young people for the transformation of society and the labour market in line with technological development trends. Due to its composition, CED has extensive knowledge about the opportunities that digital education offers, but also the importance of responsible, planned and inclusive use of the solutions that digital education proposes.

The nine organizations that initiated this approach promote digital education and STE(A)M education among students and young people through concrete and varied activities. Thus, they trained in this field about 1,500 teachers in Romania, conducted lessons with about 18,000 students, including those from rural areas, and managed to mobilize also and human resources from outside the education system involving in their work over 250 mentors.

In the context of COVID-19 and the disruptions caused by the pandemic in education, EOS Romania on behalf of CED sent an open letter to the Romanian Ministry of Education, to highlight some critical issues to be dealt with:

• reducing the digital divide between urban and rural areas, given that schools in rural areas have poor infrastructure and limited access to online educational resources;
• predictability and regulation regarding the education of students in the final grades who are most affected by the interruption of courses – the need for a plan with concrete actions and firm deadlines, implementable as soon as possible;
• the importance of developing a unitary distance education strategy, a guide for teachers in order to effectively plan and conduct educational activities in the online environment;
• the need to train teachers to make effective use of tools and resources available online – given that a number of online resources are available, teachers must have the necessary skills to select and use the most effective tools for the proposed educational purpose;
• making the best use of the solidarity and congruence of action and reaction of ICT professionals, in order to coagulate effective and sustainable long-term alternative education initiatives, to combat the implications of the educational syncope’s generated by the current state of emergency as soon as possible;

Currently, EOS Romania has started through CED the localization of an important resource for the development of teachers’ digital skills, so that they become STE(A)M ready. DigCompEdu is the basis for the development of STE(A)M competence framework within the STEAMonEdu project and for the elaboration of STE(A)M educator profiles.

EOS Romania and CED will continue to raise awareness among Romanian policy makers on policies and frameworks already developed at EU level that can be adapted and implemented in the Romanian education system. Moreover, they will support the Government in creating a country-wide STE(A)M strategy that will support the introduction of STE(A)M approach in schools across the country.

by EOS Romania Foundation

A guide on STE(A)M education policies and educators needs will be launched in December 2020 by STEAMonEdu project consortium. The aim of the guide is to present a comprehensive analysis of the STE(A)M education policies that were collected by each project partner at national/EU level and to increase the adoption and impact of STE(A)M education by investing in the community of stakeholders and the professional development of educators.

The guide will cover both policies at the EU level and those at national and regional level in five countries: Germany, Greece, Italy, Romania, and Spain. Nineteen policies were collected and uploaded on the STEAMonEdu project platform, and 15 most relevant policies have been selected to be included in this guide – policies that are bringing significant impact on the education systems, by reforming the curriculum or by ensuring a broader reach of STE(A)M in schools.

The STEAMonEdu project is based on various research activities that are conducted during the project lifetime, thus an EU and country level policy analysis supports the project in reaching its targets, but also supports further research as well as any stakeholder interested in the implementation of STEAM in education across Europe.

Project partners developed a methodological framework in order to identify, select and analyse STE(A)M in education policies.

The process to identify and collect policies has been supported by desk research as well as data collection through online surveys. While the desk research has been undertaken by the project partners, the online surveys have been opened to external stakeholders, through the wider STEAMonEdu community, with the scope to identify and collect as many relevant policies as possible.

In the context of this project, the following STE(A)M policies have been collected and analysed in order to be included in the guide:

• EU policies
• National (governmental) policies
• Regional policies
• Institution level policies (e.g. schools)

The analysis of the collected policies has been carried out by using a series of criteria and policy questions. In this effort, some policy makers have been consulted to bring clarity and accuracy to the policies, and to the implementation progress.

Beyond analyzing the policies, the STEAMonEdu consortium performed an analysis of the policy context in each project country and at the EU level, by researching a number of existing publications as well as by gathering information from the wider project community.

Also, an analysis of the efficiency and impact of STEAM educational policies at EU and national level was conducted by project consortium and all these findings will be included and integrated in the guide together with a short analysis of the STE(A)M educators needs.

Stay tuned!

By EOS Romania

In order to develop the Policy Influence Toolkit, a series of five online capacity building sessions were organised by ALL DIGITAL for STEAMonEdu project partners. Each of the sessions focused on a different layer and scenario, with the purpose of supporting project partners to develop and consolidate their policy-making strategy and to ensure a transversal action across Member States involved in the action.

With these sessions, we tried to provide a clear insight on how the institutions operate and to define the role of each organisation in convincing their government and policy makers in the importance of our cause. The sessions were centred on concrete examples of advocacy strategies and described diverse tools tailored to different actors at various levels. They were all moderated by ALL DIGITAL’s CEO Renato Sabbadini and involved speakers from partner organisations and external experts.

We have already talked about the first three sessions in our blogs The Way to Advocacy and One step closer to successful advocacy.

The 4^th session on 3 December, was focused on effective advocacy practice to influence policy at national level. In the discussion with Pierluigi Vaglioni, Italian representative on the Working Group DELTA of DG EAC and public official at the Ministry of Education of the Italian Republic, participants learned about national policy-making environments and advocacy dynamics; some tools and approaches used at national level; and practical examples of national advocacy.

The 5^th, final, session on 10 December “Effective communication strategies” was devoted to the most important aspects of effective communication in policy-making – how to develop communication strategy for advocacy, how to create and communicate advocacy message(s), engage policy makers and key stakeholders, and organise awareness raising campaigns.

Valentin Dupouey, Head of Communications at European Green Party, gave a detailed presentation about Advocacy-Campaigns-Comms. Valentin talked about elements of successful campaigns and tips for advocacy with practical effective examples at European level.

Valentin’s engaging presentation was complemented by Ekaterina Clifford of ALL DIGITAL, who touched upon other aspects Communicating for advocacy with the focus on what ALL DIGITAL does in policy and advocacy, what STEAMonEdu consortium can do as a whole to influence policy, and what tools, channels, approaches each partner can use in their work to convince busy policy-makers and raise awareness among educators and general public about the importance and benefits of STE(A)M education.

STEAMonEdu consortium thanks all the speakers for sharing their expertise and hopes these sessions will support partners in their activities to ensure proper impact and further exploitation of project results.

By ALL DIGITAL

STEAMonEdu project consortium developed a Guide on STE(A)M education policies and educator’s needs that was launched at the end of December 2020. The guide presents in a comprehensive way the STE(A)M education policies identified and/or produced by the community members and the needs of the educators in order to implement them. This document contains existing needs and policies and a selection of the policies produced by the community members.

Project partners developed a methodological framework in order to identify, select, and analyze STE(A)M in education policies.

The process to identify and collect policies has been supported by desk research as well as data collection through online surveys. In the context of STEAMonEdu project, the following STE(A)M policies have been collected and analyzed in order to be included in the guide:

• EU policies
• National (governmental) policies
• Regional policies
• Institution level policies (e.g. schools)

The analysis of the collected policies has been carried out by using a series of criteria and policy questions. Beyond analyzing the policies, the STEAMonEdu consortium performed an analysis of the policy context in each project country and at the EU level, by researching a number of existing publications as well as by gathering information from the wider project community.

An analysis of the efficiency and impact of STEAM educational policies at EU and national level was conducted by project consortium and all these findings were included and integrated in the guide together with a short analysis of the STE(A)M educators needs.

Main conclusions drafted after conducting the research and policy analysis activity are the following:

1. Quantity and quality of STE(A)M policies. The research performed within the project identified only 20 policies both at EU level and in the five countries of the project partners. The quantity and the quality of STE(A)M policies are still very low, and this translates into education systems that are not fully reformed in order to respond to the current societal challenges and opportunities.

2. STEAM vs STEM. STEAM is largely unknown as a concept, and, as a consequence, it is not addressed by policy makers at national level, as the large majority of policy initiatives are related to STEM only. At EU level, the new Digital Education Action Plan introduces the concept of STEAM only to encourage women to consider technical studies. Despite an official communication between the EU Parliament and the European Commission, and a funding programme to promote integration of STEAM, the challenge to achieve a full integration of the STEAM disciplines remains.

3. Integration of STEM. Significant policy support for integration of STEM in education can be found at EU level. STEM Education is thus currently recognised as an effective integrated and multidisciplinary approach able to meet the growing demands of businesses and allowing professionals to excel and perform outstandingly in a highly technical and evolving fast-paced environment. Most of the EU countries have integrated STEM in education by now at various levels, but impact is still low due to the lack of proper policy support.

4. Efficiency of STE(A)M policies. Most of the identified policies are still ongoing or do not include a monitoring and evaluation framework, thus it is very difficult to assess the efficiency and impact of these policies. In all five countries where the research has been performed, very little information has been found regarding policy efficiency. Ultimately, there is currently no official and transversally accepted framework which enables comparisons across different EU member states. The OECD’s PISA programme offers insight on the separate disciplines, but does not offer a full assessment of STEAM opportunities and practices.

5. STE(A)M educators’ needs. The research identified a large and diverse set of needs for the STE(A)M educators, from lack of infrastructure to teach STE(A)M disciplines to low levels of confidence and competences, and to difficulty to assess and evaluate. This only proves that there is an urgent need for coordinated support from the policy side both at EU and at the national level.

By EOS Romania

Featured image from the Microbit class at Nicolae Titulescu Theoretical High School in Slatina, Romania

A recent research by Dr Anesa Hosein, from the University of Surrey, states that girls aged 13-14 years old who played over nine hours of video games a week were 3.3 times more likely to study STEM (physical science, technology, engineering and math) than those who do not play video games. “This was the case even after accounting for their socio-economic background, their ethnicity, past performance and how good at their chosen subject they felt they were.” (ISFE).

In an interview with the Interactive Software Federation of Europe, Dr Anesa Hosein explains that girls from a lower socio-economic background have a lower uptake of girls pursuing STEM careers.

“Without women and girls, we miss out on the innovations and fresh perspectives that people from different backgrounds can bring to the science and engineering field that can not only help solve global societal challenges but create innovations that meet their needs and represent them.”

Playing video games teaches and enhances girls problem-solving, spatial reasoning, creativity, strategy and digital skills, which are all crucial for STEM subjects.

“If teachers can identify girls who like to play video games, then teachers can support and encourage girls to explore and identify whether a STEM career is appropriate for them.”

Furthermore, Dr Anesa Hosein explains that teachers role is much more relavant if we consider the leacky pipeline. At each stage of education, there are more girls dropping STEM subjects than boys, even though their performance is similar to boys, suggesting that girls need more mentoring and encouragement both from parents and teachers.

Photo by Barbara Zandoval on Unsplash

Image by WAQAR AHMAD from Pixabay

By ALL DIGITAL

The Digital Education Action Plan clearly set as strategic priorities to “foster a high-performing digital education ecosystem we need digitally-competent and confident educators and education and training staff” where STEM disciplines are included, “to enhance digital skills and competences for the digital age: supporting the provision of basic digital skills and competences from an early age” AND “promote advanced digital skills development; Digital Opportunity traineeships and encourage” a more consistent participation of women in STEM education practices and so foster gender equality.

Whereas, with the support the EU STEM Coalition the Commission will contribute to helping to promote the development of new higher education curricula for engineering and ICT based on the STEAM approach. This objective works nicely in combination with the European Skills Agenda that has included STEM as one of the 12 actions identified to carry on. It is quite evident that these actions have the aims of contributing to develop Skills for jobs in a green and digital economy, which brings us in considering STEM within the contemporary context we’re living in. Modern societies have started being focused on sustainability aspects, putting under the light the climate change challenge. In other words, the green transition requires citizens with green and entrepreneurship skills to be developed in combination with core skills and, of course the transversal, or soft, skills. 

This is also in line with the Digital Compass is the vision of the European digital transformation by 2030, that has been presented on 9^th March of this year. The Digital Compass identifies the four cardinal points in: Skills, Infrastructures, Business and Government focusing on gender convergence, educating at least the 80% of the population to the Basic Digital Skills, providing a climate neutral technological infrastructure everywhere engaging companies within this process and facilitating the switch of the public services for citizens into digital tools and platforms.

Policies address STE(A)M education from the competence perspective in stimulating Union Member States to include within their curricula STE(A)M subjects and approaches for educating European citizens for a more STE(A)M integrated mindset.

By ALL DIGITAL