Open schools for open societies
Find this session's presentations here.
It is often said that school is a mirror of our society. Is this true though? We live in a society that evolves, advances technologically, changes demographically, and that is challenged by the economic crisis. In order for our schools to open up to the societies we live in, there are still many steps to be taken.
Open schools should connect and collaborate with informal learning organisations, with parents, with industries, with policy makers. Open schools should be gender inclusive, should act as shared sites of learning for which leaders, teachers, students and the local community share responsibility, over which they share authority, and from which they all benefit through the increase of their communities’ science capital and the development of responsible citizenship. This session will begin by providing three examples from a school, a museum and a research institute that are working toward this same goal. Participants will then form groups and share their efforts to make schools more open and the obstacles they have been facing so far.
Facilitator
Director of Scientific Mediation and Education
Session speakers
Aliki Giannakopoulou from Ellinogermaniki Agogi, will talk about a teacher training programme that has been developed in the context of the Ark of Inquiry project for teachers to be introduced to the RRI concept, about a process that the project has developed in order to enable teachers to transform existing activities into more rri oriented activities and will share resources developed for students via the project portal.
International and Institutional Affairs
Ines Prieto from la Cité de l’espace will talk about the project Stories of Tomorrow, where schools partner with Universities and Museums, but also digital industries. They will create e-books about Mars Exploration thanks to new digital tool. This multi-disciplinary STEM project will integrate the arts at every stage of the process, and will use innovative educative methodologies. Combining arts, digital technologies, storytelling and space exploration with actors from research, industry, museums : this project will explore new ideas for a more open school.
Head of Living Lab for Health
Rosina Malagrida from IrsiCaixa will talk about the opening of schools to community interventions. In this sort of projects, students are invited to contribute to solve societal challenges with participatory methodologies where they work hand in hand with different stakeholders. The methos include community based research, participatory research agenda settings or participatory governance. She will also present an extended list of competences that need should be fulfilled in this new paradigm of STEM education.
