Project 2020 - 2022 

Project Summary

The report (Rocard et al., 2007) published by the European Union in 2007, emphasized that young people’s interest in the fields of science, technology and mathematics has dramatically decreased. They concluded that Europe’s long-term innovative capacity will be reduced significantly if effective action plans are not taken. Children and time changed a lot and we as school, teachers and system should keep up with the changes. We expect students to be active, innovative, independent, creative, but as research showed we don’t really give them the opportunity to develop all these skills. The changes are happening so fast that we are actually preparing students for jobs that might not even exist yet.This is why it is of vital importance for students to acquire the 21st century skills like creativity, communication, intellectual curiosity, critical thinking, media literacy, collaboration, planning and problem solving. Goal of the project: With this project, we aim to increase STEM literacy in our schools.STEM that has brought an innovative perspective to the education has been given importance by the whole world in recent years and it mainly involves the interdisciplinary approach of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. The STEM model integrates them into a cohesive learning paradigm, based on real-world demands. What differentiates the STEM model from traditional education is cohesive learning, which shows teachers and students how the scientific method can be applied in everyday life, by developing the type of thinking based on solving problems by applying real-life solutions. In partner schools, to realize the miracle Japan created in 1980 and South Korea in Asia in 2000’s-we are obliged to raise an innovative, entrepreneurial and creative thinking generation who are interested in STEM fields.In these days when we witness the Industrial Revolution 4.0, the country of ‘technological superiority’ requires being strong and can be achieved by qualified work force in this field. Developing our students in STEM and Coding fields and creating a process in which students can benefit from Europe’s experiences in STEM within the framework of exchanges of good practices. By means of our collaboration with our European partners,we will enable our students to raise with the 21st century skills like creativity, communication, intellectual curiosity, critical thinking, knowledge and media literacy, collaboration , problem defining-formulating and solving that will enable them to be successful in this field. The project activities are fictionalized on sharing good practices among the project partners and adapting all activities to all schools. With the project activities to be realized; A project process in which students, who will make innovations that enrich the life, will be created and project based learning awareness is formed as a result of teachers’ taking theoretical information presented by Science, Maths, Chemistry, Biology and Physics and blending them with the practices of Technology and Engineering. Since our project partner schools do not have an engineering cycle in the classical curriculum, a project process in which teachers develop their skills related to the integration of engineering cycle into their courses is aimed. We aim to create a school atmosphere in which , – we contribute to the logical thinking of students – students learn team work – we contribute to the increase in their self-confidence – we help them gain self-confidence in mathematics and science and make learning enjoyable for them – skills such as creativity and intellectual curiosity, knowledge and media literacy, critical thinking, cooperative work, problem solving are improved. For the continuation of STEM activities outside school hours and adaptation of cooperative learning by students; micro working groups will be created and activities that will make them compete with each other will be carried out. 10 percent increase in the mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology course grades of the students in the project partner schools compared to the previous academic year is aimed. It is an inevitable fact that awareness of STEM will change students’ perspectives on Mathematics and Science. After the implementation of the project, it is aimed to increase the STEM activities by 10% in the course plans of project partner schools. 6 LTT activities were planned during the project period. One of these for the teachers, five of them will be held for students.

With LTT activity for teachers,participant teachers will:

• learn the philosophy of STEM and integration process of it into courses,

• learn engineering design process/engineering design-based science education,

• learn project-based learning in STEM education,

• learn modelling in STEM education -will learn about 3D design processes,

• enrich their lessons with learning outcomes of other disciplines,

• increase their qualification in team working.