Grant Details

##### Background To better prepare students for the increasing challenges of the 21st century it is recommended to promote interdisciplinarity amongst several subject matters and intervene at the primary school level. STEAM education is gaining prominence over the last decade and is being included in school curricula of several countries because it promotes critical thinking and creativity amongst other competences that are necessary to face a fast-changing world. In this regard, several projects are being implemented all around the world in order for students to achieve improvements in performance and to develop positive attitudes towards STEAM. However, most existing materials and activities focus mainly on one or two of the separate STEAM disciplines without considering the potential for delivering STEAM curriculum through an integrated approach. In addition, many disseminated proposals have been developed by specialists and researchers form higher education and need to be adapted to be implemented by professionals in the field who are the teachers in schools. Moreover, most activities were implemented at local or national levels, but these are not always adequate for being used in different cultural realities. For this reason, there is a need to develop STEAM educational materials designed to be implemented by primary school teachers in their classes at an international level. ##### Objectives With the aim of increasing the levels of achievements and interest in STEAM in primary school, the ProSTEAM project intends to develop educational packages related to STEAM (including contents, science kits and guidelines of implementation) to be implemented at an international level. At total of 10 educational packages will be produced, 5 for 1st and 2nd grades (6 to 8 years old) and another 5 for 3rd and 4th grades (8 to 10 years old). In this regard, experts on STEAM education (higher education teachers and researchers) will collaborate with primary school teachers in order to produce rigorous scientific materials in line with primary school curricula. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) will be one of the themes of the educational packages. A total of nine partners will participate in this project including four universities, a polytechnic institute, and 4 schools from four countries (Italy, Lithuania, Portugal and Serbia). In order to accomplish the activities, regular face-to-face meetings will be held to develop the network and promote knowledge and skills amongst partners, including five transnational meetings for planning and monitoring and one LTT (Learning, Teaching, Training Activities). In addition, five Multiplier events are planned to be organized in all the countries participating in this project as a way to disseminate and sustain the project in the long run. ##### Activities A general framework and a pedagogical plan will be produced to guide and support the ProSTEAM teams in the development of STEAM educational packages to be implemented at an international level. To ensure that the produced educational packages will promote students’ intrinsic motivation and achievement in the STEAM subjects and that they may be implemented with efficacy by primary school teachers of different countries, a validation study will be carried out at different levels. A first level will include the evaluation of the educational content and materials, a second level is related to teachers’ usability perception about the educational packages, in order that we can get an overview of the efficacy of implementation by primary school teachers. The third level of validation will focus both on students’ achievements on the specific topic related to STEAM and on their affective reactions (including emotions associated to the activities and motivational factors). At levels two and three we will follow a “research-based design” approach revising the educational packages according to the results obtained in each of the two cycles of evaluation. Data analysis will also be used to enrich the guidelines for teachers with the aim of providing examples of what can be expected from the use of the materials and support to its effectiveness. To validate the educational packages an evaluation protocol will be developed. Moreover, the validation process will enable us to highlight the potentialities of the educational packages, as well shedding light on new uses for them. We expect that these outputs will contribute to validating and also helping to produce effective good practices that may be adopted by several schools in Europe. Detailed accounts of both the process of design and that of validation will provide a solid foundation for other similar projects related to STEAM. In this regard, these outputs may be used by anyone interested in validating STEAM educational material at an international level, namely by other countries interested in developing this kind of project. Finally, dissemination and exploration of the results and outputs of ProSTEAM amongst the international community will be provided to increase the partnership in the future and promote the sustainability of the project. Moreover, the proposal of a teachers’ professional development programme to continue after the ProSTEAM project ends will also contribute to dissemination and sustainability of ProSTEAM. ##### Impact We expect to promote a collaborative workforce with the team members of the project in order to develop a solid partnership and network valuable to the successfully implementation of the project and to its sustainability. In this regard, we intend to identify, develop, share, implement and validate STEAM hands-on practices amongst the partners of the project. As a result, we expect to produce at least 10 educational packages that may be implemented with efficacy by primary school teachers of different countries with the targeted public, who are primary school students aged 6 to 10 years old. Moreover, we expect that the educational packages will promote students’ interest and skills in the STEAM subjects and also promote their awareness about the SDG. Additionally, a teacher’s guide and student’s handbook will be available compiling all teaching and learning STEAM resources. Another important expected outcome is related with the example of ProSTEAM for developing a strategic partnership with primary schools. In fact, it is not usual or easy for primary schools to conduct this type of projects. For this reason, a partnership with higher education institutions is a way of giving the first steps to involve primary schools in international projects that will benefit their students and teachers. We expect that after this experience more primary schools will follow the example of their peers and this starts to be a common practice amongst primary schools. In this regard, we intend to produce guidelines to inspire and help others to join this kind of projects. Finally, we expect that the experience in the ProSTEAM project will make schools active in promoting collaboration with other schools sharing what they have developed in terms of knowledge and skills and this will become a common practice. Finally, we expect, through the ProSTEAM online community of practice (OCoP) to spread the project achievements and outcomes as far as possible to disseminate the educational materials and increase our partnership in the future with more countries in order to promote the sustainability of the project.