The CONNECT project is introducing a novel form of science teaching into school curricula in five countries: UK, Greece, Brazil, Spain, and Romania. This innovation is based on the concept of ‘science-action’: a problem-solving activity where students learn science knowledge, skills, and attitudes to tackle a future-oriented socio-scientific issue. Students then apply them by implementing actions in collaboration with scientists, families, and other stakeholders to benefit their lives, their community, and society. The project also promotes the so-called ‘Open-ended scenarios’, where students also tackle socio-scientific issues in collaboration with different stakeholders with participatory research approaches. As an Open Schooling project, stakeholder engagement has a key role in implementation.

At the beginning of February 2021, the CONNECT User Advisory Board (UAB) was kicked off welcoming seven of its nine new members from Spain, Greece, and Brazil. The UAB will help ensure the relevance and quality of the project by providing feedback and recommendations throughout the three-year project period.

Board members will support the project in two manners – globally and locally. The Global UAB will meet every four months for a two-hour online session, to discuss current challenges faced in the project. The agenda for each session will go through an internal process for deciding the most relevant and urgent topics. Board members will be briefed on the agenda and receive relevant materials beforehand.

Locally, board members will support and provide feedback for the local implementation, however in a less structured manner.

CONNECT project has joined the initiative “Open Schooling Together” composed of 9 EU-funded projects linked to science education innovation, involving organisations from 33 different countries. These projects are planting the seed for new education systems that foster the competencies that modern societies require, and that will help align research and innovation processes to societal values, needs, and expectations.

The CONNECT – 1.5 million project – was officially launched on September 29th-30th, 2020 with a remote kick-off meeting that brought together all project members including the Expert Advisory Board to discuss the project’s implementation towards inclusive open schooling through engaging and future-oriented science.

CONNECT is designed to increase the science capital of secondary schools’ students, by offering to science teachers a multi-lingual platform that offers:  open educational resources, scientists-projects database, partnership system, policy guidelines, and CARE-KNOW-DO framework for engaging communities, families, and STEM professionals to support students’ science actions to solve real-world socio-scientific issues