Care: The socio-scientific issue that the students ‘care about‘ was pregnancy at puberty and violence. Data during the pandemic shows that violence during outbreak increased particularly against women and underrepresented groups.   

Know:  To help young people be more informed during their puberty with ‘knowledge’’, their online  debate was supported by a dialogue focused on students questions, some references shared by experts on the web and informed-based recommendations developed by the participants.    

Do: 300 students interacted with five science professionals, a specialist in menstrual education, a doctor, a psychologist, a nurse and a social worker. The science action focused on an interactive dialogue with inquiry mapping to bring up questions, references and comments in the online discussion using Google Meet platform. 

Findings: The key benefit of open schooling mentioned by students was that the multi-actor dialogue led to greater awareness of teen pregnancy prevention and the forms of physical and mental violence that affect puberty. This initiative had the consent of the parents and created opportunities for dialogue between students and their family. Although this open schooling activity was not integrated into the curriculum, it was supported by teachers.  

Outcome: Youth found the dialogue with professionals useful and listen to what other student think enabled them to increase their interest about the topic. 

Find out more here: Our report. 

Care: The real problem that engaged students was to protect the biodiversity of a native forest, which was part of the school using a citizen-science platform to share photos, discuss issues and obtain feedback.  

Know: Participants were 15 students who developed their knowledge on biodiversity, identification of plants. 

DO: They formed recommendations for environmental protection. The project on citizen science was integrated with the curriculum, supported by the science teacher and an academic researcher in science. 

Findings: Open schooling supported by Citizen Science is a way of changing the role of school, from a place where students learn contents passively to where they can learn citizenship while learning school subjects. Additionally, open schooling gives them opportunity to interact with scientists.  

Outcomes: The results indicated that students enjoyed the approach and besides learning about plants. According to the teacher’s note students were able to identified environmental problems caused by the community surrounding the school area. They also discussed the need for more public policy to foster more active community participation in solving the issues using science. 

Find out more here: Our report. 

Care:  Participants concerns (what they care about) were to find possibilities for innovating education during the pandemic with new approaches.  

Know: This created opportunity for them to try new approaches such us open schooling, inquiry-based learnign with real socio scientific issues and inquiry mapping for students to discuss issues, references and provide evidence-based recommendations. Participants were 716 educators including 2 representative-students of secondary school and two researchers in Education, Science and Technology. This activity was recorded in YouTube and accessed by more than 7,000 viewers.  

Do: Participants identified key themes and pedagogies to support sustainable development projects in education during the pandemic in the Ceara semi-arid region of Brazil.  

Findings: Various topics were raised such as poverty, limited access to technology, unemployment, lack of water or food and diseases. This initiative was based on a consensus web conference adapted from the open scenario supported by researchers, policymakers, teachers, students and community-members. 

Outcomes: Students who participated in the webinar provided their views and presented their science-actions which were developing learning support for their colleagues during pandemic. They found significant to participate with their opinions about the topics that they find relevant. They also mentioned the importance of knowing what how and why they are learning natural sciences and integrated with social science. Students mentioned that  biology, chemistry, physics, maths and computing are as important as sociology, philosophy, history and geography. Science should be humanised for scientific knowledge not being misused. 

Care: Students were very engaged to investigate a real issue that they were concerned and interested in –  the heart diseases and their causes. The activities were developed with professionals in Medicine and academic students in Biology and Computer Science who prepared the activities using AR resources developed by the OU.  

Know: Approximately 360 Students aged from 11 to 15   used Augmented Reality to increase their knowledge about parts of the heart and its functions. They also explored a healthy and an unhealthy 3D heart.  

Do: After interacting with professionals, students’ science action was to provide (do) a workshop for their parents to show the effects of smoking, drugs, alcohol and unhealthy food to their hearts.  The key benefits for students were engagement, visual understanding and communication skills.  

Findings: This initiative was based on a semi-structured scenario linked to the school national curriculum. This practice was organised by “RA in schools” led by UFSC University who engaged undergraduates in Medicine to work together with undergraduates in Computer science to plan activities with the open educational resources AR developed by the OU and BBC. Teachers found the activities very supportive, attractive and linked with the school curriculum. Parents found that kids were very excited and AR created more opportunity for them to show and discuss the content with them. Undergraduate students enjoyed to interact with school community and realised that they could develop more AR resources in other topics and areas. 

Outcomes: Secondary school students found that AR helped them to increase their understanding about the heart. They also found activities with experts in Medicine and Computer Science useful for them to know about these areas, university and professional careers. They liked a lot the activities and were willing to use this approach again to learn other  topics and also in other disciplines. 

Find out more here:

Report 1/ Report 2/ Report 3/ Report 4

Care: Students cared about “Racism” in Brazil and selected it as their first topic of interest to develop a project and to act against it. 

Know:  in order to know more about it,  scientists (genetics and neuroscience), a social activist and school parents were invited to discuss science, health, history, and sociocultural issues related to Racism such as (human rights, equal opportunities, debunking science myths e.g. black and white peoples’ brain differences and links to intelligence.  

Do: Students produced, published, and disseminated a series of 14 podcasts (available on @webradiofalamadrid – 145 followers.  

Findings: 16 student representatives of the project were able to integrate non-formal learning about Racism as a socio-scientific theme; engaging local community. This process enabled them to realise that curriculum knowledge learned in different disciplines were used to produce the podcasts.  

Outcomes: Students improved their writing, reading, inquiry mapping, and argumentation skills during the process of producing the podcast. Scientific and digital cultures were reinforced by these practices in an integrated manner. 

Care: Rewilding was introduced as a problem to engage students and encourage discussion about how to protect the environment by reintroducing lost animal species back to ecosystems. The activities were developed with a researcher in Science and the schools’ Biology teachers. Participants were 30 students who contributed to discussions about rewilding and planned a campaign to persuade the public of the benefits of rewilding different animal species.  

Know: to decide which animal should be reintroduced, they learned and applied knowledge about ecosystems and interdependence as well as practicing devising questions, visual communication, data analysis and the enquiry skill of weighing up evidence to support a claim. They also used maths skills to prepare graphs and geographic information about habitat.  

Do: Students interacted with family members to vote on the animal to be rewilded and prepared a persuasive poster using argumentation skills based on data and facts. 

Findings: The “weigh evidence to support a claim” was tricky for lower ability pupils to fill in. They had great difficulty distinguishing between a SCIENTIFIC QUESTION and a CLAIM. The activities were useful to identify that some students need more support to analyse data. Their ability to use i-pads to do further independent research on each animal was useful. The information sheets were clear although they had difficulty in analysing the scatter graph. Lack of time was a factor due to curriculum pressures and impending exams. The final presentation task would have taken several lessons to complete, which wasn’t possible, so they adapted the materials and instead made a persuasive poster to display in the Science department.  

Outcome: The teachers reported that they felt the objective to improve students’ interest and confidence in science was met very well and the children were interested in the context.

Ten students, between the ages of thirteen and fourteen, contributed to this open schooling research questionnair. Most students said that learning science will be useful in their daily lives, as well as that they feel confident using science to come up with questions and ideas, in addition, all of them said that they think learning science is fun. The data collected also shows that almost half of the students don’t feel confident with their knowledge in science.

More details of our report: on this link.

Open schooling means “schools, in cooperation with other stakeholders, becoming agents of community; wellbeing shall be promoted; families should be encouraged to become real partners in school life and activities; professionals from enterprises and civil and wider society should actively be involved in bringing real life projects to the classroom.” (EU, 2018)
Our assumption is that the longstanding promotion of open schooling, by the European Union and its related projects in this area, has been vindicated, both as a result of the current pandemic and the need to address climate change.
In respect of climate change, there is clearly a need to prioritise behaviour change. This includes socially responsible action and a shift away from technology as a driver of change to change as a driver of technology.
The world needs young people to become socially and environmentally responsible citizens, but the current education system is simply repeating the messages of the past and preparing for business as usual.
The imagination of young people in education needs, therefore, to be fed by relevant and responsible scenarios, as a basis for action in climate change, biodiversity, and other relevant fields, rather than simply teaching them abstract science concepts without real world contexts.

It was inspired by the creation of a “window to science” with the integration of space between the “N’s” of the word CONNECT that will enable the integration of additional elements for different contexts.

The predominant chromatic use of blue allows its effective application in communication channels or supports that have vibrant as well as sober colours, depending on the target group to which they are directed.

The typography used in the identity, namely Gill Sans in the word CONNECT and Neue Machina for the description of the “slogan”, are typographies with a modern and youthful style, but at the same time elegant and professional, which together with the rest of the graphic elements results in a strong identity, dynamic and creative.

The 32 inspiring resources included in this catalogue exemplify approaches to innovate in STEAM education with open schooling resources that have been selected according to a set of previously defined inclusion criteria. These criteria were defined throughout a collaborative work between partners in the Consortium and the Living Lab for Health at IrsiCaixa, and include:

• learning through: students centred and systemic approaches; research; innovation; collaboration; critical thinking; evaluation;
• learning for inclusivity and for change;
• learning about career pathways and
• potential to scale and spread innovations.