I SEE at ESERA 2019

The I SEE project will be present with a workshop, two oral presentations and a poster at the ESERA (European Science Education Researchers Association) 2019 Conference that will take place in Bologna from 26th to 30th of August.

The main I SEE event consists in a pre-conference workshop on the first day of the conference (August 26th, 2019), before the official opening. The title of the workshop is Futurizing Science Education: the I SEE project and will host 40 participants including researchers, teachers and science education students. In the workshop we will present the teaching approach and the modules that we designed in order to reach the aims of the project: to foster students’ capacities to imagine the future and aspire to STEM careers. The goal is not only to develop professional skills but also to foster students’ identities as capable persons and citizens in a global, fragile and changing world. Here detailed information can be downloaded.

During the whole week, a poster illustrating the concept of the project will be exhibited in the European STEM Education Project Poster corner.

Moreover, two oral presentations about I SEE are scheduled in the program of the conference:

• TOWARD THE RECOGNITION OF FUTURE-SCAFFOLDING SKILLS IN SCIENCE EDUCATION (Barelli, Tasquier, Branchetti, Laherto, Palmgren, Wilson, Levrini)
  How can STEM teaching contribute to the development of competencies for pushing imagination forward and to manage, rationally and emotionally, students’ uncertainty about the future? In this talk we present an empirical study, carried out within the EU project I SEE (www.iseeproject.eu), that led us to point out some effects on secondary school students’ perceptions of future stirred up by their experience of an innovative teaching/learning module on climate change. The module was implemented in an international summer school carried out in June 2017 with a group of 24 Finnish, Icelandic and Italian upper secondary school students and their teachers. The study is methodologically framed within Design-Based Research and, according to it, a large corpus of data was collected to be qualitatively analysed. The data analysis built on what emerged in two previous studies, where students were engaged in similar future-oriented activities. In those contexts, the students described their experience as a process that led them to widen their views about the future and to feel the future more approachable. The analysis of this new data set confirmed the emergence of these macro-phenomena we observe when students cope with future-oriented activities. Moreover, the analysis allowed us to refine the categories of widening and approaching and to further define future-scaffolding skills we had elaborated in the previous studies, by recognising more nuances and making them more operative. In the talk, we will present the process of analysis and how this led us to see a relation among students’ attitudes toward the future in terms of widening and approaching and the development of future-scaffolding skill as well as their impact on the emotional dimension.
• BROADENING STUDENTS’ FUTURES THINKING: RESULTS FROM A MODULE ON QUANTUM COMPUTERS (Laherto, Palmgren, Rasa, Erkko)
  Science education is not just for understanding the world but also for taking action and contributing to change in the world. In order to work towards a future one has to be able to imagine it. Yet, due to the global crises and accelerating societal development, students have difficulties in projecting themselves in the future as active individuals, citizens and professionals. We argue that science education, and the teaching of socio-scientific issues in particular, could be significantly strengthened by using futures thinking methods adapted from the field of futures studies. We report on a 20-hour teaching-learning module, developed in Helsinki within the I SEE project, aiming to equip and empower upper secondary students to face the uncertainty and contribute meaningfully to their own and global future. Students (n=24) practiced methods of scenario development (possible, probable and preferable) and ‘backcasting’ in the context of quantum computers and the future of ICT. To understand how students’ futures thinking developed, a bottom-up thematic analysis was carried out on their essays, interviews and group work outcomes. The results showed that students developed broader and more positive future images, adopted new ways and techniques of thinking, reached more active and confident take on the future, and were able to imagine how quantum computers and other ICT can help solving global challenges. The findings affirm earlier claims to ‘futurize’ science education and inform further development of pedagogies to that end.