The ICSE Academy supports the EU’s endeavours to minimize the amount of low-performing STEM (science, maths, technology, engineering) learners. It does so by investing in a new era of a high-quality STEM teacher workforce by innovating based on existing best practices teacher education and transnational exchange strategies. This approach draws on mobility and collaboration as an integral part, thereby supporting young and established STEM teachers across Europe. Unique features of our proposed project are, in a nutshell:•A high-capacity partnership: The ICSE Academy partners are experienced higher education researchers, STEM initial teacher education (ITE) and continuous professional development (CPD) providers, educational policy makers, and schools from 13 countries learning with, from and about each other through specific innovative collaborative structures. •Unprecedented professional learning concept with three innovative professional learning formats for pre- and in-service STEM teachers, achieving effectiveness, accessibility and transferability to all Member States and fostering European mobility and collaboration: •Peer-learning through job-shadowing (ITE/CPD providers attend each other’s courses to learn from each other)•Interdisciplinary European workshop series (for teachers across Europe, run jointly by all ITE/CPD providers)•Collaborative European summer schools (in NL/CZ with focus on collaboration between participants as well as organizers)•Distinct needs-feasibility-alignment: The development of our professional learning formats is needs-driven in two ways: (1) Teachers will communicate bottom-up what they need and (2) policy makers will communicate top-down requirements from the policy level.The ICSE Academy will use a systemic approach to inform national and European policy based on a profound policy needs analysis. It will include targeted dissemination/communication and institutionalized exchange structures (e.g. round tables).

BackgroundThe digital transformation has fundamentally changed our life in the last years and will affect us and our life in ways today not even imaginable. Despite the sometimes excessive use and exposure to modern technology, the generation of the digital natives does not automatically develop sophisticated digital competences. As a consequence of the digital transformation, however, the development of the so called 21st century skills and competences is crucial for the participation in a rapid changing world and job market. Computational Thinking (CT), as one of those skills, is a way of solving problems from the perspective of a computer scientist and formulating the problem in a form such as an algorithm that is easily readable for a machine or other human. Despite a stronger focus and various different approaches of embedding CT in formal education all over Europe, there are still many problems to be addressed. The availability of information technology varies considerably and thus often prevents the teaching of digital skills. Also, the socioeconomic status is unfortunately a strong predictor for CT skills and indicates towards the existence of a so-called digital divide. Even with sufficient and appropriate equipment at hand, the successful implementation of CT in the curricula requires support for in-service teachers providing them with trainings to learn about and deepen their understanding of CT. It is also necessary to offer a platform to share best practice examples amongst teachers and to create a corresponding community.AimThe idea of this project is to develop a learning environment which can be used to teach and learn CT independently from the socioeconomic background of the students and schools. Approaches to CT using hardware and modern technology (e.g. robots, 3D-printers) can be very motivating for students. However, there are many practical reasons such as the costs, safety concerns and the availability of the tools to only a small group of students at a time outweighing their possible benefits. Using the technical possibilities of the digital transformation, we want to provide the students with an opportunity to learn CT without the requirement of buying additional hard- or software. Since nearly all students (91% in upper secondary schools) in Europe possess a smartphone, our approach aims at exploiting the benefits of the so-called Bring-Your-Own-Device-approach in a way that enables teachers to include CT in in their regular lessons. To reach the project's aim, three different aspects are focused on: -(1) the technical development of a digital learning environment called COLETTE, -(2) content-based and -(3) educational support for the teachers regarding the use of it. COLETTE will be a two-component system (1), namely a web portal and an app for mobile devices. Using the web portal as an authoring tool, teachers will be able to use existing exemplary tasks, modify and assign them in task sequences to their students. Moreover, the sequences can be shared with other teachers. By sharing task sequences, a European community of interested teachers can emerge. Using the app on their own mobile devices, students solve the tasks given by their teachers. To provide teachers with plenty of didactically well-funded content, a set of so-called generic tasks (2) will be created and implemented. A handbook about the functionality and use of the digital tool and teacher trainings based on a short-term curriculum (3) will provide the teachers with educational support.ConsortiumThe consortium contains 7 partners from 5 countries (GER, FR, NL, AT, SK). All of them will contribute to the project in different ways. It consists of experts for app coding, teacher trainings, the use of digital media and technology in education with a strong background in mathematics and computer science education and dissemination, covered by universities and a company. The associate partners include teacher associations, schools and other institutions interested in the dissemination of CT. The planned activities in the consortium are annual project meetings for coordination and to present current work results, teacher trainings based on the short-term curriculum and a conference for experienced teachers to enrich and disseminate the project and the technical and didactical developments of the application and web portal.ResultsIn the end, European teachers and teacher trainers receive a concept how CT can be taught in regular lessons with results on a technical (two-component learning environment), content-orientated (generic tasks) and educational (handbook short-term curriculum for teacher trainings) level. The impact of the project on teachers will thus be that they obtain a deeper understanding of CT concepts and their relevance which, combined with the knowledge of how to apply the new CT learning environment, will lead to a greater presence of CT in European schools.

Our Erasmus+ Project ENSITE (ENvironmental Socio-Scientific Issues in Initial Teacher Education) supports the development of future science and maths (from now on referred to as science) teachers’ environmental citizenship and related teaching competences.We face severe global environmental challenges such as deforestation and plastic waste. Europe’s society needs to acknowledge these challenges and accept their role in supporting sustainable development. Our educational systems have to fulfil the obligation to enable citizens to do so. Science education, in particular, must equip them with the ability to find adequate technological solutions.ENSITE supports this endeavour. Research proposes the engagement of socio-scientific issues (SSI) as one promising path to developing environmental citizenship competences. However, science teachers graduating from higher education (HE) institutions are not prepared to teach SSI, because they not only require teaching “scientific facts” but also involve controversial information, complex data sets and ethical, social, economic or cultural motives. Such aspects are rarely covered in initial teacher education (ITE).We aim at improving HE by including environmental SSI in science ITE. To this end we will develop an innovative approach to support teachers in (1) developing competences in dealing with environmental SSI (“Learning”) and (B) acquiring teaching skills to supporting their future students at school in becoming responsible citizens (“Teaching”) themselves.ENSITE consists of 11 HE teams from institutions across Europe comprising experts in science education (research and practice), environmental issues, pedagogical concepts to acquire transversal and forward-looking skills (e.g. critical thinking, creativity, reasoning, reflection), students’ mobility, diversity in science courses/classrooms and large scale dissemination. All partners acknowledged that their educational science courses rarely cover citizenship education and see huge potential with regard to benefits for them and their students.We decided on a thoroughly elaborated range of activities to produce purposeful results.Our research activities cover the development of 13 teaching modules on environmental SSIs for future science teachers. These intellectual outputs (IOs) cover subject knowledge on SSIs (definitions, topic areas, relevance, etc.) and how to deal with them, implications for learning/teaching processes, pedagogical concepts to design lessons, and the role of teachers’ background (beliefs, cultural, etc.) which affects teaching SSIs.In order to ensure highest quality and a convincing red thread relating to our overall topic (environmental citizenship education), each research activity follows a clear methodology: In our iterative design process, each development phase is followed by a review and pilot, optimisation loop and, finally, production. Every partner has precisely defined responsibilities. Project meetings will be organized to support internal communication.We perform several pilot activities validating our IOs at partner HEI and paving the way for long-term implementation. We use feedback from participating teaching staff and students to improve our IOs (content, user-friendliness, media format, impact etc.).We will also disseminate our results in three subsequent summer schools. Thus, in every project year we will reach out to future science teachers across Europe. We will present our IOs, engage students in a variety of innovative activities and stimulate inter-cultural and social experiences. Feedback collected during our summer schools will be used to further improve our materials.We organize (national and international) multiplier events to promote the project among relevant educational stakeholders, initializing dialogue on the matters at hand and substantiate our findings, as well as boost sustainable dissemination and exploitation.We plan several targeted European-wide and national communication, dissemination and exploitation activities, such as establishing a web portal, pursuing a flexible and modern social media strategy or scientifically present our research findings.We expect ENSITE to boost innovation in HE and more particularly science ITE across Europe. This will lead to a substantially higher number of HE educators with a versatile range of scientific, transversal skills, citizenship competences and related teaching competences. In the longer term, this contributes to a widespread shared awareness of social and environmental responsibility. Our open-access materials will support Europe’s science teaching staff to benefit beyond project duration. Our materials will particularly allow each partner HEI to strengthen their trans-national collaboration, implement innovative approaches in their science ITE programmes and facilitate institutional change, raise their reputation, and actively contribute to Europe’s smart, sustainable and inclusive growth.

Environmental education in Slovakia, and also in other EU countries, doesn`t comply with its elementary mission and it`s more symbolical or theoretical, than practical or real. Teachers in primary schools should implement environmental education into daily education of general subjects, though they might be missing relevant skills, knowledge or, more often, motivation for environmental education.One of the consequences of the absence of quality environmental education is that young people are not able to undertake the responsibility for their own impact on local environment, because they are missing the linkage between general information and knowledge presented at schools and real life in local community. Therefore one of the key roles of environmental education should be not only to deliver the knowledge but to change the attitude of young people and to increase their activities towards the sustainability of local communities.For this reason, within the project BIOPROFILES - Implementation of practical environmental education in schools, an educational program, teaching materials, worksheets and suggestions for teachers in practice were designed and developed, focused on practical environmental education with a link to the local environment and the impact of individual activities on the community, in order to strengthen their skills and competences and to help acquire knowledge of environmental issues and problems.Within the BIOPROFILES project, in which 6 partners active in the field of environmental education from 4 countries cooperated - from Slovakia (INAK, Tree of Life, CPU Nitra), Italy (CNR-IBE), Spain (VITA XXI) and the United Kingdom (LTL), innovative materials for practical environmental education have been developed for the target group of primary school teachers and pupils, with the aim of:- support professional development of teachers in environmental field,- support the skills of teachers in active use and implementation of environmental topics into daily teaching,- deliver high-quality teaching and adopt a new pupil-centred method of research-based learning,- increase the environmental awareness of teachers and pupils through monitoring of local environment,- provide teachers of primary schools in SK, IT, ES and UK with innovative teaching materials, nowadays missing on the educational markets of the above mentioned countries, combining general subjects, while integrating practical environmental concept into teaching process.These GENERAL OBJECTIVES of project and OVERALL PROJECT GOAL aimed at “Supporting the skills of teachers in primary schools in the implementation of practical environmental education into teaching of general subjects” was reached through development of 4 project outcomes:- TRAINING PROGRAMME “ENVIRONMENTAL MINIMUM” (O1) for teachers, divided into 4 days, aimed at acquiring the basic knowledge and skills needed to implement environmental education (EE) in practical teaching,- THE HANDBOOK “TEACHING GREEN” (O2), presenting in details 7 key themes of environmental education - water, biodiversity, natural and cultural heritage, air, energy, waste and the human environment, for the acquisition of basic knowledge of the teacher on the given topics,- INDICATORS BOOK (O3), representing 14 indicators for monitoring the quality of the local environment, in the form of inspirations for students` research-based activities, for the practical teaching of EE,- COLLECTION OF BIOPROFILES (O4), with 52 examples of research-based observation aimed at monitoring the quality of the local environment of selected cities in 4 countries - Slovakia, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom.The target group of the BIOPROFILES project were project partners and teachers of pupils aged 10-15 (i.e. 2nd grade of primary schools in Slovakia and relevant schools in the partners` countries). These teachers should implement environmental education in everyday education, mainly as cross-subject, though they often lack these skills, knowledge or, more often, motivation for environmental education. 29 teachers and 15 project partners were involved in the project activities as follows:- testing of O1 / TRAINING PROGRAMME through active participation in educational activities in Italy, Spain and Slovakia,- testing of O2 / HANDBOOK while using materials in their teaching,- monitoring the quality of the local environment while using the O3 / INDICATORS BOOK,- practical monitoring and summarizing their findings in O4 / COLLECTION OF BIOPROFILES.Project outcomes have the potential to significantly contribute to filling the gap in the availability of relevant training programme and materials for gaining relevant knowledge and skills in the field of environmental education while complying with European priority in the national context of “Strengthening the profile of the teaching profession”.

IncluSMe (Intercultural learning in mathematics and science education) offers a constructive contribution for tackling one of Europe’s greatest challenges: education for an increasing number of refugee and immigrant youth, to integrate them into European educational systems and to provide for stable, socially cohesive societies. The project aimed to increase the quality of higher education curricula for prospective maths and science teachers by linking maths and science education with intercultural learning – and thereby strengthening students’ social, civic and intercultural competences.Core to IncluSMe was the design and implementation of open access teaching modules on intercultural learning for prospective maths and science teachers. The modules have been already implemented in Higher Education Institutions in Germany, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Spain, Greece, Lithuania, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Slovakia. The modules are also available free of charge and for immediate use on Erasmus+ Project Results Platform, in Scientix as well as on IncluSMe web portal https://inclusme-project.eu/.By offering international summer schools and multiplier events, IncluSMe strengthened transnational cooperation between universities in establishing mobility programmes for maths and science students in initial teacher education. The project brought together 11 teams of higher education institutions for initial teacher education from across Europe comprising experts in maths and science education, in inclusion and diversity, in mobility and intercultural learning, as well as people involved in pilot projects for refugees:University of Education Freiburg, Germany (coordinating institution)University of Nicosia, CyprusUniversity of Hradec Králové, Czech RepublicUniversity of Jaen, SpainNational and Kapodistrian University of Athens, GreeceVilnius University, LithuaniaUniversity of Malta, MaltaUtrecht University, NetherlandsNorwegian University of Science and Technology, NorwayJönköping University, SwedenConstantine the Philosopher University, Slovakia