Future Challenges Report Editors
Abstract
This report describes the results of the WP6 research activities performed in the first year of the
Go-Lab Project and represents a Milestone in WP6 – Community Building and Support. It is
serving the need for the identification of the current and future challenges as it regards Science
Education and the scope and the approach of the Go-Lab Project in order to address them in a
holistic and state-of-the-art way. Therefore, the results and the conclusions are presented as a
basis for further work. However, participatory engagement and the study of related
methodologies will continue during the life-cycle of the project and will allow partners engaged
in these parts of the project to periodically update and enrich their work in this domain with new
inputs, to go beyond the scope of this deliverable.
For this reason, following the description of the activities performed and the conclusions that
can be drawn from this work, the last chapter contains a set of open questions that will remain
in the agenda of the project partners and will drive further activities.
The structure of the report is the following: Chapter 2 presents the original hypotheses and the
methodology connected, Chapters 3, 4, 5 and 6 present the main results according to the
sources and approaches used to collect data and articulate them, Chapter 7 contains an
integrated overview of results and, together with the conclusions, presents a list of open issues
that the project will continue to address in view of maximising its future impact.
Finally the Six Discussion Papers (Challenge and Opportunities Papers) produced as a main
component of this study by WP6 partners are presented in Annex 1, while the list of names of
experts interviewed is presented as Annex 2.
The following conclusions are the result of the work reported here:
1. The Future Challenges Study confirms the relevance of the aims and the approach adopted
by the Go-Lab Project in terms of its vision for school education in the future and of the
potential of the ICTs to contribute to this vision. The project’s specific contribution to the
upgrade of Science Education at the European and international level is still considered as
significant, while the project's complementarity to a number of large-scale, Europe-wide
initiatives, supported by the European Union, coherent among themselves, is seen as
timely.
2. There is also a broad consensus on what the main challenges and the main areas of
change are. In particular, these include the curricula reform and assessment methods, the
competence-based learning and innovative pedagogy as well as the learner-generated
knowledge; additionally, the upgrade of teachers’ competences, the motivation and capacity
building towards change, the learners motivation as well as the upgrade of teachers' digital
competences, their familiarization with the digital technologies and the use of digital
resources. Addressing each of these challenges is possible and small-scale experiences
exist to demonstrate good practice, yet system-scale innovation is the real challenge.
3. Nevertheless, although it is difficult to address all challenges simultaneously, this still
corresponds to the best approach in order to reach the objective of system-scale innovation.
Over thirty years of both European and national Programmes aiming at the adoption of ICT
in education show that an integrated approach is indispensable in order to produce real
impact: technology infrastructure without the enhancement of teachers’ competences and
motivation will not change the way Science is taught - or better Science learning is
experienced - nor any change in pedagogical practice will ever happen without a change in
the way the curriculum is being conceived and built and the learning assessment is being delivered. It is therefore fundamental that the Go-Lab large scale piloting needs to be
supported by the relevant institutions in each participating country and coupled with the
above-mentioned principles, if the project is to combine the bottom-up approach of the
participating schools with the relevant “innovation policy” framework of the country. The
virtuous circle between research, policy and innovative practice must be fully adopted by
the project.
4. Stakeholders’ involvement is a crucial element in the project implementation: without
stakeholders’ attention and consensus a mechanistic implementation of innovative
experiences will not produce significant impact after the end of the project. Stakeholders
must not only know about the Go-Lab Project, but also support its efforts, and in order to do
this they need to gain “ownership” of the pilot experiences and be allowed to gain an
important role in its future implementation.
5. Formative Evaluation and Quality Assurance are two fundamental features of the Go-Lab
project because they lead the way so that the partners keep an open and consistent
communication channel among WPs and Tasks and, even more importantly, with the
stakeholders, and as we have stated this is one of the keys for the maximization of the
project's impact in the medium and long term. If we look beyond the project “contractual life”
– that is relatively long and already contains quite ambitious quantitative and qualitative
objectives - the real success will consist in a large-scale follow up of the project results and
their integration into the EU and the national policies for the modernization of Science
Education. To reach this goal a systemic and transparent documentation of the working
cycle of the project, of difficulties and improvements and of lessons learnt, is of utmost
importance.
6. Finally, the Go-Lab Project has a lot of challenges to face in the next couple of years, and
at the same time a real and concrete opportunity to become relevant, in view of an
anticipated, systemic change of Science Education in Europe. Making this opportunity a
reality will depend on the conditions identified above and probably others that will emerge in
the coming years of the project. Every one of the identified challenges will need to drive the
project activities' planning, while in the meantime, certain important aspects that are still
open will be addressed.
Domains
Education
Origin : Explicit agreement for this submission
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