Project description
Science education to help young generations build empowering visions of their future
Scientific and technological development has been driving fast societal changes and the educational systems are struggling to keep up the pace of such transformations. As a result, youth do not find in education the resources needed to construct empowering visions of their future and develop competences to navigate a complex, fragile and fast-changing society. Effective science education for future generations is urgently needed. The EU-funded FEDORA project aims to develop a future-oriented model enabling formal and informal science education to offer young people foresight, imaginative and action competences. Specifically, the project will enable research in science education to develop methodologies that target the main factors of present misalignment between educational systems and society. Recommendations for anticipatory policies will then be formulated for the creation of new, visionary attitudes on open schooling and institutional transformations.
Objective
The relation between science and society is strongly influenced by the impressive acceleration of scientific and technological development. Within this society of acceleration (H. Rosa), the young are experiencing a sense of derangement and an alarming sense of loss of future and hope.
FEDORA will develop a future-oriented model to enable formal and informal science education to equip the young with thinking, foresight and action competence skills needed to grapple with the societal challenges.
In particular, the project aims to address three forms of misalignment that emerge from the difficulties of the educational systems to keep the pace of societal changes: a) the clash between, on one hand, the vertical and hyper-specialized organization of teaching in disciplines and, on the other, the inter-multi-transdisciplinary, multi-actor and open character of the new modus operandi of R&I; b) the mismatch between the formalized and exclusive languages used in schools and the needs for new languages to enhance imagination and the capacity to talk about the contemporary challenges; c) the clash between the a-temporal or historically oriented teaching approaches and the need to support the young to construct visions of the future that empower actions in the present.
These forms of misalignment represent blind spots for science education that FEDORA will explore through a multi-layer (institutional, conceptual, cultural) research approach, an articulated structures of actions and a multiform set of research methodologies (qualitative and quantitative surveys, design-driven and Delphi Study methodologies,..).
The actions and results will feed into recommendations for anticipatory policies aimed to mobilise visionary attitudes on open-schooling and to orient concrete institutional transformations to nurture, in secondary school students, a new sense of trust and desire needed to support an aware, responsible and sustainable participation in science-related societal issues.
Keywords
Programme(s)
- H2020-EU.5.c. - Integrate society in science and innovation issues, policies and activities in order to integrate citizens' interests and values and to increase the quality, relevance, social acceptability and sustainability of research and innovation outcomes in various fields of activity from social innovation to areas such as biotechnology and nanotechnology Main Programme
- H2020-EU.5.g. - Take due and proportional precautions in research and innovation activities by anticipating and assessing potential environmental, health and safety impacts
- H2020-EU.5.d. - Encourage citizens to engage in science through formal and informal science education, and promote the diffusion of science-based activities, namely in science centres and through other appropriate channels
- H2020-EU.5.h. - Improving knowledge on science communication in order to improve the quality and effectiveness of interactions between scientists, general media and the public
- H2020-EU.5.a. - Make scientific and technological careers attractive to young students, and forster sustainable interaction between schools, research institutions, industry and civil society organisations
- H2020-EU.5.f. - Develop the governance for the advancement of responsible research and innovation by all stakeholders, which is sensitive to society needs and demands and promote an ethics framework for research and innovation
- H2020-EU.5.b. - Promote gender equality in particular by supporting structural change in the organisation of research institutions and in the content and design of research activities
- H2020-EU.5.e. - Develop the accessibility and the use of the results of publicly-funded research
Funding Scheme
RIA - Research and Innovation actionCoordinator
40126 Bologna
Italy