Promoting Open Schooling across Europe to make school science relevant to real-world challenges.
The aim of this activity is to engage students in an analysis of locally distributed waters, encouraging collaboration to build and evaluate knowledge. The authentic learning task involves the student group in the evaluation of analytical certificates of their home/school waters, with analysis, assessment and critical considerations on the characteristics of specific tap waters and the related impact on human health.
Water management is crucial to sustainable development because clean freshwater and sanitation services are essential to human health and well-being. The aim of this activity is to provide an introduction to integrated water management and water quality, with a particular focus on the situation in students’ local area.
The aim of this activity is to engage students in collaborative authentic activities to evaluate evidence and support claims on the topic of “Forest use vs. Forest protection”. It enables students to use evidence and claims to formulate creative solutions to local, real-life situations.
The aim of this activity is to promote knowledge construction and validation, creative action, as well as self-efficacy through collaboration among the students to create possible solutions to AMR while taking ownership of their learning. The activity introduces students to their mission to start an awareness-raising campaign for AMR consisting of different open schooling projects, thus having an impact at the local level. The different open schooling projects and guiding steps are summarised in the Students’ resources section below.
The aim of this activity is to initiate collaboration between educational and non-educational agents, raise students’ awareness of science-related careers through meaningful interaction between experts and students, and enhance students’ interest in science through activities developed in an authentic context related to AMR. The activity evolves in two steps: (1) Meeting the experts in school and (2) Engaging in authentic activities at the experts’ facilities. It is important to note that aside from the relevant background of the experts (i.e., microbiologist, molecular biologist, biochemist, biotechnologist, geneticist), a set of criteria should be listed for their selection in terms of gender, ethnicity, religion and SOE status in order to maximise inclusivity. Moreover, coordination meetings need to be arranged between the teachers and the experts before the interaction with the students.
The aim of this activity is to introduce students to sustained inquiry by training argumentation as a scientific practice. It provides students with the opportunity to reflect on the available information and prompts them to create possible solutions for the issue of AMR. Initially, there is an introduction to a simple definition of an argument, the components of an argument, the identification of an argument, and how to formulate a strong argument. After practising formulating arguments based on a rubric, the students get prepared to organise a debate on the topic: We should ban the use of antibiotics for flu treatment. Do you agree or disagree?
This activity explores AMR from the perspective of different stakeholders in order to document the issue, elaborate on the challenges to be addressed and practice critical thinking. Authentic media items are provided to students, representing the positions of different societal actors. The goal is to raise awareness of the issue and reflect on the credibility of the information using an information literacy test. It is important to note that the activity is introduced after an initial brainstorming to get students familiar with basic facts and knowledge related to bacteria, antibiotics and resistance.
The aim of this activity is to develop students’ modelling competence, enabling them to identify their own initial ideas about both clean and polluted air. They are asked to create drawings and written descriptions of how they imagine clean and polluted air, both as seen with the naked eye and in smaller scales.
The aim of this activity is to help students gain an understanding of air pollution that is compatible with its scientific definitions. Specifically, it focuses on the understanding of air pollution as the presence of suspended particulate matter (PM) in the air. Students first analyse which pollutant is usually referred to by the media when describing urban air quality. Then, they carry out a learning lab activity exploring an analogy – they compare the pollution generated by an engine to what happens when a peanut is burned instead.
The aim of this activity is to develop students’ critical thinking about what we understand by high-quality research in science. This activity is conducted in two steps: (1) reflecting about different ways of answering a scientific question; and (2) analysing the processes of carrying out research using quality criteria such as: validity, reliability, and usefulness.
