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Opening Schools to STEM Careers


SYSTEMIC-Scientix-STEMAlliance

Welcome to the MOOC Opening Schools to STEM careers

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The Opening Schools to STEM Careers MOOC is meant to train and empower Heads of Schools and Career Counsellors in successfully equipping -and adapting- schools with tools for introducing and attracting young people to STEM careers. During this course, participants will learn how to recognize relevant STEM career pathways, identify significant STEM skills and soft abilities, address gender stereotypes, collaborate at in-school-level for STEM career counselling and host and create STEM career events and overall, among others.

It is widely known that Europe needs more young people to pursue STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) subjects and careers to become part of a much-needed qualified workforce in the upcoming years.

At the same time, a wide range of factors affects students’ interest and pursuit of STEM careers - from the given curriculum to teachers’ knowledge to even participation in professional development activities. Whatever these factors may be, they are usually directly linked to school organisation.

For this reason, it will be of vital importance to build the capacity to empower the most relevant stakeholders in school leadership and school organisation. The Opening Schools to STEM Careers MOOC is meant to train heads of schools and career counsellors to successfully equip schools with tools for introducing and attracting young people to STEM careers.

Topics

In this MOOC, participants will: 

  1. Understand why STEM is critical for students’ future welfare and success;
  2. Recognise some of the most relevant STEM career pathways;
  3. Appreciate different types of career counselling approaches at the school level; 
  4. Determine the most significant soft skills and STEM abilities, methodologies and pedagogical approaches that teachers and career counsellors should use/focus on;
  5. Learn how to address gender stereotypes and foster a culture of understanding;
  6. Learn how to collaborate within the school on the subject of STEM career counselling (including collaboration between parents and teachers);
  7. Learn how to initiate and maintain community partnerships for STEM career counselling; 
  8. Learn how to host and create STEM career events; 
  9. Learn how to build a STEM career counselling vision and an action plan for schools (including leadership perspective aspects).

Prerequisites

The course is targeted at heads of schools and career counsellors from Europe and beyond. The course is also useful for any educational stakeholder who wants to learn more about school-level strategies and activities for introducing STEM careers to students.

Modules

  1. STEM careers in schools and in the job market
  2. STEM career pathways
  3. STEM leading schools
  4. Gender stereotypes in STEM education
  5. Balancing the roles of teachers, mentors, parents and role models
  6. Benefits of external school to work programs
  7. Career orientation events on STEM education

Certification

You will receive digital module badges for every completed module of the course as well as a course badge and a course certificate upon completion of the full course.

Note to teachers from Portugal: You can get your successful participation in a European Schoolnet Academy course formally recognised as valid continuous professional development, and thereby acquire the relevant number of training hours, by sending your certificate to the Conselho Científico e Pedagógico de Formação Contínua (CCPFC) at Rua do Forno, nº 30, 1º andar - apartado 2168, 4700 - 429 Braga, Portugal. For more information, please contact the CCPFC.

Course Staff

Disclaimer & Copyright

The SYSTEMIC project is a joint initiative of both Ministries of Education and industry, with the overall objective of increasing young Europeans' interest in STEM careers and providing teachers with the appropriate pedagogical tools to enable them to teach STEM topics in a more attractive way.

Scientix, the community for science education in Europe, promotes and supports a Europe-wide collaboration among STEM teachers, education researchers, policymakers and other STEM education professionals.

The STEM Alliance – inGenious Education and industry – brings together industries, Ministries of Education and education stakeholders to promote STEM education and careers to young Europeans and to address anticipated future skill gaps within the European Union.

 

Scientix 3 is supported by the European Union’s H2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement N. 730009). SYSTEMIC is Co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union. The content of this course is the sole responsibility of the organizer and it does not represent the opinion of the European Commission (EC), and the EC is not responsible for any use that might be made of information contained.

Creative Commons License

All content on this course unless specified otherwise is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

  1. Course Code

    OpenSchoolsSTEM
  2. Classes Start

  3. Classes End

  4. Estimated Effort

    3-4 hours (25 in total)
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