Teacher Guide

According to several independent studies and reports, girls and women are underrepresented in the STEM studies and careers. UNESCO finds that only 28.8% of the work in the scientific sector is carried out by women. According to the OECD reports, in the OECD countries, only 5% of 15-year-old girls expect to pursue a career in engineering and computing compared with 18% of boys. Are girls less talented than boys to pursue STEM subjects? No, it has been proved that boys and girls have the same level of cognitive abilities required to study and succeed in STEM related field. And yet, when females decide to pursue their interests in the STEM studies, they tend to leave the field at higher rates than men. Maybe there are some cultural obstacles that prevent women from participation in the STEM fields? Interestingly, in countries considered as gender equality champions in Europe, Nordics, the female participation in STEM fields – both in terms of university enrolment and career is the lowest in comparison to other counties.

Why might girls be less interested in STEM?

STEM has been traditionally associated with men and as a male domain and field of expertise. Several studies found that children as well as teenagers associated science with men and depicted scientists to be male. What is most worrisome, this trend has been observed since the 1950s and has not changed much. The authors of most recent studies conclude that despite the increase of women's representation in science over the last decades, children still observe more male than female scientists in their social environments. This STEM – gender connotation is a very significant determinant of the STEM and non-STEM interests as girls (as well as boys) do not want to choose the ‘wrong sex’ profession. This is strongly related to the self-image the girls develop starting in childhood that reflects the gender occupational role segregations.

Bias and embedded stereotypes

The way STEM tasks are designed favours styles and habits of work that are more characteristic to male learners (generally speaking). The STEM area has been claimed to reflect values and interests important to boys and men rather than what would be of girls’ and women’s focus. Boys tend to follow so called agentic goals while girls are drawn more to so called communal goals (Agentic goals are linked to achieving success, whereas communal ones are associated with working with and for other people). STEM-gender connotations have been found to trickle down to education and create the STEM subject biases that favour boys.

The benefits a more balance gender distribution in STEM

Girls’ and women’s equal representation in STEM education and professions is vital from three key perspectives: human rights, science, and development. It goes without saying that girls as well as boys should be able to enjoy equal access to and equal opportunities to study and work in the fields of their choice. Increased female inclusion in STEM is believed to strengthen scientific excellence and enhance quality of STEM outcomes. More women in STEM can contribute to more diverse approaches and perspectives in the field that leads to production of more robust knowledge and development of more effective solutions. There is already plenty of evidence showing women have abilities in STEM fields: i.e., advancements in the prevention of cholera and cancer, expanded understanding of brain development and stem cells. The STEM field needs gender equality and needs a diverse pool of talents and viewpoints to maximize the field potential and leaving out women is a loss for all. Moreover, women’s underrepresentation in STEM education and employment perpetuates existing gender inequalities in status and income – gender pay gap, especially because the salaries in STEM professions currently mostly held by men are better paid.

According to the IPCC Report 2018, the global climate has changed relative to the pre-industrial period, and there are multiple lines of evidence that these changes have had negative impacts on organisms and ecosystems, as well as on human systems and well-being. Climate change has mobilized activism around the world, especially vigorously active are the youth generations gathered for example around the initiative Fridays for Future inspired by Sweden’s Greta Thunberg (https://fridaysforfuture.org/). Young people demand world leaders and national governments to take immediate actions to address the climate crisis. For the girls to get interested in a topic it is crucial that the topic is useful, personally relevant and related to life in and out of school. 

The urgency of climate change action and its motivational force

Research on gender equitable science learning finds that introduction of open-ended, real-life problems that address concerns and interests of girls into the curriculum promote gender equity in the classroom and learning. Climate change related issues seem to match exactly the characteristics of the topics female learners would be concerned with and eager to engage in. Therefore, bringing in climate change as ‘problems’ to science classes significantly increases the girls’ interest in learning science. Inclusion of climate change within the scope of STEM redefines the stereotypical STEM’s image as a domain that promotes only agentic values and represents male traits and characteristics. Climate change’ entrance to STEM means the ascent of the so important for the girls’ communal values into the STEM’ realm – working with others and for others, collaborating with each other. Bringing climate change issues to STEM helps bridge the gap between the STEM as science focused on ‘just the facts’ with STEM science that includes ‘also the actions’ - seeks solutions and is action-oriented.  

Taking action - seeking solutions

In the face of climate change issues, girls are found to display so-called constructive hope. Girls’ constructive hope vis-à-vis climate change means the girls show a positive and constructive approach towards climate change. They are future-oriented and eager to engage in action and towards solutions identification for the environmental challenges. Girl students recognize the graveness of climate change; however, they genuinely believe they can do something about it. Therefore, offering them an opportunity to work on climate change actions and solution-seeking galvanizes their innate interest and tap into their abilities and potentials.

Open Science Schooling (OSS) as a didactical approach to science learning has been experimented with in Europe since 2019 through Erasmus+ project implementations, as a response to the European Commission’s call to “rethink science learning” and to “(e)ncourage open schooling where schools, in cooperation with other stakeholders, become an agent of community well-being; families are encouraged to become real partners in school life and activities; professionals from enterprise, civil and wider society are actively involved in bringing real-life projects into the classroom.

OSS advocates for:

• engaging students in real-life science challenges in the society
• engaging schools and students in practical science collaboration with resources in the local community. These resources take the form of local stakeholders, including research, science, innovation and social resources and stakeholders
• offering students direct participation in epic, immersive and exciting missions that have a relevance for them
• inviting interdisciplinary and cross-class approaches
• offering students with different learning styles a variety of practice-oriented work forms different from traditional theoretical and laboratory-based science teaching
• providing students with the opportunity and resources to develop a different image of what science is and what science could be for them

In this light, OSS supports the meaningful contextualisation of science for students through experiential learning (constructivism) alongside practical, hands-on activities in order to generate knowledge. The ultimate goal is to bridge science learning and students through the practical identification of science as it is used in the students’ environment and context (e.g., local community). This goal is achieved through the engagement in real-life missions with local community actors, which require transdisciplinary support and foster 21st century skills development (e.g. creativity, critical thinking, collaboration and communication, initiative and social skills). In the case of Science4Girls, OSS was deployed through the implementation of local missions related to environmental issues identified by the student teams.

Generally, four interrelated processes have been identified during the practical implementation of OSS: problem contextualisation, knowledge and implementation, documentation and self-regulation, and sharing and reflecting.

• Assemble a teacher’s team - 2-5 members (or more in you plan to have many project teams)
  • At least one STEM teacher, but aim for multiple perspectives by getting teachers from other subject areas involved as well, e.g. languages, art/design, ICT, business, social/political studies.
• Discuss the outer frame for the project among the teachers in the teacher’s team - learning objectives and constraints
  • Remember that students choose their own projects and plan their own work. Still, it is important to set a frame for the project by identifying primary learning objectives and the project space’s outer limits - time, feasibility, topical constraints (e.g. focus on climate change, energy supply chains or health issues), external contacts (expected/required).
  • Teachers should also consider how different learning styles can be accommodated within the project frame.
  • Make sure the frame includes those STEM abilities that the students are expected to work on, and how their performance is evaluated.
    • Also consider how to encourage students to use and develop so-called 21st century skills such as creativity, critical thinking, collaboration and communication, initiative and social skills. 
      • And consider if and how the expression of such 21st century skills can be included in performance evaluation criteria.
  • The teacher team should also consider and discuss the role of gender for STEM-learning in this type of setting.
  • Discuss guiding principles for how the teacher’s team will support and guide the students, i.e. providing active guidance and support, but avoid instruction and control.
  • Develop consensus within the teacher team regarding the outer frame, guiding principles and working process to coordinate their efforts and the way they communicate with and guide the students. This is especially important in a multi-disciplinary team with members, who might be less used to working together.
  • How much time to spend on preparation depends on how detailed the outer frame needs to be, which in turn depends on what the learning goals are and how the project work is expected to integrate with other learning activities. But don’t overdo preparations. It is difficult to cover everything, and some details will have to be discovered - and appropriately responded to - when the project is underway.

• Introduce project-based learning to the students
• Stage opening event that introduces the focus and outer frame of the project and provides inspiration 
  • Make sure students are aware of the type of learning goals concerning STEM-knowledge that they are expected to include/learn/develop during the project work.
• Assemble project teams
  • Recommended group size: 4-5, ages 12-16
• Present/suggest and discuss with students possible contacts - local authorities, companies and individuals.
  • Help students learn how to approach local contacts - to think about who to contact, what to say, what type of information or collaboration one seeks and so on.
  • Finding, appropriating and working with local communities' resources:
    • How to identify, make contact, understand, take action in collaboration… [Note to self (Martin): important point, make sure the experiences of the partners is represented]

• Get teams going by exploring local opportunities
  • Help establish connections, also encourage students to use their own or make new connections (under teacher supervision).
• Students are tasked with identifying project alternatives that are interesting and engaging to them
  • Using ideational techniques such as brainstorming.
  • Identified problems are put into context, but examining their surrounding setting and connections - problem contextualisation.
  • …and by exploring their surroundings and talking with the people they find there
  • For each identified alternative: explore challenges, describe expected outcomes, identify benefits and discuss the importance of the topic/problem - at the local level, and the global level.
  • Projects are expected to produce some type of positive change or impacts (not only describe or evaluate)
  • Teachers supervise and make sure that the projects align with learning objectives and keep within the established outer frame, including STEM learning goals.
• Students compare alternatives and select the project they wish to pursue

Teachers provide support and guidance, yet it is important that students make the choice themselves. This to foster both engagement in the chosen subject, and support the sense of self-sufficiency.

• Students are expected to plan their own work
  • Students set their own goals and plan their work. Students should be encouraged to explore alternative directions, and when settling on a specific way forward to avoid planning too far ahead, as this can hamper their ability to make appropriate course corrections when reacting to developing circumstances.
  • Teachers provide support and make sure that identified goals are aligned with learning goals and other aspects of the project’s frame, but it is important that the students are allowed to find their own way and given room to experiment.
• Responding to the complex real-life demands 
  • Students should be encouraged to monitor the progress continually and use self-regulation to re-evaluate their plans, and not to be afraid to adjust both goals and work methods to take advantage of new experiences.
  • Experimenting and testing solutions in realistic settings should be an integrated part of the work effort. This to gauge the credibility and value of generated proposals and prototypes.
  • Teacher’s help students gain balance between just moving forward, and moving forward in an interesting direction - with the experience accrued at each step illuminating the way forward. It is important to help students deal with the uncertainty of project challenges that are not predetermined, but need to be discovered, understood and dealt with as they are encountered.
• Document the work
  • Students are expected to document the work they do - with notes, pictures, video and other materials.
  • Teachers should remind the students to document and keep the documentation in order.
• Identify the role of and need for STEM knowledge 
  • Teachers and students jointly identify STEM knowledge and skills required to work effectively and efficiently with project challenges.

Teachers help students address encountered knowledge gaps in the project process, and help students fill those gaps and apply gained knowledge appropriately - learning on demand.

• What goal?
  • Where the end goal is and what the end goal is, is something that needs to be discovered. It will have been (positively) constrained by the initial frame and shaped by careful nudges along the way, but should also include elements of surprise. By encouraging students to be both opportunistic and mindful in their selection of routes, the project will move towards interesting goals that reveal themselves at the end.
• When to finish?
  • When the project concludes is often determined by outer constraints - such as time available or a predetermined deadline. Students should be encouraged to be aware of such constraints, but not to let them dominate their decisions on direction and goals, to make sure that the goal is pursued because it is interesting rather than convenient.
• Documenting the journey and the destination
  • OSS promotes storytelling as an intuitive yet powerful means of describing both results and process. 
  • Teachers should encourage students to write and record during their journey, and then reflect and express their reactions to where they ended up. Encourage students to use other means than writing to make stories come alive - video was used to great effect by many groups in our project.
  • Reflections should include both results and gained insights in relation to the project they have pursued; personal and group-level insights gleaned from the experience of running a project such as this; and how this experience has affected their understanding and perception of STEM subjects and how this, in turn, has affected their attitude towards and image of science in general.

Students should also be encouraged to reflect on what doing science as a female is like, and how the female perspective carries potential to expand and develop what science could be.

• What did we achieve? How did we do it?
• Reports and reflections on the journey and the destination are valuable in their own right - as testaments what one has produced and what one learnt along the way - but their real value potential is revealed when shared broadly and generously with others. 
  • Encourage students to share their experiences via posts on social media, publishing to the web, holding presentation events, and just talking with people they happen to meet, or intentionally seek out. 
• Sharing is valuable both for the recipient and for the sender. The recipient learns new things and broadens their perspectives; students receive affirmation and feedback, including - hopefully - feedback which questions and challenges. This promotes additional learning opportunity by providing contrast and adding nuance.