Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SESAM21 (Sense, Science & the Magics of the Planet Pantry)
Reporting period: 2021-07-01 to 2022-02-28
SESAM 21 addresses the important objectives of the NIGHT call that is to increase the interest of young people in research and science, increase the understanding of research’s role in society among citizens including young people and their families and to counteract the stereotypes that exists about research and researchers. With these in mind the SESAM 21 set out in collaboration with six schools across Denmark, their teachers and a team of mentors from research based companies and from university to develop an ambitious final NIGHT event on the last weekend of September 2021. The SESAM 21 undertaking was split in two streams across Denmark: an east and a west pillar. The development of the SESAM 21 took place from May 2021 until late September. During that period of time the schools with teachers and pupils and with the support and assistance from a team of mentors, developed learning stations, workshops, prototypes and other installations and instruments all related to some kind of research and science challenge. The overall thematic topic of SESAM 21 was the climate driven call for transition of the food, agricultural and natural eco system. The SESAM 21 used a bottom-up participatory approach, where students worked in projects supervised by teachers and research mentors in order to prepare something that illustrated a research challenge that could be communicated and explained to visitors at the final NIGHT event. Understanding of research role among citizens in local communities, families, students and teachers is important in a knowledge intensive society. Furthermore it is important to understand that grand challenges such as the one posed by the climate crisis requires research. By working in particular with young people we make a contribution to a long term development of the knowledge economy, we attract more people to higher educations and we make a contribution to a better understanding of research and science. We further make a contribution to an understanding of how different actors of the knowledge triangle can work together to create innovation and to development of a student driven type of science communication where the needs of young people play an important role.
Our project runs in 4 work packages: awareness raising, the NIGHT event itself, impact assessment and management. We started the activity in mid spring 2021, the project peaked in the last weekend of September, the impact assessment and evaluation took place over the fall and reporting were done in winter 2022. A central element is the involvement of schools. In the first work package we created awareness of the NIGHT itself and we prepared the installations, workshops, prototypes and other activities that were to be presented on the final NIGHT weekend. In the first part of the project, we made agreements and arrangements with the schools and their teachers on how they could work in a student driven and participatory manner with the aim of illustrating challenges where research and science could make a contribution. We brought in mentors from knowledge intensive businesses as well as early career researchers and MSCA researchers to assist and work as mentors at the schools. The transversal overall theme was the challenges for the food, agricultural and natural eco-system. The final event in the last weekend of September was split in two: on Friday we had presentations at the schools and on Saturday at the central venue. Our impact assessment aimed to get an understanding of whether our central NIGHT objectives were reached and we used pupils, teachers and visitors at the final event as informants. We learned that visitors were quite positive and found the choice of thematic topic relevant. They also liked very much the idea of involving young people from school to communicate science. In particular we find found a supportive attitude among parents that were the primary visitors at the Friday school events. For the teachers part we learned that teachers are very supportive to the idea of education for sustainability and they are also very open to the idea of prioritizing the STEM subjects and some of them were also positive to the idea of working in a Project Based Learning manner. For the pupils we learned that there was high support to the idea of working independently and in a bottom up manner where the needs of the students in terms of science and research became important. They also like the idea of bringing in mentors from both business and from research to develop the different instruments to be presented at the final NIGHT. For the limitations we learned in particular that it is extremely important to start early working with the schools because schools are using a very long planning horizon we also experienced that the schools preferred smooth and well planned instructions on how to work with pupils and how to prepare the things to be presented at the final night. Overall we learned that theme can easily be expanded to cover all other important topics such as natural resource, resource boundaries land-use boundaries, biodiversity, soil health, climate mitigation, energy and water efficiency were perceived as timely and relevant topics to bring into the SESAM project. All in all we conclude that communicating the role of research and science in a school setting and using young people as the point of departure has huge potentials.
In particular we make a contribution i 4 areas. They are all related to the overall goal of attracting young people to research careers, increase the understanding of research in general among citizens and counteracting stereotypes of research and researchers
1. We make a contribution to the idea of involving schools as science communicators and putting young people in the central position in communicating the role of science research in society. We make that contribution in particular by drawing on the insights from the Whole School Approach in which in which school has central role in creating outreach to local communities and to societies
2. We make an important contribution to developing the idea of mentorship. The idea of using experts from knowledge intensive businesses and early career researchers for instance from the MSCA community. We find that the dynamic that can be developed within the conceptual framework of the Knowledge Triangle and the Whole School Approach can create an important open school dynamic that can be used effectively to communicate the role research in society.
3. We make an important contribution to communicating the role of research and society by adding in particular a strong digital component. We used digital technologies in all our installations, workshops round tables and other instruments during both the preparation of the night and the execution itself. By doing so we make a contribution to the development of the emerging Computational Thinking subject that is very much related to research and data thinking
4. We make an important contribution to the experimental mode of working in schools. An approach that is extremely research relevant and that fits very well with the Project Based Learning mode of teaching at school. The SESAM with its engineering, building and construction approach in this was illustrates how practice and go hand in hand with theory and we see that this has a positive effect among in particular pupils that are not traditionally strong in the STEM subjects.
1. We make a contribution to the idea of involving schools as science communicators and putting young people in the central position in communicating the role of science research in society. We make that contribution in particular by drawing on the insights from the Whole School Approach in which in which school has central role in creating outreach to local communities and to societies
2. We make an important contribution to developing the idea of mentorship. The idea of using experts from knowledge intensive businesses and early career researchers for instance from the MSCA community. We find that the dynamic that can be developed within the conceptual framework of the Knowledge Triangle and the Whole School Approach can create an important open school dynamic that can be used effectively to communicate the role research in society.
3. We make an important contribution to communicating the role of research and society by adding in particular a strong digital component. We used digital technologies in all our installations, workshops round tables and other instruments during both the preparation of the night and the execution itself. By doing so we make a contribution to the development of the emerging Computational Thinking subject that is very much related to research and data thinking
4. We make an important contribution to the experimental mode of working in schools. An approach that is extremely research relevant and that fits very well with the Project Based Learning mode of teaching at school. The SESAM with its engineering, building and construction approach in this was illustrates how practice and go hand in hand with theory and we see that this has a positive effect among in particular pupils that are not traditionally strong in the STEM subjects.