THE ESERO PROJECT IN BELGIUM

Rodrigo Alvarez Royal Observatory of Belgium

G-HOU2014

September 08-12 2014, Estoril, Portugal

The ESERO project

• Educational project supported by the European Space Agency (ESA)

• ESERO stands for European Space Education Resource Office

The ESERO project

• Currently ESA has established seven ESERO national offices which cover ten ESA Member States: Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Finland, Netherlands,

Norway, Portugal, Romania, Sweden and UK.

• Aim of ESERO: space-based education that supports the specific educational needs of the various Member States (all having different educational

systems, different school curricula and different languages).

ESERO in Belgium

• ESA and the Royal Observatory of Belgium agreed in 2006 to launch a Belgian ESERO Office at the Planetarium of Brussels

• Two full-time collaborators (Dutch- and French-speaking) were hired as ESERO Office Managers

What B-ESERO offers

• Major issue : choice between curriculum options (latin / science / economy) is made at the age of 12

the sooner the better: make pupils feel more comfortable and familiar with sciences already at the primary level

What B-ESERO offers

• But lack of confidence at the primary level to tackle the “space” theme in the classroom

B-ESERO provides teacher trainings

What B-ESERO offers

• Provide the high-quality science trainings required by primary level teachers

establishment of an educative partnership with science education experts

(i) train the trainers to adopt IBSE (inquiry-based science education) methods

(ii) guarantee the content & quality of the trainings

What B-ESERO offers

• Teacher trainings focus on hands-on activities

What B-ESERO offers

• Need for ready-to-use science-related educational material referring explicitly to topics of the curricula

elaboration of educational material & evaluation tools

(i) elaborated by inspectors and teachers

(ii)clear references to the Belgian curricula: teachers know when and how to use the material

Specific educational material

Specific educational material

What B-ESERO offers

• Other issues:

(i) no access to laboratories for experimentation

(ii) limited time devoted to a given project

(ii) limited budgets

Funding: a few k€ were distributed to the schools willing to start classroom projects: material for experiments, books, visit to science centers…

Enhancing the impact

• Strong bias towards well-informed and interested teachers :

The trainings / resources / calls for projects might reach mainly the most enthusiastic teachers and not the bulk of (reluctant) teachers

Impact/effort ratio lowered

Enhancing the impact

• Establishment of an educative partnership with the public education authorities:

they formally facilitate, endorse and authorize access to the national school systems and to official teacher training institutions

The “science@school” project

• French-speaking community:

- Teachers have to participate to 4 teacher trainings per year : in-service training

- B-ESERO has established a close partnership with the education authorities

“Sciences à l’école” project

The “science@school” project

• Strong involvement of the inspectors: “educative supervisor” whose job is to visit the classrooms and check if the teachers correctly follow the curriculum

teachers pay more attention to inspectors than to external trainers: non-interested teachers are reached

in-service teacher trainings: scientific methodology in order to improve self-confidence

each participating school has to start a 1+ year-long classroom project with hands-on experiments

trainings for school directors: how to highlight the “science” theme in the school project document

The “science@school” project

• A total of 111 schools involved in the project

• Around 400 teachers trained per year

• Creation of a label “Science school”

• Dissemination to the German-speaking community

Belgian ESA astronaut

Frank De Winne

presenting the label

« Science school »

The “science@school” project

Astronomy workshop for teacher trainees

• Dutch-speaking community:

- No in-service training & no educative supervisors

- B-ESERO has established a partnership with most of the teacher education institutions

pre-service teacher education

Astronomy workshop for teacher trainees

Astronomy workshop for teacher trainees

B-ESERO : other activities

• ASGARD project: launching of a weather balloon with in-board instrument elaborated in the classroom

ASGARD

B-ESERO : other activities

• Belgian CanSat competition: mini-satellite, integrated within the volume of a soft drink can

CanSat

B-ESERO : other activities

• Visit of the first Belgian astronaut in the classroom

Dirk Frimout

Outcomes: science fair

• The ESERO activities really helped the previously reluctant teachers to consider the teaching of science from a renewed point of view

organization of a science fair with most of the schools involved in the project participating

Outcomes: science fair

children (and their teachers) were really proud to present their own project to their families (or colleagues)

a few years before, those teachers were absolutely not enthusiastic about science, space or astronomy!

video link (1 min)

Conclusions

• B-ESERO is a highly successful project thanks to:

- The possibility to have 2 full-time people managing and coordinating the activities

- The establishment of a large network of valuable partners

- The support of ESA: trainings, material, events, funding of classroom projects

esero@planetarium.be - www.esa.int/esero

European Space Education Research Office An education project of the European Space Agency