Building Girls into Global STEM: Engaging Students with Real-World Contexts

1. Girls into Global STEM - ‘GIGS’ Welcome to the course Developing skills and knowledge to engage students (particularly girls) in STEM through real life global contexts and the use of digital technology

2. Introductions Course facilitator: Course participants:

3. Course outline This session:Context - background, global goals, girls and STEM, outlining the school-based tasks School based learning: Working on global contexts and global STEM activitiestasks, arrangements for submission of results, monitoring and support Face to face session:Feedback and peer review, creating e-books and other resources to suit your own teaching environment, course evaluation

4. Course timings and resources

5. Girls into Global STEM:Background to the course This three part course for teachers has been produced as a result of the EU funded ‘Girls Into Global STEM’ (GIGS) project (2016- 2019). In a nutshell GIGS is: • An Erasmus* + Strategic Partnership project led by the University of Hull (UK), involving partnerships between schools, Higher Education and NGOs in four European countries • Focused on finding new ways to motivate girls to opt for STEM subjects while at school and potentially progress to related higher education courses and/or STEM careers • Focused on the inclusion of real life global contexts along with digital tools as powerful motivators for students learning *To find out more about Erasmus: www.erasmusplus.org.uk

6. Course aim and objectives The course aims to increase teachers’ confidence and skills to increase girls engagement in STEM subjects in schools through an engagement in global issues. Course objectives: The course is designed to: - raise awareness of the gender divide in the take up of STEM subjects that lead to STEM careers - help teachers to identify techniques that are reported to increase girls engagement in STEM - support teachers to develop STEM activities and strategies contextualised on global learning to run with students - support teachers to develop methods to evaluate the effectiveness of their classroom practice to engage girls in STEM.

7. Real world contexts and the Global Goals This is the opportunity to explore the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) also known as Global Goals as potential real world contexts to offer your students. One premise is that girls relate more positively to STEM when their learning is set in a real world context and another is that girls react favourably to practical/hands on activities. There are 17 Global Goals that, if achieved, will help end world poverty by 2030. Each Global Goal offers opportunities for STEM to play a key role in helping deliver the targets set for each goal.

8. Real world contexts and the Global Goals The Global Goals Quiz

9. The Global Goals In the GIGS project five Global Goals were selected by teachers and students as contexts that offered good opportunities to explore STEM. They were Global Goals 2 : No Hunger 6 : Clean Water and Sanitation 5: Gender Equality 7: Affordable and Clean Energy 11: Sustainable Cities A set of ‘stimulus’ materials were developed as starting points to support teachers and students to develop STEM activities from each context. These stimulus materials can be downloaded from http://www.gigsproject.eu/ Project Outputs – Global STEM Challenges.

10. Key questions • What’s the overall picture in Europe about girls take up of STEM subjects and related careers? • What are the reported main factors and recommendations to improve girls interest and take up of STEM in school beyond compulsory age? • Are there gender divides in the uptake of STEM subject beyond compulsory years at your school? • What can I do in my school to increase girls engagement in STEM at school …that could lead them into STEM careers?

11. Girls and STEM -What are the issues? Numerous reports across Europe over the past 20 years have tracked the performance and take up of STEM qualifications and careers amongst girls. Whilst there has been some areas of increased participation amongst girls in STEM subjects – there still remains gender gaps in subsequent career choices. This is a huge concern for many STEM related businesses and companies, who report to have difficulty in recruiting STEM skilled workers. This is an increasing concern as many of the older and experienced technically skilled workforce reach retirement widening the recruitment problem. ‘Britain produces 12,000 engineering graduates a year – and there are currently 54,000 vacancies.’ Sir James Dyson In this module, you will have the opportunity to find out more about some of the reported key barriers for girls remaining engaged in STEM subjects and recommendations for improving school-based practice to engage and retain girls beyond the compulsory age of studying STEM.

12. Group activity What ideas do you have for encouraging girls at your school to take up STEM subjects/careers either linked to report findings or your own thoughts. In your groups write these on post-it notes then see if they can be grouped. Real life contexts Improving girls’ interest in STEM Role models Practical work

13. STEM and Global Learning Before getting started with planning your School based tasks at either Level 1 or Level 2, we’d like to share what we believe to be key global learning opportunities created by including global contexts and therefore global learning within your STEM teaching. STEM and Global contexts provide opportunities for students to: • Connect with global issues • Recognise global inequality and injustice • Want to take action in their own lives and to value how STEM skills and knowledge can be part of the solution to make a difference in the world.

14. Therefore the Key Questions are: • Why use real world contexts in STEM? • What are the Sustainable Development Goals ( Global Goals) and can they help provide contexts for STEM? • How can I make the project relevant to my schools situation? • How can I include Global Learning in my teaching? • How can we measure the impact on the students who take part in the project?

15. Introducing the School Based Tasks

16. Task 1: What influences girls? (Level 1) We recommend that you read a few key reports (see suggested reading list) to give you a good overview of findings and recommendations to improve school-based practice. Feel free to add in your own reading. On your Recording research sheet make a note of any recommendations/suggestions from any of the reports you read. At the end of each report, reflect on the questions in column 3.

17. Recommended reading for Task 1 Why don’t European girls like science and technology? https://news.microsoft.com/europe/features/dont-european-girls-like-science-technology/#W3R2xCWJmcHeAkSH.99 “Not for people like me?” Under-represented groups in science, technology and engineering • https://www.wisecampaign.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/not_for_people_like_me-full-report.pdf It’s different for Girls : The influence of Schools http://www.iop.org/education/teacher/support/girls_physics/different/page_61620.html Arrange for a female STEM Ambassador to work with you students https://www.stem.org.uk/stem-ambassadors • ‘Doing science,’ rather than ‘being scientists,’ more encouraging to girls • https://ukedchat.com/2019/02/06/doing-science-girls/amp/

18. Task 2: Global Goals – Which ones for STEM contexts? Level 1 • Look at the United Nations website on the Global Goals and select four or more goals that you feel could provide valuable contexts to include in your teaching of STEM. http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/sustainable-development-goals.html Each country that has signed up to support the Global Goal agenda has developed its own strategy for delivering the goals in their own country. Here is the link to the UK government strategy document: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/implementing-the-sustainable-development-goals/implementing-the-sustainable-development-goals 2. Work with a group of girls and ask them to help identify which of the Global Goals they feel STEM could make a significant contribution to achieving.To facilitate this process, allow them to research into the Global Goals. A set of the Global Goal and images can be used a starting point. In addition the Global Goals string activity and ‘Who’s responsible’ helps students make the links between their own lives and those living in ‘developing countries’ https://practicalaction.org/global-goals . A set of the Global Goal targets and images can be downloaded to help facilitate this process https://practicalaction.org/global-goals-display

19. Task 3: What’s most relevant to my school? Level 1 Look at each of the five Global STEM Challenge stimulus documents alongside your own ideas and consider which Global Goal contexts would make a good fit to your own teaching and learning environment.You may choose to consider the: • age group of the students within your school that you could trial the Global Goal contexts with • fit to areas of the formal STEM curriculum - opportunities for including the Global Goal contexts outside of the formal curriculum (eg: within STEM clubs/enrichment days). Consider the Global Goal contexts against these criteria and/or any of your own for potential inclusion in your school. • Do any of these contexts offer options for you to take further? Which one or two would you choose to include and why?

20. Curriculum links for Task 3 Does your Global STEM material need to deliver/support parts of the STEM and/or other curricular areas? If so, you might like to view and/or use Practical Action’s Curriculum Links and/or the GIGS project’s Curriculum Links to construct a similar table for your proposed activities.

21. Task 4: Evaluating existing Global STEM resourcesLevel 2 A number of organisations produce teaching resources that support teachers to include real world contexts within their STEM teaching. This task asks you to work with colleagues and potentially older students to evaluate a teaching resource of your choice that is set in a global context to support global learning. (A list of resources is on the following slide). You might choose to use the following criteria. Does the resource help students to: • connect with global issues? – how do the materials help students connect to global issue/make the issues relevant to students? • recognise inequality and injustice? – how do the materials help students to understand global inequalities and injustice? • take action to make a difference in the world? How do the materials encourage students to want to develop science and technology that improves the lives of everyone on the planet? Finally, make suggestions as to how the STEM resources could be improved to extend Global Learning.

22. Suggested STEM resources to evaluate Please select a resource to evaluate: A STEM challenge from Practical Action https://practicalaction.org/stem A primary or secondary Upd8 resource https://practicalaction.org/upd8 From any of the Science, D&T or Maths resources on the Global Dimension site https://globaldimension.org.uk/resources/browse/?tab=subject

23. Task 5: Baseline research with your students - Level 2 Before making any changes in your own practice to encourage girls into STEM, it’s valuable to find out what are the drivers and/or issues that might reduce girls interest in STEM at your school. As part of the Girls into Global STEM (GIGS) project, an on-line questionnaire and ‘Draw A Scientist’ activities were developed to try to find any key drivers/issues that were encouraging and/or dissuading girls from STEM subjects. We recommend that you develop, run and analyse a short questionnaire with a group or class of girls with whom you could continue to work with at your school. You are welcome to: - View and carry out the Draw a Scientist activity from GIGS website- Develop your own questions using an online tool such as Survey Monkey or develop a paper-based questionnaire- Use any of the questions developed for the GIGS project - Select questions from any of the recommended reading list for this module. The report Why Europe’s girls aren’t studying STEM? contains a good range of questions.

24. Task 5: Planning your STEM project We hope by now, you’ve started to get some ideas of how you might want to develop a STEM based project/challenge or activities with and/or for a group/class of students based on one or more of the Global Goals. For Task 5 download the project planning sheet. It is intended to help you manage the development and teaching of the Global STEM project in your school. It can also be used to present your plans to other colleagues.

25. Involving students As part of the GIGS project a small group of students aged 14-16 years worked alongside their teachers to identify the Global Goals that they were most interested in. They then co-developed STEM investigations and ‘hands-on’ activities to engage younger students aged 11-13 years based on the Global Goal contexts. Each school captured their activities using video, sound files, photographs, etc. and then produced aneBook or website page to share their work. This might be a methodology that you choose to use. The next slide will give you an opportunity to listen to the students feeding back on their own experiences.

26. Student feedback Listen to the interviews with the students who were involved in identifying and developing STEM activities from a range of Global Goal contexts. These were recorded in Poland after a GIGS student conference and can be found at:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FoXsRb_UE8 What did the students learn from their experiences in their role?We hope that their interviews will want to make you continue to develop/use a Global Goal context within your own school.

27. Task 5: Useful links What about the SDGs? A summary and some background can be found at: http://www.unescap.org/sites/default/files/UN_DPI_SDG_presentation_final.pdf ‘Think Global’ explores the ways in which the Global Goals can support global education: https://think-global.org.uk/?s=sustainable+development+goals ‘Practical Action’ links the goals to global projects: https://practicalaction.org/global-project-ideas

28. Task 6:  Stories in the News – Level 2 Level 2 task: for your own class and to support your colleagues to deliver in their class: Primary: registration time activities Secondary: Tutor time activitiesOver a 6 week period design one quick fire activity per week, based on a issue in the news with international implications linked to this course.  You may choose to produce a powerpoint, source a short video or another way of presenting of your choice. Share this with your colleagues – for example, across a year group - supporting them to deliver the activity during registration or tutor time, as age appropriate.  Gather feedback from your colleagues and reflect on what has worked well, what you and they have learnt and what you would do differently another time. Record your findings for evaluation purposes.

29. All tasks: Keeping a record of digital assets If you intend to record your Global STEM activities (as we did for the GIGS project), then you might want to consider beforehand whether you want to collect videos, stills, interviews or other digital assets? And for what purposes? • adding onto a website? • supporting work on an eBook generated by the teacher or pupils? • as a revision tool? • motivating or training other staff members? If you intend to include students in collecting any of the assets for you, then you might wish to think about equipment and training requirements and obtaining the necessary permissions. We will cover the use of digital assets in the face to face session.

30. Logging progress and self evaluation Progress log (Level 1 and Level 2) Self evaluation (Level 2)

31. Next steps - the School Based Tasks Registration for the School Based Tasks will be via a the link which will willbe sent following the webinar. Support will be arranged after completion of the form and depending on the tasks selected. The Face to Face session will include:-An opportunity to report back on the strategies you used and the impact and outcomes achieved - Reflection on your research approaches- How to make the most of your digital assets- Global Learning through an International Partnership

32. Introductions Course facilitator: Course participants:

33. Session outline Individual feedback What did we learn? (Group activity) Taking it further: Extra ideas for your own STEM activities Keeping a record of digital assets eBooks creation tools Setting up an equitable partnership Course Evaluation

34. Feedback session 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

35. eBooks In some of reports you read in Module One, it suggests that girls are motivated by the use digital tools in STEM subjects. If you are interested in collecting or using digital tools to support your STEM activities, then you might like to create an eBook or add your resources to a school website. Here’s an example of an eBook and website created by schools in the UK and Poland created as part of the Global STEM activities they developed. The De Ferrers eBook www.gigsproject.eu select tab: Ebook by ZespółSzkół w Siennicy If you chose to produce an eBook or webpages - you might want to make a list of the assets that make the book a useful resource. The following slide provides links to digital tools to guide you to produce an eBook.

36. eBook creation tools There are a number of software applications for the construction of eBooks • iBook author – Apple’s free propriety software but the resulting .iBooks files can only be viewed on a Mac desktop or iPad • Book Creator – a website for Android devices, Windows PCs, free for up to 40 eBooks; and an app for iOS devices • Kotobee Author – a versatile eBook creator – the resulting eBooks run on any device including eBook readers – free to trial • Free guides are available from the iBook store

37. International collaboration (UK slide) 1 Can take place face-to-face or online 2 Grant funding, including reciprocal visit grants, for clusters and one-to-one partnerships involving schools in participating countries in UK, Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), South Asia and Middle East & North Africa (MENA). 3 Teacher development and learner engagement 4 Collaborative Projects 5 Partner matching 6 Fact sheets https://connecting-classrooms.britishcouncil.org

38. Clusters and cluster co-ordinators (UK slide) Can be a mix of primary and secondary schools. No upper limit on number of schools in cluster Maximum grant available £35,000 Led by an identified, experienced, UK Cluster Co-ordinator, responsible for: •Recruitment of schools into the cluster •Completion of the grant application •Distribution of grant funding within the cluster •Coordination of cluster activities https://connecting-classrooms.britishcouncil.org

39. Any questions? Any questions about any aspect of this course – Webinar? School Based Task? Face to face session?   Follow-up?

40. Developing your Global STEM activities We’ve given you a lot to think about when developing your own or adapting any existing approaches and materials. Good luck with developing and using them for your own teaching! Finally: Action Planning - Make a note of any ideas that you would like to implement with six months, then within two years at your school. and Please complete our course evaluation Congratulations on completing the course!