Schools involved

The schools involved have taken part in several European projects and innovating programs to improve the quality of the teaching-learning process.

Both have been experimental schools for the Ingenious Project (shaping the future of Science and Mathematics education) in the frame of the European Commission FP7 program.

Both took part in the Global Science Excursion Project as experimental schools (Extended curriculum for infrastructure online), predecessor of the Virtual Science Hub platform, in the frame of in the frame of the European Commission FP7 program.

Besides, they are also experimental schools within the new project based on the use of virtual labs through an inquiry-based methodology, GoLab (Learning by experience), in the frame of the European Commission FP7 program.

The IES David Buján High School has carried out the project “Citizenship Science at School” funded by the Barrié Foundation, where the integration of some citizenship science models into the academic curriculum are set out.

Loreto Grammar School has got a Science Club design according to the project expectations, deepening into the technological version of the so called STEM Clubs and participating in renowned competitions such as “Teentech Awards”

During the project

Methodology.

”The best way to learn science is doing science”

Both coordinators, due to our previous experience, believe that this is the key principle. The Inquiry-Based Learning is the most efficient one for the acquisition of knowledge and scientific-technological competences. Both coordinators have shared our experiences in this regard to get the project to a good end. In addition,  during the project, the Spanish coordinator, José Viñas, was given a grant by the Barrié Foundation to to attend an intensive course “Fundamentals of Inquiry” at the Institute for Inquiry at Exploratorium, San Francisco, California (USA), where, together with 25 teachers from USA, Canada, Japan and China, he could study further into the inquisitive methodology within science education, which has added an extra value to our project.

Royal Academy of Engineering projects. The UK school got involved in RAEng through the national program Connecting STEM teachers (CST) and it worked in the Museum of Science and Industry of Manchester (MOSI) to test the resources which connect actual engineering to the classroom, thus allowing teachers to develop a collaborative methodology. We have used this material with the primary schools in Altrincham on different occasions and  at IES David Buján.

Citizen Science. The IES David Buján High School experience at implementing citizenship science projects in the classroom, has offered a wider choice to pick up the most interesting ones to be adjusted to the students levels. In addition, two mobile phone apps have been created to carry out citizenship science projects during the project.