FUTURE INVENTORS: A NEW APPROACH USING AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE TO LEARN IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Future Inventors is an education project of the National Museum of Science and Technology Leonardo da Vinci that aspires to transform the way science and technology are taught at school impacting on the curriculum, approach and the physical places in which teaching and learning happen through the design and dissemination of a pedagogical methodology and related resources that exploit aesthetic experience, bodily engagement, self-expression and creative exploration.
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Italy
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It addresses urban-rural linkages
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
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As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): FONDAZIONE MUSEO NAZIONALE SCIENZA E TECNOLOGIA LEONARDO DA VINCI Type of organisation: Non-profit organisation First name of representative: LORENZO Last name of representative: ORNAGHI Gender: Male Nationality: Italy Function: PRESIDENT Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: VIA SAN VITTORE 21 Town: MILANO Postal code: 20123 Country: Italy Direct Tel:+39 02 4855 5376 E-mail:direzione@museoscienza.it Website:https://www.museoscienza.org
Future Inventors (FI) is an education project of the National Museum of Science and Technology Leonardo da Vinci in partnership with Rocca Foundation that aspires to transform the way science and technology are taught at school and to impact on the curriculum, approach and physical places through the development of a pedagogical methodology that exploits aesthetic experience, bodily engagement, self-expression and creative exploration. It is implemented through a series of resources: a teacher training course, activities for students, a kit, an artist-in-residence program, a Museum learning space.
The methodology is structured in a 3-stage evolving experience in which learners engage directly and actively scaffolding their knowledge and skills to build a deeper and more meaningful relationship with STEM: from stage 1) 'capturing' attention through a response to a powerful stimulus; to stage 2) 'focusing' on STEM contents through direct experimentation; to stage 3) 'engaging' in a project that leads to creative personal expression.
The project builds on:
a) aesthetic experience as a transformative pedagogical tool and the starting point for reflection, experimentation and creative manipulation in STEM.
b) sustainability, by being learner-centred, engaging and based on real-life experiences; and by creating methodology and resources transferable to formal and non-formal education practice, replicable, useful and inspiring in the long run.
c) inclusion, investing in ‘Science Capital’, a notion that encompasses the idea that each individual builds their own rich and subjective ‘capital’ in STEM, helping this way to value diversity and broaden what counts as learning.
Future Inventors was developed through an R&D phase for the design of methodology and resources and a Testing phase in which these were tested with pilot schools. Since September 2022 it is at the Implementation phase for dissemination of the methodology and resources at national and European level.
Pedagogy
STEM
Learning
Aesthetics
Inclusive
FI aims to:
•foster sustainability education, i.e. be learner-centred, engaging, positive and based on real-life experiences, involve young people in meaningful ways, create a dialogue between digital and analogic culture, materiality and non-materiality.
•develop and disseminate a pedagogical methodology for teaching and learning in STEM transferable to school practice, replicable in any school context, useful and inspiring in the long run.
•offer support for the use of the methodology potentially to all curriculum topics.
•use the methodology to transform physical learning spaces at school (or other informal learning contexts) to enable teaching and learning that is hands-on and interdisciplinary.
•design and offer affordable or free resources (teacher training course, activities for students, kit for work in the classroom, artist-in-residence program) sustainable and replicable at school and museum, that become permanent know-how of teachers to work with their students year after year.
After the R&D phase when the pedagogy and the resources were designed and prototyped; and the Testing phase with pilot schools, FI is (since September 2022) in the Implementation phase during which the objectives are met through:
•dissemination of the methodology through the delivery of the activities for teachers and students.
•provision of the resources to schools at national level.
•collaboration with schools interested in taking this potential more in depth, transforming their way to work, empowering their teachers, redesigning physical spaces.
•delivery of a permanent learning program at the new Museum lab.
•creation of a context for reflection across the international education community.
The initiative is exemplary because it plans for durability, is designed to become viral and have a potentially permanent lifecycle; and adaptability as its innovative methodological elements can be valid and used beyond specific curriculum topics or learning contexts.
In Future Inventors, aesthetic experience is the overarching notion of the pedagogical methodology and determines the nature of learning. It is understood as:
• a way to interpret human experience, guided by curiosity and awe and inspired by beauty to create new meanings. It sees our body and physical experience as the unity of senses, emotions, gestures and words, thus as the means to encounter and understand the world around us.
• a pedagogical tool, compelling, transformative and unifying, through which emotion and anticipation become the flywheel for change and for the desire to pursue similar experiences, mixing the value of creating knowledge with the value of exploration, joy and the expression of ideas, thoughts and emotions.
In this context, the key objectives are to:
• use aesthetic experience as the basis for inclusive learning and a sense of belonging in STEM for all.
• reinforce the use of aesthetics and art for (re)interpreting STEM-related concepts and stimulating emotions, appreciation of beauty and new meanings.
• acknowledge a series of qualities for their role within an individual’s experience (unfortunately still not considered equally valuable in STEM learning) - bodily engagement, emotions, self-expression and open-ended, creative exploration - and build teaching and learning around them.
FI is exemplary because it introduces aesthetic experience in STEM learning considering it a potentially transformative pedagogical tool; and adopts it as the fundamental – and most innovative – element of the pedagogical methodology. Aesthetic experience is not only ‘the transformative reaction’ to an art encounter; it is the starting point for reflection, experimentation and creative manipulation around STEM engaging learners directly and actively; and becomes integral part of a ‘learning flow’ that leads to deeper engagement and understanding.
The philosophy of Future Inventors lies in Science Capital, a concept which encompasses the idea that each individual builds their own ‘capital’ in science and technology as a bag to carry around through life containing your STEM-related knowledge (what you know), attitudes (what you think), experiences (what you do) and contacts (who you know). This bag does not have fixed contents but these are added to as you move through life and differ from person to person. Science capital-oriented thinking can help shift the pedagogical narrative toward a new STEM education approach that broadens what counts as learning and values diversity. Science capital is a framework that helps educators better understand why STEM learning experiences may resonate better with some young people’s lives and experiences than others. It helps explain why and how STEM teaching and learning can be adapted to value and connect with the life experiences and interests of a broader range of students than those with high levels of science capital.
In this context, the key objectives are to:
•create a supportive and inclusive environment in which all students feel they can express themselves and contribute from their own lived experiences, and that these are valid and valued.
•help educators develop a mindset that values aesthetic experience, agency, creativity, personal expression, beauty as tools for more inclusive learning and recognizes a broad range of experiences, and skills in the science classroom.
•reach out to schools through affordable or free training courses and tools.
•create an open-source platform that can be used by the broad formal and non-formal education community to help transform STEM teaching methods and school spaces.
It is regarded exemplary because it builds on Science Capital and on the fundamental role of aesthetic experience, agency, personal expression and beauty as ways to support diversity in engagement and experience and to broaden what counts in/as learning.
Future Inventors does not explicitly address the third sector or non-governmental organisations, something which is not though excluded in future developments. It mainly addresses schools and the local community around them, the one formed by teachers, students and their families and the wider circle of other influential individuals (grandparents, caretakers, informal educators, etc.). So far schools were involved in the R&D phase for the co-design of the methodology and resources, and in the Testing phase in teacher training courses, student visits to the FI lab at the Museum, work in class, meetings with artists, to experiment and evaluate the project ideas. At the end, participants continued to collaborate with the Museum either by repeating activities in class, by asking the staff for support to redesign some of their spaces (or even creating FI-inspired labs at schools), by disseminating their experience in other professional development situations with other schools, by sending colleague teachers to new training courses or more school groups to the FI lab at the Museum, etc.
More concretely, the impact on the citizens (educators and students) involved so far and the potential impact of future involvement are on:
•the knowledge and competences of teachers in delivering STEM activities and designing new ones.
•the knowledge and skills of students in STEM.
•student awareness of ‘where STEM happens’ (beyond textbooks or traditional expressions of science).
•the development of agency and self-confidence in relating to, and engaging with, STEM.
•the development of scientific citizenship.
•the professional development of formal and informal educators through the results of the research and evaluation studies, and the opportunities for reflection across the professional community.
•the redesign of school spaces where STEM teaching takes place by integrating methodological principles and values of FI.
•the rethinking of the way STEM is taught and learned.
Future Inventors was developed through an extended R&D phase during which methodology and resources were designed and prototyped by the team of the Museum; followed by a Testing phase in which these were tested with pilot schools; and is now (since September 2022) at the Implementation phase for dissemination at national and European level and, where possible, globaly.
So far:
• cultural/education institutions and professionals at European level collaborated with the Museum for the identification of the pedagogical elements, art installations and digital tools used by the project.
• an Advisory Board of local, national, European and USA-based experts in the fields of pedagogy, STEM, digital culture, schooling follows the progress and offers advice where needed.
• a Sounding Board consisting of stakeholders from the Italian Ministry of Education, Industry and STEM fields supervises the potential and impact of FI on education.
• academics from the Centre for Research in Education in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics King’s College London were invited to run a research study on the nature of the project and its impact on learners, teachers and museum practitioners.
• a team of 12 expert teachers, selected by the Italian Institute of Educational Research from schools at national level, brought the perspective of the school into the prototyping process.
• 38 teachers and 241 students from 6 schools at regional level participated, tested and evaluated the activities, contributing to the consolidation of the pedagogy and resources.
• the national training platform of the Ministry of Education is used to disseminate the training courses for teachers.
• cultural institutions at Italian or European level support FI through economic resources that guarantee the continuation of the Implementation phase and the dissemination of the methodology as they acknowledge the affinity of FI objectives to their own strategic cultural and social mission.
The main disciplines and knowledge fields are:
•Aesthetic experience in Education
•Embodied cognition
•Inquiry-based learning
•Project based learning
•Pedagogy and learning in STEM. Pedagogy and learning in non-formal settings
•Physics, as the initial STEM curriculum topics involved in the development of the methodology and resources are Image and Sound (knowing that FI aspires to become transferable to other topics and/or disciplines of the curriculum)
•Digital Technology through all the tools used and manipulated in the different experiences
•Interactive digital art
These disciplines/fields have been explored and integrated into the design and development process since the beginning by the Museum team who has already extended experience and expertise and, at regular basis, in collaboration with schoolteachers, learning and pedagogy experts internationally, artists and curators, academics and researchers. Museum staff established and maintained partnerships with those during the R&D and Testing phases either for the purpose of reflection on contents and methodologies, or for the realization of site-specific experiences and installations.
In addition to the direct interactions among experts and Museum team, the above professionals also interacted with each other – for example:
•Teachers and artists and/or learning experts met during training courses or final evaluation meetings in which they encountered situations together or discussed findings and outcomes.
•Learning experts and artists interacted during the R&D phase to discuss and test ideas.
•Different representatives participated in meetings of the project two Boards.
•Researchers met with teachers and other learning experts.
The added value of such interaction was in terms of exchange of views and joint participation to a common experience that could be encountered from different perspectives, joint testing of prototypes and, of course, the contribution of different voices to the final outputs
Future Inventors is innovative because it:
•promotes a new pedagogical methodology which stands on a series of specifically-devised activities and resources, designed to have a permanent lifecycle and used for any curriculum topic or learning context.
•adopts aesthetic experience as the constitutive element of the pedagogical methodology considering it not (only) ‘the transformative reaction’ to an art encounter, but an integral part of a ‘learning flow’ that evolves into ever deeper engagement and understanding.
•restores the fundamental role in learning of a series of qualities - bodily engagement, emotions, self-expression, open-ended, creative exploration – unfortunately still considered valuable in fields other than STEM.
•presents STEM from different perspectives – using aesthetics, bodily engagement, emotions, senses, storytelling, interactions with art installations, personal and direct encounters with artists in residence – thus emphasizes their beauty, awe, interdisciplinary nature and encourages new meanings, ideas and connections with each individual.
•encourages teachers to use methodology and resources in an open-ended way, following their own practice and teaching objectives rather than a fixed/prescribed protocol.
•invites teachers to work together creating teams across STEM and Art/humanities disciplines within the same school working under a common project and objective maximizing the learning potential beyond interdisciplinary boarders and allowing for broad expressive possibilities and deeper understanding.
•brings artists who work in the intersection between science, technology and the arts into STEM learning as an innovative element and creates a collaborative setting for students and teachers to engage creatively with them.
•builds on Science Capital, i.e. on the value of building one’s own personal and diverse ‘capital’ in STEM and for the need to broaden what counts in learning by recognizing and respecting diversity in engagement.
The main objective of Future Inventors is to offer a pedagogical methodology transferable to school practice, replicable in any school context, useful and inspiring in the long run. To support this, a series of activities and resources (a teacher training course, activities for students, a kit for work in the classroom, an artist-in-residence program) are designed to be sustainable and replicable at school and informal learning settings.
Today, the focus is on two STEM-related curriculum topics as case studies – Image and Sound – but the pedagogical methodology does not apply only to those two; it could be used to teach any curriculum topic in the classroom because it is conceived as a way to see STEM education in general, beyond the traditional disciplinary barriers and prescribed processes.
Methodological suggestions as well as several of the tools contained in the kit can also be used as examples to transform physical learning spaces at school to enable teaching and learning that is hands-on and interdisciplinary.
What is contained in the kit are a series of tools, software licenses, analogic and digital materials for use in the classroom that can be found anywhere easily so that the suggested activities, or new ones deriving from those, can be replicated in the classroom or other settings.
As part of the Implementation phase, on top of continuing to multiply activities and resources, our intention is to create an open-source platform containing all the necessary details so that FI can be adopted by any interested professionals in the education community. This way we can maximize the reach and autonomous use of everything that the project has to offer.
The pedagogical methodology for teaching and learning in STEM exploits aesthetic experience, bodily engagement, self-expression and creative exploration. It fosters an evolving experience, a ‘learning flow’, in which learners explore and engage with STEM-oriented situations, differently from one passage to the next, thus scaffolding their knowledge and skills to build a deeper and more meaningful relationship with STEM. Consolidated methodological elements (inquiry-based and project-based learning) and new, pedagogically powerful ones (aesthetics, immersivity, embodied cognition) are integrated into the learning flow in 3 stages: from capturing attention through a response to a powerful stimulus; to focusing on exploration to elaborate and deepen into concepts; to engaging in a project that leads to meaning making and personal expression.
‘Capture-Focus-Engage’ are the 3 stages of the learning flow:
‘Capture’ builds on powerful digital art installations which explore STEM-oriented concepts. No explicit reference is made to STEM in that initial moment; learners’ encounters are immersive and characterized by interaction with immediate impact at sensory, emotional and aesthetic levels. Immersion and aesthetic experience help engage senses, cognition, emotions, the body, often in unexpected ways and offer a series of meanings and insights that stimulate reflection among the learners.
In ‘Focus’, starting from reflection on the Capture experience, the ‘STEM dimension’ of the art installations becomes the subject of experimentation that helps learners explore science concepts and technologies in depth, understand their qualities and how they might connect, and build basic knowledge and skills to enable reuse of learned concepts in other situations.
At the ‘Engage’ stage, learners build on the knowledge, skills and experience developed in the previous stages to conceive and design their own project encouraged to integrate aesthetics, self-expression and storytelling
Across the globe countries grapple with the future of education even more now that the pandemic accelerates the need to support mindsets that value beauty, creativity, innovation, sustainability and inclusion helping individuals to build their own potential and a sense of belonging and thrive in an uncertain future. In this, STEM are not only inseparable parts of our everyday life but also valid tools to enhance participation, skills (agency, critical thinking, problem posing, managing complexity, creative thinking, self-expression and meaning making), active citizenship and social cohesion.
Traditionally, schools are entrusted with the responsibility of producing a scientifically literate population, yet, despite the efforts, the situation today seems little improved. Schools on their own cannot bear the task, with disaffection at different levels (engagement at school, participation in the debate around science and technology etc.) risking to increase at worrying levels.
FI emerged from the need to contribute towards the enrichment of STEM education, today still characterized by transmissive approaches and rigid teaching structures; to support teachers in acquainting themselves with new (digital) tools, often closer to the agendas of their own students than to their own ones; and to reinforce the stance that sees children as active constructors of knowledge.
FI promotes a methodology designed to be integrated into school practice, reaching out to each school that becomes agent within the local community. Disaffection, loss of contact or traditional approaches become concrete situations that can be addressed through new ideas tailored on specific needs, objectives and local identity. By adopting FI, schools can establish collaborations that best reflect their own context, such as those with artists, local museums and community organizations, with the view that STEM education can transform curriculum practice, learning spaces, tools.
Demonstrated results: pedagogical methodology integrated into a teacher training course, the learning activities for students in the Museum and classroom, the kit, the artist-in-residence program and the new permanent “Future Inventors” Museum lab open to schools and the community.
Between 2019 and 2021, the outputs were designed and prototyped by the Museum staff with 12 expert teachers and international experts, tested with 6 pilot schools (38 teachers, 241 students) and evaluated by researchers from King's College London.
Achieved benefits: teachers gained knowledge and skills relating to science, technologies and pedagogy, enriched their practice through the know-how and kit (which remains their own) and receive permanent support by the Museum; students gained knowledge and skills in STEM through aesthetic experience and self-expression during activities in the Museum lab and in class including engagement with artists in residence. These are demonstrated in the KCL research report.
The implementation phase started in September 2022. The development plan includes: reach out to new schools, replicate the training courses for new teachers followed by work with students in the Museum and classroom, continue the Art residence program and the free provision of the kit to each participating school, and an open-source platform for the wide dissemination at national and international level.
In 2023, we plan 4 new training courses (January, March, June, October) followed by student work; 4 new art-residences (March, April, May, November), the publication of the pedagogical methodology, academic publications of the results of the research, and a first transfer of the methodology into an informal learning setting different from the Museum.
Envisaged results include the increase of the number of schools using Future Inventors and the gradual creation of a wide community of practice that leads to using the pedagogy for other topics of the STEM curriculum.
FI resonates with the Framework on sustainability in that it contributes to the “creation of supportive learning environments that enable teaching and learning that is hands-on and interdisciplinary”, and is built on those very characteristics of sustainability education i.e. being learner-centred, engaging, positive and based on real-life experiences, involving young people in meaningful ways, fostering collaboration and partnerships in local and wider communities; as well as promoting systems thinking, critical thinking, problem framing and exploratory thinking.
The notion of sustainability in the context of FI is understood as the need to create a pedagogical methodology, expressed and integrated in concrete actions and resources, that is transferable to school practice and to potentially all curriculum topics, replicable in any school context, useful and inspiring in the long run and not only within the period of the project itself.
More specifically, FI suggests ways to enrich the physical school learning environment (classroom and other school learning spaces) and encourage the use of a teaching approach that puts the learner at the centre of an engaging, participatory and experimental experience and challenges the traditional disciplinary barriers. Pedagogy and resources are designed to be used year after year within the school practice not only because they offer tangible ideas and tools but also because they build on the collaboration among teachers across different disciplines and on cooperations between formal and non-formal institutions. FI focuses on the development of skills and competences as the basis for building a lifelong relationship with STEM. This means developing a know-how that allows everyone to create their own, personal, meaningful and diverse relationship with STEM, therefore feel confident in understanding, taking positions and belonging within the ever-changing science and technology context and debate.
