ECB

Careers in industry

In this topic we discussed if students were informed about careers in industry and how school counseling varies in each countries of Europe. There was a feeling that especially girls won´t get the necessary information for technical education and in some countries girls aren´t so interested in STEM careers and choosing more humanistic professions. Also we agreed how important is to have enthusiastic teacher who is pushing pupils, especially girls, in STEM-subjects when they see them struggling. Also it seems that many teachers don´t have the necessary information on STEM-careers and therefore they cannot help their students. Career counseling is seen to be very important, but that varies a lot in Europe. Some countries have no career counselors and some that have, don´t have enough resources to do it properly. It´s very important to collaborate between teachers and career counselors, since teachers carry the information of pupils and counselors carry the information of careers.

Skills provided by the school
In this topic we discussed about necessary skills that schools have to teach students, for making them fitting for careers in STEM.
Teachers shared their ideas and, at the same time, we found inspirations from the ideas industries shared during career counsellors workshop in Brussels.
- Creative and critical thinking
- Ability of learning through PBL (project based and problem based learning) environment
Students need to learn to act in non-standard situations and solve non-standard problems using heuristics methods
- Ability of asking questions (not just to answer the questions someone thought for you) and the ability to recognize problems (not just to solve the problems someone present you)
 
- correct fruition of the internet (how to find informations on the web)

- Ability of team working.

- Ability of problem solving

- Ability of planning investigations, analysing results and evaluating experiments

- Ability of self learning
Learning from choice rather than from prescription can enhance the pupil's knowledge, participation and interest at school and would also increase their interest to study stem later.
Many presenters from industries suggested that it would be really a good thing that students could have the opportunity to learn to think out of the box inside the ordinary curricula...
Students must be ready to change their skills, because progress always opens new challenges and working with science and technology needs that people would be ready to adapt to new needs.
There are also some skills that are required for innovation:
- business skills: to turn ideas into sustainable markets;
- personal skills: for success collaborations;
- scientific and technological skills: for breakthrough solutions
In many countries Ministries of Education are planning special programs for talented students, to let them develop solid bases in STEM education. This is a good choice, because otherwise some good students loose themselves by the way, especially if they get bored inside ordinary curricula.
Many teachers observed that many times the problem can be teachers and teaching methods.
We have not only to change our teaching methodology to keep the students attention, but we have to be aware also of the new learning process, much different from ours.
The gap between teachers like those who participate here and others is big and deep.
There is not a quick solution. Only national programs of teachers training and adapting curriculum can make the change.
 
Boys versus girls’ careers
In this topic we discussed if there such a thing as boys’ careers and girls’ careers
Many teachers observed that girls are more interested in certain subjects, like chemistry, biology and natural sciences and boys are more interested in other subjects, like maths, physics and engineering.
The main factors that influence the students are: personal interests and the difficulty of the subject. Sometimes anyway, the perception that girls have about their attitude in STEM subjects is due to a cultural problem, rather than a real shortage.
 The most important think that we can do is at early age in the kindergarten stimulate girls in their interest in STEM subjects using frequently the same practical activities as the boys do, to give up stereotypes.
Do girls need to be motivated differently than boys? 
We have to encourage girls already from the primary school (or maybe the kindergarten) to study math and science.
Maybe girls and boys have different ways of learning STEM subjects and it is up on us, the teachers, finding different methods to teach.
 Also in the European Parliament’s magazine it is written that "Although girls participate and perform at comparative level to boys in these topics at secondary level, they rarely move into tertiary or vocational paths in technology and IT... girls need a more realistic idea of science, technology, engineering and mathematics studies and jobs..."
Teachers are very important as career advisor and mentors, making girls engaging in STEM subjects! Industries develop special programs for engaging girls in STEM. Teachers brought some examples, like INTEL with its program “Gender diversity in STEM: why it matters”, IBM with its “EXITE” project; Google Israel with “Mind the gap”. In some countries these projects addressed to involve more girls in STEM subjects come from Ministries of Education or from nonprofit organisations.
 
School/ industry initiatives
In the first thread we discussed what kind of resources and actions could help teachers to promote STEM and careers in industry. With younger pupils (primary) teachers  would prefer expert-visits. Those visits could also easily to be arranged with pupils´ parents for example. Pupils would love to hear of their typical day for example. With older pupils chats, industry visits, projects between school and industry were mentioned. All the teachers agreed on positive effect with collaboration between school and industry. In the second thread we discussed what schools actually do to promote industries and STEM. We discussed about collaboration between teachers, as teachers would teach the subject they are familiar with and are motivated about, also if it means to swop classes. In some countries it´s easy to swop classes between colleagues, especially in primary schools. Workshops, career counselors and different kinds of projects such as job shadow projects were mentioned as success stories.