Presentation at 'Astronomy Education Allicance Meeting' hosted by EPSC and GHOU from 8 to 12 September 2014 in Cascais, Portugal.

1. THE ESERO PROJECT IN BELGIUM
Rodrigo Alvarez
Royal Observatory of Belgium
G-HOU2014
September 08-12 2014, Estoril, Portugal

2. The ESERO project
• Educational project supported by the
European Space Agency (ESA)
• ESERO stands for European Space Education
Resource Office

3. 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).

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. What B-ESERO offers
• Teacher trainings focus on hands-on activities

9. 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

10. Specific educational material

11. Specific educational material

12. 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…

13. 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

14. 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

15. 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

16. 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

17. 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 »

18. The “science@school” project

20. 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

21. Astronomy workshop
for teacher trainees

22. Astronomy workshop
for teacher trainees

23. B-ESERO : other activities
• ASGARD project: launching of a weather balloon with
in-board instrument elaborated in the classroom
ASGARD

24. B-ESERO : other activities
• Belgian CanSat competition: mini-satellite, integrated
within the volume of a soft drink can
CanSat

25. B-ESERO : other activities
• Visit of the first Belgian astronaut in the classroom
Dirk Frimout

26. 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

27. 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)

29. 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

30. esero@planetarium.be - www.esa.int/esero
European Space Education Research Office
An education project of the European Space Agency