Prof Mariano Gago, Former Minister of Science and Technology, Information Society and Higher Education in Poprtugal.

1. SCIENTIX 2 CONFERENCE
EC and European SchoolNet
Brussels
24 October 2014
«How Ministries of Education should uptake STEM challenges?»
José Mariano Gago
gago@lip.pt
Invited Thinker 2014 Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts
INSTITUTO SUPERIOR TÉCNICO - UNIVERSITY OF LISBON
LIP and
INSTITUTO DE PROSPECTIVA
PORTUGAL
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2. To the memory of Joan Solomon
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4. How Ministries of Education should uptake STEM challenges?
How should WE?
Why ministries of Education only? Why STEM only? What kind of STEM? Which STEM challenges?
From Plato and Aristotle, to Cicero and Thomas More’s Utopia, into modern times: philosophers as advisors to the king, or to the people
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5. How Governments should uptake STEM challenges?
1. By making clear their main objective: general science and technology education main purpose is the
scientific and technological culture of society at large
2. By recognising that promoting scientific and technological culture in society is key for the long term
success of Research and S&T policy. Science Education must therefore be part of S&T policy.
3. By promoting the appropriation of Science and Technology by society and thus by investing in science
education, formal and informal.
4. By celebrating the human values of science and their role in civilisation
5. By recognising that general Science and Technology Education in schools is key to lifelong learning
and to social adaptability.
6. By shaping science and technology education as an inclusive process of practical socialisation to
science and technology, working together with all other areas (from the arts to the sports) with no
barriers .
7. By using general science and technology education, project work, systematic experimental and
technical practice, as tools for reducing social selectivity in education.
8. By recognising that only the empowerment of science teachers and their social recognition by society
may allow for the success of sustainable S&T policies.
9. By devising and funding large scale stable national and international initiatives and by supporting
independent initiatives aiming at bringing together schools, research centres, science-based
professionals as well as industry and science centres.
10. By being held political accountable for their actions!
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6. How Governments should uptake STEM challenges?
By making clear their main objective: general science and technology
education main purpose is the scientific and technological culture of
society at large
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7. By recognising that promoting scientific and technological culture
in society is key for the long term success of Research and S&T
policy. Science Education must therefore be part of S&T policy.
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8. By promoting the appropriation of Science and Technology by
society and thus by investing in science education, formal and
informal.
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9. By celebrating the human values of science and their
role in civilisation
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10. By recognising that general Science and Technology
Education in schools is key to lifelong learning and to
social adaptability.
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11. By shaping science and technology education as an inclusive
process of practical socialisation to science and technology,
working together with all other areas (from the arts to the
sports) with no barriers .
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12. By using general science and technology education, project
work, systematic experimental and technical practice, as tools
for reducing social selectivity in education.
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13. By recognising that only the
empowerment of science teachers
and their social recognition by society may allow for the
success of sustainable S&T policies.
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14. By devising and funding large scale stable national and
international initiatives and by supporting independent
initiatives aiming at bringing together schools, research
centres, science-based professionals as well as industry
and science centres.
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15. By being held political accountable for their actions!
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17. “However the present study is more ambitious: it sets school science education in
the context of the future Europe-wide scientific culture of citizens.
We believe that the foundations on which the future of scientific culture in Europe is based
must be built from the knowledge and attitudes transmitted to pupils in the school
classroom.
How these attitudes develop depends on several very broad factors:
• the perceived purposes of science education;
• the contents of the National Curriculum for science;
• the national attitude to how school education should be carried out;
• the national attitude towards science as an academic system of thought.
Science education serves several purposes including preparation for academic scientific
research and training for work in many other fields which may include aspects of science.
Our aim in this project was to look at just one specific purpose - that of forming the public
scientific culture. “ Joan Solomon
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18. “When we decided, five years ago (in1990), to launch the debate on the future of scientific
culture in Europe, and we selected scientific education as the prime sphere of
action, we were well aware of how difficult this task would be.
“The difficulty was, firstly, one of lack of opposition. The debate surrounding
scientific culture revolves, first and foremost, around the conditions of citizenship
in the modern world. Thus, it is a political debate and a political struggle.
“Indeed, the fact that scientific education should have as its cornerstone the criteria of the
formation of wide-spread scientific culture is not obvious , as is apparent from the absence of
the banal and lasting consequences that would be its natural sequel: more widespread
experimentation in the teaching of sciences; "live" scientific education from primary school level;
systematic educational partnership between basic schooling, research institutions, museums or
information dissemination centres.
“The difficulty is also one of duration. Tackling the matter of duration, calls for convictions
rooted in stable social practices.
And hence the third and last difficulty: the fight for scientific culture can only be stated and
brought to notice through denunciation, through a specific attack on what is wrong, (…)of
the structural and pervasive barriers between science and the general population. Hence,
concrete denunciation should be juxtaposed with the effective implementation, the
concrete proof of the possibility of a more democratic scientific culture.
So this is where we are now. “ jmg1995
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20. “It is a sad fact that in most countries very few students who have specialised in SET
or mathematics are recruited into teacher education. The future teacher is more likely to
have a preference for other subjects. In their teaching training, they can often continue to
avoid SET subjects.
This seems to be the case for most countries at the primary level, while the degree of subject
specialisation varies between countries at the secondary level.
At the upper secondary level, most countries have better SET-qualified teachers, although
many countries today suffer from a lack of newly qualified entrants into the SET teaching
workforce.
Paradoxically, the more a society has a need for people with a SET background, the
less likely is it that such people will enter the teaching profession. Part of the reason is
that remuneration, working conditions, possibilities for in-service training, etc. make
the teaching profession less attractive than other areas of work for people who are in
demand. Well qualified and motivated SET teachers are key when it comes to
stimulating future generations’ interest in science and technology and SET careers.
Hence, in the long run, the future lack of well-qualified SET teachers may be even more
serious than the current demand for researchers and scientists.”
Ziman et al, 2004
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21. Science Education should contribute to EDUCATION
Empowering science teachers should contribute to empowering students and
To helping them
To think out of the box!
3 bright spots
Education revisited (from Aldous Huxley, Island, 1962)
Science education revisited (from Robert Louis Stevenson, St Ives, 1897)
Education under attack (from the UN, today)
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27. I don’t know where the rope was got, and doubt if I much cared. Its length, indeed, we made a shift
to fathom out; but who was to tell us how that length compared with the way we had to go?
Day after day, there would be always some of us stolen out to the Devil’s Elbow and making
estimates of the descent, whether by a bare guess or the dropping of stones.
A private of pioneers remembered the formula for that—or else remembered part of it and
obligingly invented the remainder. I had never any real confidence in that formula; and even had
we got it from a book, there were difficulties in the way of the application that might have
daunted Archimedes.
We durst not drop any considerable pebble lest the sentinels should hear, and those that we
dropped we could not hear ourselves.
We had never a watch—or none that had a second-hand; and though every one of us could
guess a second to a nicety, all somehow guessed it differently. In short, if any two set forth upon
this enterprise, they invariably returned with two opinions, and often with a black eye in the
bargain. I looked on upon these proceedings, although not without laughter, yet with impatience
and disgust.
I am one that cannot bear to see things botched or gone upon with ignorance; and the thought
that some poor devil was to hazard his bones upon such premises, revolted me.
(RL Stevenson, St Ives)
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28. EDUCATION
UNDER ATTACK
2014
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30. http://www.protectingeducation.org/education-under-attack-2014
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31. Thank you!
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