Supporting green action in schools and communities by inspiring and empowering teachers

Science on Stage is a European-wide non-profit initiative for teachers in the field of STEM education. Since 2019, it has focussed on promoting green action in schools by choosing the UN Sustainable Development Goals in STEM education as a guiding theme of its national and international festivals. At these events, teachers from all over Europe come together to share their ideas and best practices, to network and get inspiration, and to raise awareness of the need for quality in education and the education system’s commitment to being a part of sustainable cities and communities. At the last European festival in August 2024, over 800 teachers from 50 different countries came together in Turku, Finland. The guiding theme of the SDGs in STEM education, one out of seven guiding themes for presenting teaching projects at the festival fair, was particularly well-represented.

In addition to empowering teachers through offering training and networking opportunities, Science on Stage is committed to the dissemination of innovative teaching ideas and classroom projects by publishing open educational resources created, written and peer-reviewed by STEM teachers. In 2022, we published extensive teaching resources on how to address and integrate the SDGs in the classroom, followed by a call for participation in the European-wide Future League competition in October 2022. Among the applications, ten projects with an excellent focus on involving the students in a green action integrating their community or the wider region were chosen for the final in Berlin in November 2023. Participants – both students and teachers – expressed that the competition provided an incentive for them to envision and realise projects that strengthened their green competences and made them understand their own agency and impact for change within their communities. The winning projects invested the microplastic contamination of drinking water in cooperation with a partner school in Ecuador, built a mini-submarine fully equipped to monitor and protect the coastal environment in the region, and explored possibilities for a sustainable and barrier-free redesign of the school building, respectively.

In the beginning of September 2024, new digital teaching resources on AI in STEM Education were launched, also accompanied by a call for submitting innovative classroom projects, the AI in STEM challenge. The teaching materials include two projects focussing on bridging the topic of AI and machine learning and the teaching of digital and AI skills with the SDGs and the promotion of green competences and skills. The projects “EcoKids Teach AI” and “Recycling Smart” were identified from submissions to the Future League competition and the Portuguese Science on Stage festival in 2023 and developed as digital resources in order to provide hands-on examples and material for addressing the topic of recycling and waste separation in STEM education.

Through these resources and calls for application, Science on Stage hopes to continue to inspire new students and teachers throughout Europe to become active parts of their school communities and societies, and to (re)discover joy and purpose in learning and teaching STEM subjects.