UBC Task Force on Youth Employment and Well-Being:
Steaming around the Baltic Sea
by Matti Mäkelä | matti.makela@turku.fi
Photos: Jaska Poikonen
photos: Jaska Poikonen The title of this article was also the title of the webinar held in November. Webinar – arranged by the Task Force Supporting Youth Employment and Well-Being – covered some of the best STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math) education practices in the Baltic Sea Region (for example, Finnish STEAM activities in Turku and in Oulu, Fablabs in Lithuanian Schools). This webinar brought together 23 experts from different countries around the Baltic Sea. Even more popular was STEAM Turku Online Study Visit on May with as much as 58 participants. This study visit presented STEAM Turku in a nutshell: aims and goals, values, activities, results and best practices from pre-school education to secondary level.
Furthermore, during the year 2021 TF also planned two workshops to the UBC General Conference workshops, which will be held in 2022/23: • VET Goes Hybrid: Developing Resilient, Equitable and Attractive Solutions to Vocational Education and Training • Resilient cities through attractive education – STEAM education tackling global challenge
These and other forms of STEAM cooperation in BSR made apparent that there is a real demand for more cooperation and exchange of best practices in the field of STEAM education. TF has accepted the challenge and will arrange more STEAM webinars and study visits next year and support other STEAM activities in the UBC network. In addition to STEAM, Task Force concentrated on two other major themes during the year 2021: Basic Skills and Attractiveness of Vocational Education and Training. Under these themes TF arranged two webinars (one in May and one in September) under the title Today’s Truants – The best practices to manage school attendance problems. In these webinars participants learned what are school attendance problems, how to identify them and how they manifest in basic education. Three keys to better deal with SAPs turned out to be Attention, Attendance data and Assessment.
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