STEAM – Task Force turns digital

by Matti Mäkelä| matti.makela@turku.fi

During the fall 2020 Task Force Supporting Youth Employment and Well-Being arranged one workshop and one seminar, due to the ongoing pandemic both were arranged online.

STEAM – Science and Technology Path for Every Child and Youngster workshop was arranged on 2nd of October as a part of this year’s EUBSRS Annual Forum. Workshop’s 26 participants represented educational organizations, decision-makers, youth workers, enterprises, and other professionals working with STEAM subjects from Finland, Sweden, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and Germany.

The workshop developed several ideas to develop STEAM cooperation in BSR:

• STEAM Baltic Sea region network with joint academic activities including short-term courses, joint projects, student exchange and joint teacher training activities • Study visits, workshops and seminars • International competition for secondary level education students (in the workshop the Beyond 2030 Challenge from Southwest Finland was used as a case example) • Material bank for STEAM activities on a platform that is open for everyone • Shared virtual learning environments

The 5th Annual School to Work Conference was arranged on 21st of October with the following themes: STEAM, attractiveness of VET, basic skills, NEETs and early school leaving. Seminar’s keynote speakers were project coordinator Erno Hyvönen from Ministry of Education and Culture (Finland) and Doctor Laima Galkute from Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania). Hyvönen spoke about basic skills challenges and solutions in Finland, and Galkute spoke about STEM and the European Green Deal.

There were 68 participants in the seminar and they had an opportunity to choose between 12 different workshops, which dealt with the subjects like, for instance, math tutors, peer mentoring, one stop shops, work-based immigration, sustainable development goals in STEAM and increasing awareness and attraction of VET. The seminar was arranged in cooperation with EUBSRS Flagship School to Work.

In 2021 UBC Task Force Supporting Youth Employment and Well-Being will continue to concentrate on three major themes: STEAM, attractiveness of vocational education and basic skills.

The idea behind the theme-based approach is that concentrating on certain issues would make cooperation and creation of common goals and projects easier, as we have already seen during the year 2020.