The ICSE Academy supports the EU’s endeavours to minimize the amount of low-performing STEM (science, maths, technology, engineering) learners. It does so by investing in a new era of a high-quality STEM teacher workforce by innovating based on existing best practices teacher education and transnational exchange strategies. This approach draws on mobility and collaboration as an integral part, thereby supporting young and established STEM teachers across Europe. Unique features of our proposed project are, in a nutshell:•A high-capacity partnership: The ICSE Academy partners are experienced higher education researchers, STEM initial teacher education (ITE) and continuous professional development (CPD) providers, educational policy makers, and schools from 13 countries learning with, from and about each other through specific innovative collaborative structures. •Unprecedented professional learning concept with three innovative professional learning formats for pre- and in-service STEM teachers, achieving effectiveness, accessibility and transferability to all Member States and fostering European mobility and collaboration: •Peer-learning through job-shadowing (ITE/CPD providers attend each other’s courses to learn from each other)•Interdisciplinary European workshop series (for teachers across Europe, run jointly by all ITE/CPD providers)•Collaborative European summer schools (in NL/CZ with focus on collaboration between participants as well as organizers)•Distinct needs-feasibility-alignment: The development of our professional learning formats is needs-driven in two ways: (1) Teachers will communicate bottom-up what they need and (2) policy makers will communicate top-down requirements from the policy level.The ICSE Academy will use a systemic approach to inform national and European policy based on a profound policy needs analysis. It will include targeted dissemination/communication and institutionalized exchange structures (e.g. round tables).

Our Erasmus+ Project ENSITE (ENvironmental Socio-Scientific Issues in Initial Teacher Education) supports the development of future science and maths (from now on referred to as science) teachers’ environmental citizenship and related teaching competences.We face severe global environmental challenges such as deforestation and plastic waste. Europe’s society needs to acknowledge these challenges and accept their role in supporting sustainable development. Our educational systems have to fulfil the obligation to enable citizens to do so. Science education, in particular, must equip them with the ability to find adequate technological solutions.ENSITE supports this endeavour. Research proposes the engagement of socio-scientific issues (SSI) as one promising path to developing environmental citizenship competences. However, science teachers graduating from higher education (HE) institutions are not prepared to teach SSI, because they not only require teaching “scientific facts” but also involve controversial information, complex data sets and ethical, social, economic or cultural motives. Such aspects are rarely covered in initial teacher education (ITE).We aim at improving HE by including environmental SSI in science ITE. To this end we will develop an innovative approach to support teachers in (1) developing competences in dealing with environmental SSI (“Learning”) and (B) acquiring teaching skills to supporting their future students at school in becoming responsible citizens (“Teaching”) themselves.ENSITE consists of 11 HE teams from institutions across Europe comprising experts in science education (research and practice), environmental issues, pedagogical concepts to acquire transversal and forward-looking skills (e.g. critical thinking, creativity, reasoning, reflection), students’ mobility, diversity in science courses/classrooms and large scale dissemination. All partners acknowledged that their educational science courses rarely cover citizenship education and see huge potential with regard to benefits for them and their students.We decided on a thoroughly elaborated range of activities to produce purposeful results.Our research activities cover the development of 13 teaching modules on environmental SSIs for future science teachers. These intellectual outputs (IOs) cover subject knowledge on SSIs (definitions, topic areas, relevance, etc.) and how to deal with them, implications for learning/teaching processes, pedagogical concepts to design lessons, and the role of teachers’ background (beliefs, cultural, etc.) which affects teaching SSIs.In order to ensure highest quality and a convincing red thread relating to our overall topic (environmental citizenship education), each research activity follows a clear methodology: In our iterative design process, each development phase is followed by a review and pilot, optimisation loop and, finally, production. Every partner has precisely defined responsibilities. Project meetings will be organized to support internal communication.We perform several pilot activities validating our IOs at partner HEI and paving the way for long-term implementation. We use feedback from participating teaching staff and students to improve our IOs (content, user-friendliness, media format, impact etc.).We will also disseminate our results in three subsequent summer schools. Thus, in every project year we will reach out to future science teachers across Europe. We will present our IOs, engage students in a variety of innovative activities and stimulate inter-cultural and social experiences. Feedback collected during our summer schools will be used to further improve our materials.We organize (national and international) multiplier events to promote the project among relevant educational stakeholders, initializing dialogue on the matters at hand and substantiate our findings, as well as boost sustainable dissemination and exploitation.We plan several targeted European-wide and national communication, dissemination and exploitation activities, such as establishing a web portal, pursuing a flexible and modern social media strategy or scientifically present our research findings.We expect ENSITE to boost innovation in HE and more particularly science ITE across Europe. This will lead to a substantially higher number of HE educators with a versatile range of scientific, transversal skills, citizenship competences and related teaching competences. In the longer term, this contributes to a widespread shared awareness of social and environmental responsibility. Our open-access materials will support Europe’s science teaching staff to benefit beyond project duration. Our materials will particularly allow each partner HEI to strengthen their trans-national collaboration, implement innovative approaches in their science ITE programmes and facilitate institutional change, raise their reputation, and actively contribute to Europe’s smart, sustainable and inclusive growth.

The SEER - The STE(A)M Education European Roadmap, is an improvement journey with different stages associated to intervention steps based on research and proven experiences with recommendations, to get more STE(A)M-happy motivated and connected citizens. The SEER will be at the intersection of four major dimensions: (1) the need to collect all that currently is in place (such as STE(A)M education policies, innovative STE(A)M teaching practices, and feedback on how existing STE(A)M programs were implemented so far), (2) the importance to foster exchange and dialogue among all STEAM education stakeholders, (3) the necessity to permanently carry out needs analysis activities that would identify gaps, as well as impact analysis of initiatives and policies and (4) provide guidance for future actions and get the buy-in of citizens and particularly major stakeholders (Ministries, schools, parents, teachers) through outreach mechanisms. The SEER will deliver: a) The SEER process: including focus groups, seminars and case studies with supporting surveys, polls, and results, leading to the identification of gaps and the STE(A)M Education European Roadmap; b) The STE(A)M Education European Roadmap: The Atlas of roadmaps that will help improve STE(A)M Education from different stakeholders starting point and using a myriad of paths depending on the goal to achieve; c) The STE(A)M Education European Roadmap Impact Strategy providing a standard impact assessment mechanism for new STEM plans, projects, and initiatives; d) A proposal of how an Integrated STE(A)M education certification framework could contribute to educational reform, why it is relevant for students, teachers, citizens and MoEs, and how schools can self-evaluate. Additionally, to continuously engage the community at large on the options and benefits of STE(A)M in our lives and their connection to a better / greener world, and future degrees and careers, SEER will run an ambitious series of dissemination actions.

Our proposed GEIGER will be an innovative solution with associated components and an Education Ecosystem addressing security, privacy and data protection risks of and for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises and Microenterprises (SMEs&MEs) in Europe. GEIGER will be developed in analogy of a GEIGER counter for detecting atomic radiation threatening human life. The GEIGER solution will be used for assessing, monitoring, and forecasting risks and reducing these risks by improving the SMEs’&MEs’ security with well-curated tools, and an education program targeting practitioners-in-practice as “Certified Security Defenders” bringing security expertise sustainably to SMEs&MEs using existing vocational education frameworks. GEIGER consist of a GEIGER Indicator that dynamically summarizes the current level of risk by evaluating measures undertaken for security defences among the participating SMEs&MEs. The GEIGER Indicator can be personalised by registering the enterprise’s profile and supports GDPR-compliant sharing and exchanging data about incidents. The GEIGER Toolbox allows stepwise do-it-yourself assessment and improvement of the SMEs’&MEs’ security, privacy, and data protection with lightweight controls and advice for improved protection at varied levels of sophistication. The included tools offer endpoint, server, and network protection and guide the SME&ME in a personalised manner in data hygiene, including access and security control, data privacy management, and backup practices. The GEIGER Education Ecosystem offers experimental-based training and cyber range-enabled challenges and will be integrated into curricula of diverse professions of non-ICT experts, offering direct impact on SMEs&MEs through target group-oriented education. The GEIGER solution will be demonstrated in three complementary use cases within three countries. GEIGER will achieve sustainable impact by raising awareness of more than one million SMEs&MEs within a period of 2.5 years after start.

IncluSMe (Intercultural learning in mathematics and science education) offers a constructive contribution for tackling one of Europe’s greatest challenges: education for an increasing number of refugee and immigrant youth, to integrate them into European educational systems and to provide for stable, socially cohesive societies. The project aimed to increase the quality of higher education curricula for prospective maths and science teachers by linking maths and science education with intercultural learning – and thereby strengthening students’ social, civic and intercultural competences.Core to IncluSMe was the design and implementation of open access teaching modules on intercultural learning for prospective maths and science teachers. The modules have been already implemented in Higher Education Institutions in Germany, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Spain, Greece, Lithuania, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Slovakia. The modules are also available free of charge and for immediate use on Erasmus+ Project Results Platform, in Scientix as well as on IncluSMe web portal https://inclusme-project.eu/.By offering international summer schools and multiplier events, IncluSMe strengthened transnational cooperation between universities in establishing mobility programmes for maths and science students in initial teacher education. The project brought together 11 teams of higher education institutions for initial teacher education from across Europe comprising experts in maths and science education, in inclusion and diversity, in mobility and intercultural learning, as well as people involved in pilot projects for refugees:University of Education Freiburg, Germany (coordinating institution)University of Nicosia, CyprusUniversity of Hradec Králové, Czech RepublicUniversity of Jaen, SpainNational and Kapodistrian University of Athens, GreeceVilnius University, LithuaniaUniversity of Malta, MaltaUtrecht University, NetherlandsNorwegian University of Science and Technology, NorwayJönköping University, SwedenConstantine the Philosopher University, Slovakia