The overarching goals of FEDORA are to produce a new future-oriented approach to science education and to foster proactive and anticipatory policy making aimed to align science education (a key-component of RRI)
with the fast-changing society and with the fast-changing modus operandi of R&I. The approach will aim to provide the young people with thinking and future-scaffolding skills (Branchetti et al., 2018). Among possible thinking skills, FEDORA will focus on inter-multi-trans-disciplinary, linguistic/argumentative and imaginative skills needed to grapple with the new methods of R&I and to enhance the capacity to talk of and about the societal challenges. As for the abilities to navigate the world with an
Anticipation-Action-Reflection mindset (OECD, 2018), FEDORA will focus on future-scaffolding skills: they refer to the ability to construct visions of the future (anticipation) that empower action in the present, in a
responsible and sustainable way (reflection). Future-scaffolding skills include scenario thinking, systems thinking, thinking beyond the realm of possibilities, action competence, managing uncertainty and complexity. The project’s activities address three blind spots in science education: (i) misalignment between knowledge organisation into disciplines in science and modus operandi of R&D; (ii) misalignment between science education language and complexity of life; (iii) educating the young generation with a mindset that science is retrospective and stable and the need to address experienced future schock caused by technological development in reality.
Project funding:
The EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation “Horizon 2020”
Project results:
The three main outputs of the analysis of the blind spots will have the form of reports:
? FR1 – Framework for aligning science teaching/learning in formal contexts with R&I: new inter-multi-transdisciplinary forms of knowledge organization for co-teaching and open-schooling;
? FR2 – Framework for aligning (formal, informal and non-formal) science education with society: the search for new languages and narratives to enhance imagination and the capacity to talk about the contemporary challenges;
? FR3 – Framework to futurize science education.
Period of project implementation: 2020-09-01 - 2023-08-31
Project coordinator: ALMA MATER STUDIORUM
Project partners: University of Helsinki, THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD (UOXF), FORMICABLU SRL, Stichting Teach the Future
