International Comparative Report on the Dissemination Activities · 2016-10-25 · International Comparative Report on the Dissemination Activities . 2 ... (IBL), connections to the

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The project mascil has received funding from the European Union

Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2013-2017) under grant agreement n° 320693.

International Comparative Report on the Dissemination Activities

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Project Information Project no. 320693 Project acronym: mascil Start date of project: 01/01/2013 Duration: 48 months Project title:

Mathematics and science for life

Dissemination level Thematic Priority: Science in Society Funding scheme: FP7

Information about the deliverable Deliverable N° 7.1 Due date of deliverable: Month 45 Actual submission date: 30/09/2016 Deliverable title:

International Comparative Report on the Dissemination Activities Contact Information Coordinator: University of Education Freiburg, Prof. Dr. Katja Maaß Lead partner for this deliverable: Dr Nicholas Mousoulides Website: www.mascil-project.eu © 2016 Dr Nicholas Mousoulides, University of Nicosia, mascil project (G.A. no. 320693) The mascil consortium grants the permission to distribute the licensed materials under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license as described at

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

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Table of Contents

Executive Summary .................................................................................................................. 4

1. Introduction and Dissemination Strategy ......................................................................... 7 1.1 Project overview ....................................................................................................... 7 1.2 Overall dissemination strategy.................................................................................. 8

2. Dissemination in Mascil project ...................................................................................... 11 2.1 Contextual Factors and Rationale ........................................................................... 11 2.2 Focus of Dissemination ........................................................................................... 22 2.3 Implementation Challenges and how to Overcome them ....................................... 25 2.4 Good Examples of Dissemination ............................................................................ 29 2.5 Effectiveness of Dissemination ............................................................................... 39

3. Conclusions and Recommendations ............................................................................... 47 3.1. Essential Conditions for Successful Dissemination .................................................. 47 3.2. Further Improvements ............................................................................................ 49 3.3. Sustainability .......................................................................................................... 51

4. References ...................................................................................................................... 54

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Executive Summary

The present report provides a description and analysis of the mascil dissemination strategy framework, and an international comparative report on the dissemination activities carried out during the lifetime of the project in all partner countries. The mascil consortium recognized from the beginning that dissemination activities are an essential and pervasive task throughout the project’s life, and integrated within all project’s working packages. Developing and implementing an effective dissemination strategy was crucial in meeting the project’s overall aim, which was to increase young Europeans knowledge and interest for Science and Technology (S&T), and to attract more students in following Science and Technology related careers. In doing so, mascil activities focused on increasing teachers’ skills in regards to inquiry based science teaching (IBL), connections to the World of Work (WoW), and the use of mathematics and science in S&T careers.

Dissemination strategy of the project was also in line with the general approach that was followed in the project, and which focused on the systemic level. Specifically, the project follows the systemic approach, and the participatory intervention model and thus involved these target groups from the outset: (a) teachers, aiming to encourage them to participate in the professional development activities organized by mascil, and to encourage them to use IBL in their classes; (b) other groups that are close to schools, such as heads of schools, parents, students, teacher educators etc., aiming to inform them about the added value of IBL and its aims, the importance of the connections between school and the world of work, and to provide them with examples of how they can support these innovative ways of teaching and learning; (c) science and mathematics educators, aiming to encourage them to spread information on the project beyond partner countries.

The report is structured in three chapters. The first chapter focuses on the mascil dissemination strategy framework, and it is analyzed in two sessions, (a) the project overview (in regards to dissemination) and (b) the principles of the overall dissemination strategy that was carried out in the project. The second chapter focuses on the dissemination activities that were carried out in the macsil project. The chapter is structured on the following sessions: (a) the contextual factors and rationale of the project dissemination, (b) the focus of the dissemination in all partner countries, (c) the implementation challenges and how the project consortium overcome them, (d) some

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exemplary examples of effective dissemination events, in all partner countries, and (e) a discussion on the effectiveness of the dissemination activities carried out in mascil. The third chapter is devoted in the conclusions and recommendations, and it is structured in three sessions: (a) a presentation of the essential conditions for successful dissemination, as those have been identified from the mascil experience, (b) our reflection on the possibilities for further improvements, and (c) the sustainability aspects of the project.

The significant outcomes can be summarized in the following:

The implementation of the dissemination strategy has been successful, ensuring the quality of mascil as a dissemination project. The specific objectives, namely (a) supporting a widespread uptake of inquiry-based science teaching in rich vocational contexts across partnership countries, and (b) disseminating information on the project, the inquiring features of mathematics and science, their usefulness and inquiry-based pedagogies to a variety of target groups, have been reached to a great extent.

The project consortium, by making use of a systemic approach and the participatory intervention model have succeeded, to: (a) informed and engaged teachers (pre-service and in-service), and students on the project’s aims and objectives, (b) informed and engaged other target groups, including high level policy-makers, inspectors, researchers of science and mathematics education, on IBL, and the mascil project in particular, (c) informed parents and other community members during meetings and workshops on the core idea and the activities carried in mascil project, (d) initiated cooperation between teachers, and various local actors, including industry and providers of informal education, and (e) worked towards bringing together different target groups and facilitated their collaboration.

Our dissemination strategy and workplan had both qualitative and quantitative targets. It was intended to reach both large numbers of people in our target groups, and have a large number of dissemination activities, but at the same time all required quality measures were carried out and guidelines were followed, as to maximize the qualitative aspect of our dissemination activities. Impressively, all partners have organized and participated in a very large number of dissemination events, covering more than 400 dissemination events, and more than 60 research publications.

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To further improve the high quality dissemination strategy and activities, the report concludes with the essential conditions for a successful dissemination implementation for such a dissemination project, the ways to further improve the dissemination results in all partner countries, and a sustainability plan. Our dissemination identified that, among others, the essential conditions for successful dissemination include the use of high quality of products, like the products delivered in the mascil project (e.g. teaching materials, marketing materials, PD courses, events, workshops, exhibitions etc.), the target group specific actions, the links with other organizations and local authorities, and how these links resulted in close collaborations, the necessary and catalytic connections with stakeholders, and the importance of the workplace contexts.

To further improve a successful dissemination framework, it is important to make use of existing materials, networks, contacts, be open for opportunities, make the changes sustainable even if it requires a lot of efforts, evaluate the needs of the target groups, and try to receive important information and valuable advises from experts. In further planning and dissemination, it remains important to work on developing strategic partnerships that can move forward and promote similar aims once the mascil project comes to an end.

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1. Introduction and Dissemination Strategy

1.1 Introduction to Mascil Project Dissemination

The dissemination strategy of the mascil project follows the systemic approach that has been adopted for the whole project. To this end, project partners carried out dissemination activities that explicitly targeted: (a) teachers; encourage them to participate in the professional development activities and encourage even more teachers, than those participate in professional development courses, to use Inquiry Based Science Teaching (IBL) in their classes, (b) other target groups that are close to school practice. These groups include, among others, policymakers, politicians interested and/or involved in educational policy, heads and deputy-heads of schools, parents, students, teacher educators, researchers etc. to inform them about IBL and its aims, connections between school and the world of work and what they can do to support these innovative ways of teaching, and (c) science and mathematics educators to spread information on the project beyond the partner countries.

With regards to the main objectives mentioned above, the project consortium by making use of a systemic approach and the participatory intervention model have succeeded to:

inform teachers (pre-service and in-service), and students on the project’s aims and objectives

inform other target groups, including high level policy-makers, inspectors, researchers of science and mathematics education, on IBL, and the mascil project in particular

inform parents and other community members during meetings and workshops on the core idea and the activities carried in mascil project

initiate cooperation between teachers and various local actors, including industry and providers of informal education

work towards bringing together different target groups at the mascil mid-conference, and mascil final conference.

The project consortium, led by the coordinator Prof. Maass organized the mascil mid-term conference (a second, final conference will take place in month 47). The mid-term conference was very successful, both in terms of the number of participants, the PD centres that were involved, and of course the quality of the contributions. Based on

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these outcomes, it is expected that the project’s final conference will not only be a successful event, but also a significant teacher and research conference at an international level.

Our dissemination strategy and workplan have both qualitative and quantitative targets. It is intended to reach both large numbers of people in our target groups, and have a large number of dissemination activities, but at the same time all required quality measures are carried out and guidelines are followed, as to maximize the qualitative aspect of our dissemination activities. To achieve that, frequent exchange of knowledge and ideas between partners takes place, joined (between partners) dissemination events are carried out, including research papers. Further, it is impressive that all partners have organized and/or participated in a large number of dissemination events. Specifically, mascil consortium have organized and participated in more than 400 dissemination events, covering all target groups. Taking the above into account, it seems safe to claim that the project fulfils the targeted objectives of dissemination to the greatest possible extent.

1.2 Overall Dissemination Strategy

The Dissemination Strategy Framework presented below is based on the “Creating an effective Dissemination Strategy and Expanded Interactive Workbook for Education Development Project, by Harmsworth and Turpins (2000). A project cannot be considered to have had real impact if there is no dissemination of its results beyond the boundaries of the project itself. Effective dissemination is not an easy part of the operation of projects, but it is very rewarding. Further, dissemination is very important because it provides added value to projects, as the impact can be potentially wider than the original focus. Effective dissemination also ensures that a project can have a real impact, beyond the boundaries of the project itself. Finally, effective dissemination can facilitate the achievement of sustainability and the long-term continuation of any project.

What is Dissemination?

Dissemination refers to “the process by which, using certain strategies, results of a project are made available, comprehensible and usable by potential users.” (Harmsworth & Turpins, 2000). Within the mascil project dissemination framework, dissemination is approached in four different levels, namely:

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Dissemination for Awareness. In this level, the dissemination aims to make people aware of the mascil project. This is useful, especially for those target audiences that do not require a detailed knowledge of the mascil project, but it is still helpful for them to be aware of our activities and outcomes. Dissemination at this level is expected to help us build an identity and profile within our community.

Dissemination for Understanding. The various target groups that are directly targeted focus in this level of dissemination. These groups have been explicitly identified from the beginning of the project and they can benefit from our mascil project. These target groups need to have a deep understanding of the project work, activities, results, and outcomes, especially because their involvement in the project is expected to improve significantly its results.

Dissemination for Support. It is crucial that the project consortium gets support from key audience and other stakeholders. Even if the project delivers excellent results, if it does not get the support required from key policy makers, all of the project efforts will be limited. It is important that people we want to eventually use our mascil project’s results must be involved from the beginning, supporting our activities.

Dissemination for Action. Action refers to a change of practice resulting from the adoption of products, outcomes or approaches offered by the mascil project. These audiences (or groups) are the people that are in a position to “influence” and “bring about change” within their organizations. These are the audiences that need to be equipped with the right skills and knowledge of our work in order to achieve real change.

Scope of Dissemination

The purpose of the mascil dissemination strategy is to provide the project consortium with an effective and efficient blueprint to follow in disseminating the objectives and results of the mascil project. Further, an objective of the dissemination strategy is to make known as widely as possible the activities, the outcomes, the products, and the recommendations of the mascil project, especially to teachers, and to other policy-makers at the national, EU and international levels.

The dissemination strategy framework lies on four basic public relations principles: (a) Stay proactive and be visible. Mascil should focus on promoting the objectives through media and community involvement. Another aspect focused on building positive relationships with opinion makers (e.g. policymakers at the Ministries of Education). (b)

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Be informed: Keep abreast of education and community issues. Attend the national and community policy making on the topics of IBL and WoW. (c) Be consistent in all actions and work on delivering the right actions at the right place. (d) Be constructive, by trying to be part of the solution and by building personal relationships.

To meet the scope and the objectives mentioned above, dissemination has to be an ongoing process that should be understood as beginning in the first stages of the project and continuing long after the project’s end. In order to maximize its impact, project consortium carefully planned the type and the timing of any activity focused on dissemination. Further, consortium focused on choosing the most appropriate period for dissemination, depending on current (and national in sometimes) priorities, availability of resources and opportunities. However, in any case, project consortium considered designing a plan focused on different dissemination phases, from the initial stage to the final-stage dissemination activities.

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2. Dissemination in Mascil project

2.1 Contextual Factors and Rationale

To better implement the dissemination activities in all partner countries, an ongoing analysis of the existing contextual factors, the rationale and the supportive factors was carried out. These factors are presented next, for each partner country.

Germany

Several challenges were faced by planning and implementing diverse dissemination activities, namely:

Educational situation in Baden-Württemberg is characterized by reform processes, both in the structures of the school system and in curricula, which lead to teacher reluctance to participate in any new activities. Additionally, teachers complained of work overload and lack of time. The facultative character of each dissemination activity/PD course makes very difficult/challenging reaching teachers for any additional activities.

Dissemination of the project, its aims and results is time-consuming. Both establishing and maintaining contacts to single people, to the group of people and/or to institutions require a lot of efforts such as: writing mails, sending newsletters, flyers and/or invitations.

There were some factors that German partners experienced as very supportive.

First, the very good quality of the produced materials / project’s results was significant for dissemination among teachers. Ongoing, partner received request on materials (in digital and print form) from people from not only European countries (among others even from African and American countries). Such requests motivate us to make even more effort to make the mascil materials more available/visible.

Second, the topics addressed by mascil project are strongly present in the current policy debate in Baden-Württemberg and belong to the core content of the upcoming educational curricula. It means that the activities and courses organized by mascil project arouse interest by some professional groups.

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Third, changes in the social live and structure related to the movement of refugees on the European level cause emerging of new societal needs. Therefore, mascil project can respond to these needs through offering some educational courses for refugees.

Austria

Dissemination is approached in three different ways:

Dissemination for Awareness. The main target groups for this are: stakeholders, policy makers and math and biology education researchers in Austria and on an international level. As these people hardly have time to come to a particular mascil meeting, partners addressed them face to face whenever meet them in various contexts, e.g. MA Kurt Nekula, who is responsible for “quality assurance of the Austrian teacher training and school system” at the Ministry of Education and Family was informed about mascil during a meeting at the AECCs at the University of Vienna. Others such as Prof. Franz Rauch (IMST Network, Austria), Mag. Jürgen Czernohorszky (City school board, Vienna), Dr. Thomas Plankensteiner and Mag. Adolfine Gschliesser (School board of the Country Tyrol) were informed at similar occasions. Further, colleagues working in mathematics and biology education research were also informed at conferences (e.g. ESERA, ECER, New perspectives in Science Education, VBio etc.). Supporting factor: The Austrian Education Competence Center Biology is involved in many stakeholder and researcher groups which are active in the teacher education system in Austria and in science education research internationally.

Dissemination for Understanding. The main target groups for this are representatives from pedagogical colleges and pre-service and in-service teachers who are not participating in Austrian mascil training courses. Representatives of pedagogical colleges were informed via negotiating cooperation contracts. Four pedagogical colleges became formal Austrian partners in the mascil project, and that resulted in reaching more than 850 pre-service teachers.

Dissemination for Action. Teacher are the most important target group to make changes in science teaching happen in Austria. Thus it was most important to run mascil training courses in as many Austrian counties as possible. Partner finally managed to run training course in 5 out of 9 counties and a “Bundesseminar” which is a nationwide advertised teacher training seminar in February 2016. An obstacle is the fact that currently it is very difficult to motivate teachers to enroll in additional in-service teacher training courses, which requires more investment than half-day workshop activities. In-

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service training is not compulsory for many teachers and due to the implementation of standardized tests and a new high school curriculum those who are motivated engage in tearing courses which prepare them for these new tasks. In addition, Austrian mascil courses ask teacher to implement mascil activities in class and report on their experience afterwards which is a time consuming and a challenging activity.

Bulgaria

The decisive role of the dissemination activities for the implementation of the project was one of the priorities of the Sofia mascil team from the very beginning of the project. It was decided that these activities should embrace all important stakeholders: teachers, policy makers, school masters, parents, general public and also school students. It was also decided to use a variety of tools with the aim to reach larger parts of the Bulgarian society: Conferences, Seminars, Workshops, Round table discussions, publications and interviews (in newspapers, magazines, national broadcasting radio systems and national television channels). The partners for the dissemination and implementation of the project were also identified: Ministry of Education and Science (MES), Regional inspectorates for Education (RIE), Regional Centers of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, publishing houses responsible for the production of school text-books, RAABE-Bulgaria (the biggest provider in the country of professional development courses for in-service teachers), non-governmental organizations as the Union of Bulgarian Mathematicians, Foundation “Prosveta”, etc.

Cyprus

Among the challenges faced in Cyprus was the fact that the educational system in the country was characterized by major reforms in both curricula (in all subjects), in the school system (subject choices, access to universities), and in teacher working conditions (new scheme for professional learning, teacher appointment). This situation had a negative effect on teacher willingness to participate in professional activities. Further, the fact that in-service training in Cyprus was so far not compulsory made it more difficult to attract teachers to participate in the mascil program.

However, there were many supportive factors for carrying out mascil dissemination activities in Cyprus. One was the fact that IBL and STEM in general are among the core changes in the new curricula. Consequently, a number of teachers were willing to join our program. At the same time, IBL and connections to the WoW were also interesting topics for policy makers, and parents. Finally, the Cyprus partner had excellent connections with national high level officials (e.g. Minister of Education and Culture,

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Directors of Education, Chairpersons of Teacher Unions, Chairpersons of Parent Associations), which made it possible to accredited the mascil courses, and to have regular mascil related meetings at the national ministry of education. There good connections and collaborations were among the major reasons for the successful implementation of the dissemination actions (and the project in general) in the country.

Czech Republic

Currently, a reform of the education system is taking place in the Czech Republic. The changes relate to wider policy perspectives (macro level), school level (meso-level) and classroom level (micro-level), and are evident in the following lines. In relation to wider policy perspectives, new curricular documents for primary and lower secondary education include the field of “Man and world of work”. In curricular documents the call for inquiry-based methods has appeared, but only generally mentioned for the time being. The IBL approaches are prioritized in policy making national documents on general level only, without concrete explanation and comments in examples and expected competences. Consequently, the national curriculum prioritizes inquiry based teaching and learning approaches, in general and in specific in science and mathematics subjects, in the primary, general secondary and vocational education, but unfortunately, rather on general level, without concrete explanation and comments in examples and expected competences (as in the national curriculum).

Regarding professional development, teacher training on IBL has become the main policy priority a recommended trend. Although such an orientation is being declared in educational documents on all levels, it is hardly implemented in practice. At the school level, there seem to be only sporadic relations between general education and industry, mostly in the form of joint projects or sponsoring (funding), both in the field of formal and informal education. Direct relation between the vocational schools and industry does exist. The extent to which schools implement policy priorities in relation to inquiry based teaching and learning approaches is not large, in general and in specific in science and mathematics education on all educational levels. In relation to teacher training, overall concept of prospective training includes both the theoretical background and topics connecting school and the world of work, on all levels of the education system. The main teaching method is active learning; the IBL is on start point.

In the Czech Republic, the national educational context seems to be passive to some extent, and definitely more supportive efforts for the IBL implementation could be included in all documents. Although the implementation of the mascil project objectives into the currently-designed educational reform on the policy making level is obvious, the

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objectives are not widely reflected in school and classroom practice yet. Pedagogies and learning materials developed within the mascil project are expected to provide significant support in the Czech Republic. It means that the main part of mascil dissemination activities was included into teachers´ professional development in the Czech Republic and related cooperating institutions in other countries.

Greece

Our main challenges in planning and implementing dissemination activities were to target a large number of in-service teachers and school communities in participating in our mascil PD meetings. These teachers could possibly act as multipliers of mascil philosophy in our educational system. This can be considered successful, since (i) 136 in-service teachers participated in our PD meetings though face-to-face and e-learning communication; (ii) participants were from a wide variety of disciplines such as mathematics, science and informatics who were working in primary, lower and upper secondary general and vocational schools. (iii) all our mascil participants spread out mascil philosophy to their colleagues in their schools; (iv) many of our participants carried out dissemination activities (talks & workshops) in national conferences and open school lessons; (v) some of our participants and the members of the Greek mascil team prepared papers for submission to international conferences (e.g., PME 40, ICME 13) which could support disseminating the aims of the project to the wider educational community.

Supporting factors in approaching teachers were: (i) the use of existed channels of communication (e.g., post graduate programs) and collaboration with teachers especially at the secondary level (e.g., school-based initiatives of mathematics and science teachers); (ii) the announcement about mascil in two national conferences (in the 30th Annual Conference of the Hellenic Mathematical Society (HMS) in Karditsa at 8-10 November, 2013 and the 5th conference of the Greek Association of Researchers of Mathematics Education (GARME) in Florina at 14-16 March, 2014); (iii) the development of our national website which proved to be an important tool for disseminating our mascil activities to Greek teachers and preparing our PD courses; and (d) the design of a leaflet for advertising mascil to teachers and policy makers.

Lithuania

One of the supporting factors was that the STEM is priority in Lithuania now. And this approach is very close to mascil ideology. The policy makers were interested in mascil. In the discussions of workshops with policy makers and researchers were concentrated

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on how to implement IBL into STEM strategy and to solve more concrete problems. For example, were seen some challenges: how to organize and to involve all Lithuanian teachers of mathematics, science, technologies, computing and other subjects to use IBL? The question is related with teacher professional development and teacher preparations in the universities, and of course it has a financial aspect too. Other question was how to make STEM subjects attractive to students.

Netherlands

Currently, all science and mathematics examination programs for senior high schools in the Netherlands have been reformed, the resulting programs starting at the national level in 2013 and 2015. One of the aims of renewing the single disciplines was to make them more coherent. All programs define common competences related to research, design and communication. A context-concept approach is a dominant approach in these new disciplines. Contexts are taken from every-day life, but also contexts from science innovation and industry are used in teaching and assessment. Pre-service and in-service teacher training programs that prepare for these reform programs will certainly profit from the mascil project.

The Ministry of Education decided to reduce government interference with pedagogical and didactical aspects of education. The Ministry now mainly focuses on the core objectives of education. This concerns specifically arithmetic and mathematics. For example, the Ministry defined core objectives pertaining to mathematical skills for secondary education. Schools are at liberty to develop these according to their different educational perspectives and teaching styles. At the school level, despite all recent initiatives, a change towards inquiry based learning is hardly implemented in most schools. Main reasons for this are that the teachers lack sufficient educational materials and don’t have a rich repertoire of IBL teaching at their disposal.

In lower secondary education, mathematics and science are seen as distinctively separate disciplines in the Netherlands. Successful teacher training projects on IBL initiatives are rare. As such, efficient and effective pedagogical materials for inquiry based learning, and interdisciplinary and modelling approaches are needed. Specific training as well as well-planned dissemination is still required. In contrast, at the national level there is a strong collaboration between industry and vocational education. In short, there are incentives for science teachers to be involved in mascil courses. For mathematics teachers it is less obvious why they should need professionalization in that direction. Furthermore, as a result of the differentiated school system in the Netherlands it is difficult to make a strong connection between general secondary education and

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vocational education. Although general schools can learn from the expertise of 'the World of Work' from vocational education, there is no tradition in meeting each other.

It is planned to orient our dissemination activities on science teacher training institutions as in this sector the need for mascil ideas and resources fits to the reforms in upper secondary education. With respect to mathematics partner focused on teacher conferences and electronic newsletters to raise interest in and to create enthusiasm for a mascil approach to mathematics education.

Norway

There is a general conductive context in Norway for the implementation of the project and for the achievement of the mascil objectives. The mascil team has good connections with local school authorities within mathematics and science, but there is a challenge to engage policy-makers in general in such projects, as well as school leaders and parents. Due to several parallel priority programmes, partner experienced a competition regarding attention. A national priority area, compulsory for all lower secondary schools, was introduced simultaneously as mascil. Thus, an important challenge is the obligatory participation in government-initiated action programs, which make school leaders hesitant to add to their already loaded time schedule. Another constrain towards mascil aims is regarded the lack of teacher confidence in their subject knowledge, rather than lack of inquiry teaching skills. Schools and teacher resistance towards change represents another constrain. Dissemination to pre-service teachers is still not formalized, but depends to a high degree on the single teacher responsible for each course.

In Norway there is a general supportive context for the implementation of the project and for the achievement of the mascil objectives. In relation to wider policy perspectives, policy documents state that the connection between schooling/teaching and industry should be strengthened, and teaching should be made more relevant for students. Priority is also given to inquiry-based methodology both in sciences and mathematics. At a school and classroom level though, it seems that teachers find it hard to adjust to the propositions (see Deliverable N° 2.1, mascil). The inquiry-based methodology was also previously disseminated through the PRIMAS project, both in Norway and in our district. Thus, the school authorities were already familiar with the concept and implementation strategy (spiral model, cascade model, concept of using multipliers) at the time when the mascil project started.

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Through the national policy workshop, partner managed to establish a consolidation of the importance of IBL and WoW approaches amongst the teacher education community, dissemination of the importance of such approaches to school and government authorities and the underlining of the important role mascil plays in this. In particular, the participation and engagement of the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research through their representative at the workshop, was important for dissemination of the project.

Romania

The teaching tradition in Romania is a very traditional one, with no elements of IBL, or other alternative methods. It relies mostly on frontal teaching, solving traditional (formal) mathematical exercises and problems. It has also a very strong tradition for competitions (while on PISA and TIMMS evaluation Romania is low achieving among the states of European Union, on the International Mathematical Olympiad Romania is in the top). The organizational structure is highly centralized; teachers do not have a professional autonomy, do not have a responsibility to the local community, they are hired on the basis of a national exam. Moreover, in rural areas the educational system faces difficulties in terms of assuring qualified teachers for schools. The curriculum is also highly centralized and with a very tight time frame. On the other hand, in 2012 the Ministry of Education was changed 6 times (and during the project life-time 8 times), moreover the name of the Ministry of Education was changed 6 times in the last 8 years and there were several structural changes, so most of the Romanian teachers gained some resistance to educational changes, especially to changes with political background.

On a personal level most mathematics and science teachers are overloaded (especially the mathematics teachers), so the biggest challenge was to convince the PD participants to invest time and effort in experimenting new things that are against tradition, against their former practice, in some sense even against curriculum and school organization. For this reason the Romanian mascil team (according to the opinion of the National Advisory Board) chose to focus on: low- or mid-level policy makers, school directors, inspectors, members in executive boards of schools, local stakeholders having strong connections with the schools (educational advisor for local council, etc.); producing high quality local examples by involving teachers and professionals from several regions (both from rural and urban areas); keeping a strong contrast all over the PD courses between mascil PD (with several cycles) and most of other courses.

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The main supporting factor was the existence of local informal teacher networks, the use of social media and the experience (e.g. local examples) gained in previous projects like DQME (Developing quality in Mathematics Education), or PRIMAS. Partner also benefited from the fact that in-service training is compulsory in Romania. Involving parents through social networks proved to be also a supporting factor for dissemination events.

Spain

The involvement of teachers to try out and incorporate new pedagogies is always challenging. Although many teachers feel the need of using different pedagogies, and although they know that the new curricular demands in the country orientate their work towards IBL-related pedagogies, the case is that many of them still feel unsecure about using these kind of methodologies, and are reluctant to be involved in PD courses. Therefore, one challenge faced was to motivate teachers and to stimulate them to engage on PD activities. Partner tried to do that mainly through workshops in which they could experience that IBL is useful to meet the curricular demands, to motivate students, and to engage them more effectively in mathematics and science learning. The collaboration with existing PD structures was critical for us to succeed. In mascil, three different and successful collaborations can be highlighted: (1) with the Teacher Centers (PD institutions, depending directly from the Regional Ministry of Education, and in charge of providing accredited and free PD activities to teachers); (2) with the INTEF, institute depending from the National Ministry of Education, and in charge of promoting PD nationally (although the PD competencies have been transferred to each Region in Spain); (3) with the coordination and professional development staff of the SAFA foundation, which is in charge of a network of more than 30 schools in Andalucia.

The supporting factors we relied on were the personal relationships already established between the mascil national team and key actors within these institutions. We have a history of collaboration with many Teachers’ Centers as well as with people responsible for the professional development of SAFA schools. Besides, the involvement of relevant people from the INTEF in mascil NAB and the EAB has been quite successful in promoting PD activities nationally, leading to the organization of two mascil courses in the Ministry’s Summer School (years, 2014 and 2015).

Another challenge was offering parents and other out-of-school groups new ways of thinking about mathematics and science learning in school. Most of them have experienced traditional teaching methods when they were at school, and are rather reluctant to other methodologies. Approaching to these groups is always challenging,

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since they are normally busy and do not have the time to attend workshops and talks. In this case, we relied on the strong connections we already had with teachers’ associations that promote big science fair events. The support of mascil has been important for these events to take place. And these events have attracted the interest of parents, out-of-school groups, but also the interest of teachers and students, sharing a common message about a different way of learning mathematics and science in school, in which inquiry plays a central role. Since we have collaborated with associations that already have a successful trajectory in the organization of such events, we think that the result is quite effective. Instead of starting from zero organizing big dissemination events like this, it was more effective, both in terms of costs and time, to support already existing structures that already exist. Mascil has supported the celebration of the 6th and 7th science fairs in Úbeda (in collaboration with the Renaciencia Association) and the III and IV science fair in Jerez (in collaboration with the Teacher Centre in Jerez).

Turkey

Collaboration with Ministry of Education made it easy to get permission for teachers to attend mascil workshops. Around 300 pre- and in-service teachers participated in the two-day mascil teacher workshop in Ankara, Nevsehir and Adana. Participants of the workshops were grades 6-12 science teachers and maths teachers and some were pre-service science and maths teachers. The workshops mainly focused on inquiry-based learning (IBL) in connection to the world of work (WoW). Four mascil workshops took four days training and 3 mascil workshops took two days training.

Following a first workshop, that took place earlier, the participating teachers implemented the mascil units in their classrooms. After this implementation phase, this second two-day workshop was organized to get to know more about their experiences during the implementation phase and to offer a platform for exchange.

UK

In England there have been significant changes to national structures regarding courses for pre-service teachers (ITE) and in the ways of providing professional development for in-service teachers. These contextual factors have presented multiple obstacles for mascil in the UK and are summarized briefly below.

The growth of academies and academy groups with independence from the Local Education Authority (LEA) means that the local authority has less influence and fragmented control over schools in their geographical area. Previously, such

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as in the case of PRIMAS implementation, a strong strategic approach could have been developed through liaison with LEA’s but this was no longer viable.

LEA advisors for mathematics and science, who previously would have been key strategic partners for the implementation phase, with well-established networks of schools, no longer exist in the new system. These advisors would have been ideally placed to publicise, recommend and recruit clusters of schools to work with mascil and act as multipliers but were removed from their positions before mascil implementation was due to commence. Without them there has been a temporary void whilst new structures and roles are being developed. Therefore, we were not able to use these key individuals or structures to develop mascil.

The new structures for professional development in mathematics focus on a national network of Maths Hubs. These are selected schools, each with a Maths Hub lead, who has responsibility for co-ordinating professional development for a large group of schools. During the implementation phase the Maths Hubs were still developing their local networks of schools and focusing on some pre-determined national priorities. It was therefore difficult to utilize such embryonic networks or introduce mascil into their developing PD programmes since other priorities had already been agreed. For science no such network even existed.

Universities are no longer the main providers of ITE in England and there are multiple routes into teaching. School-based ITE is now widely available through various schemes but these changes have added to the complexity of ITE provision. Significantly, there be only one pre-service mathematics teacher in a school and therefore reaching a number of participants would require separate negotiations with several different schools. These changes have had a significant effect and a strategic approach has been difficult to achieve.

Since these changes have all taken place during the lifetime of the project it has been particularly difficult to develop an effective strategic approach or identify key influential people within a system that has been in such a state of transition. It has also been difficult to utilize any local or national networks effectively since old networks have been dismantled and any new ones are still in an early stage of development. There has also been reluctance on the part of schools to release in-service teachers for PD. This seems to be due to problems finding finances to provide lesson cover for teachers and sometimes a preference for attending PD that is focused on achieving higher scores in national assessments rather than the aspects of classroom practice promoted by mascil.

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2.2 Focus of Dissemination

Taking into account the cultural, systemic, societal, and other differences between the partner countries, the focus of the dissemination actions in the partner countries varied. Further, while in some countries partners explicitly focused their actions to specific target groups, in some other countries partners worked with more (or different) target groups.

Dissemination activities took the various forms, including, among others, web-based (mascil national home-pages), paper-based (Teaching material provided in continuous professional Development (CPD) courses) or face-to-face strategies (CPD Training Courses, national policy workshops, formal and informal meetings with stake holders, formal conclusion of cooperation contracts with Pedagogical Colleges (Austria), Pedagogical Institutes (Cyprus, Greece), PD centers (Germany, Spain, UK), e-learning based (virtual meetings between partners, moodle-based PD training).

Teachers

As expected, the main target group for the dissemination actions was teachers. The main focus of the dissemination activities in Netherlands, Cyprus and Greece was on the platforms for teacher education and professionalization. The purpose of this focus, in Netherlands was to create awareness among teacher educators and multipliers for the opportunities that mascil offers to extend the repertoire of (student) teachers towards using IBL and workplace contexts in science and mathematics education. Together with workshops at conferences of the platforms and regional visits to teacher education centers project partner in Netherlands tried to ensure the continuation of the project’s ideas and resources beyond the lifetime of the project. Similarly, in Greece, the main focus was on engaging large numbers of in-service mathematics and science teachers working both at the general and vocational education in mascil PD activities and also to cooperate with other relevant stakeholders (e.g., school advisors, policy makers) throughout the duration of the project. The purpose for this focus was to ensure the widespread implementation of mascil in real educational contexts as well as the continuation of mascil’s ideas beyond the lifetime of the project and the accreditation of mascil training courses.

In the same line, in Spain the dissemination mainly focused on teachers, parents and out-of-school groups. Concerning teachers, different workshops have been organized, with an aim to raise their interest on IBL and to attract them to the mascil PD program. Similarly, in the Czech Republic and Lithuania the dissemination activities were focused

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on improving the quality of teaching of pre-service and in-service mathematics and science teachers. Some activities targeted teacher meetings and conferences, and it was realized by lectures and workshops of teacher community of the Czech Republic as well as cooperating countries.

Policymakers

Policymakers have been the focus of dissemination actions in all partner countries. Reaching and discussing with policy makers the core aim of the mascil project was identified as crucial, in order to ensure and to stimulate a fruitful discussion on the state of the educating the teacher educators. In some countries, a large number of meetings took place with high level education officials, including other others Ministers, directors of educational authorities, directors of PD centers, and chairpersons of teacher associations, companies, and media.

A more European oriented approach was conducted in Germany. Dissemination activities aimed to reach teachers educators from different European countries and to establish a strong network of Professional Development Centres in order to exchange experiences, to cooperate and to focus on the same development direction – the aims are to attract attention on the international level, to develop common strategy which changes and in which way should be implement on the European level, to force the policy makers to deal with the challenges.

Connecting IBL and WoW

While still focusing on teachers, dissemination activities in the Germany, UK, Greece, Turkey and Norway were aimed at influencing change in the use of IBL and WoW within mathematics and science classrooms. This has involved three main approaches: (a) using the existing positions of team members on national advisory groups, committees and within networks to promote the aims of mascil and encourage the embedding of IBL into the curriculum, (b) widening awareness of the value of IBL and WoW in mathematics and science classrooms through local networks, conference presentations and professional development sessions, and (c) developing strategic partnerships with national organisations with common interests in supporting teachers with IBL and WoW.

Working at the School Level

Dissemination in Norway focused on a local level. On the local level the focus has been to make mascil and its ideas known in schools in Trondheim, and the surrounding communities, by working closely with teachers and school authorities, rectors and principals. In Romania, a similar approach was used, to face the problem that most

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teachers are resistant to changes that are suggested or required from local or central administration and the system is not supportive for teachers. For this reason, their dissemination actions were focused on teachers, parents, students and low level policy makers (school inspectors, school managers) at the school level. Further, in countries like Austria, Cyprus, and Greece disseminating materials and ensuring their use was a core aspect of the dissemination actions, and working towards this was embedded from the outset, both with respect to short term opportunities as well as strategically planning long term dissemination and exploitation.

Accreditation

The accreditation of the provided PD courses was also a focus of the dissemination actions in a number of countries. For example, in Cyprus, Greece, Czech Republic, Turkey, and Bulgaria partners worked with national (Ministries of Education) and local authorities (Pedagogical Academies, PD centers) to accredit mascil PD courses. The latter was quite significant, both for attracting large numbers of teachers for the PD courses and also for ensuring a high probability for the sustainability of the PD courses.

Focus on Students

In some other countries, like for example in Bulgaria, Romania, and Lithuania, dissemination activities focused on students. For instance, the dissemination among school students included some online competitions and a special High School Students’ Institute of Mathematics and Informatics (HSSI) where the participants (students of grades 8 – 12) work on their own projects under mentors in an “open inquiry style”. For the implementation and dissemination activities with teachers the team worked closely with the Union of Bulgarian Mathematicians (and its approx. 50 branches in the country), the Ministry of Education and Sciences and its Regional Inspectorates for Education (RIE), with the Regional Centers of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

Parents

Parents have been the focus of many dissemination actions in a number of countries. In Spain, the focus has been on sharing a different way of doing mathematics and science in school, more inquiry-oriented, that will challenge their beliefs (rather traditional in many of them) about mathematics and science teaching in school. This has been achieved mainly through the promotion of science fairs and other events addressed to a general audience. Besides, the Spanish team has also been involved in dissemination activities to researchers in Education. In Bulgaria, Cyprus and Czech Republic, good relations were developed with some parent associations and NGOs which have the

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education as a sphere of interest. The tools for dissemination (and, sometimes simultaneously for implementation) included conferences, seminars, workshops, round table discussions etc., organized directly by the partner national teams. Further, dissemination in some cases took the form of lectures and demonstrations of IBL at events organized by other organizations, publications and interviews in newspapers, magazines, national broadcasting radio systems and national television channels.

2.3 Implementation Challenges and how to overcome them

Various challenges have been faced by all partner countries. While it was not easy to overcome these challenges, close collaboration between partner countries, exchange of good practices, and good relations with local key-players made it possible to overcome these challenges, and to ensure the best possible dissemination of the project results and products.

Policy Workshops

In some countries, among the biggest implementation challenges were the mascil policy workshop. In Germany, due to the particular features of the target groups addressed by the three workshops, there were specific problems in setting the workshop dates. Usually, policy makers’ appointment calendars are full and finding a suitable date for most of the desired participants proved to be a challenge. Additionally, the educational situation in Baden-Württemberg is characterized by reform processes and changes, both in the structures of the school system and in curricula, which made the implementation of the policy workshops challenging.

The German partners managed to overcome these inconveniences by organizing target group specific events. By running three different policy workshops, it was possible to bring together different groups of interest within one meeting. In order to guarantee an adequate flow of information between the different target groups the results from each workshop were reported to the participants of the subsequent meetings. We are convinced that under the given circumstances, this implementation strategy was the best approach to reaching policy maker and gaining the valuable outcomes.

Similarly, in Austria there have been fundamental changes in the teacher education scheme. For instance, in Austria Universities and Pedagogical Colleges are still in the process of developing a shared understanding of how the traditional dual teacher education system should be merged in one. This has caused problems in engaging

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policy makers from different stakeholder groups in mascil activities in general and in the mascil policy makers workshop in particular. The problem was overcome by arranging face-to-face meetings with all the rectors of the pedagogical colleges in the Viennese area. Thus the mascil project was a door opener for negotiating and working together on a “practical level even though the structural framework had not yet been agreed on amongst Universities and Pedagogical Colleges those days.

For the majority of the partner countries, the biggest implementation challenge was to convince teachers about the importance of IBL, and consequently the mascil PD courses. In the UK initially the team identified two national organizations who agreed to work in partnership to deliver mascil PD courses for teachers. Both had wide networks for marketing the courses to schools but the first partner (NRICH) was eventually unable to participate due to internal changes and with the second (MEI) a 3-day course was developed but did not recruit. The course was then revised and re-branded with closer links to current issues for teachers but recruitment was still low. It became apparent that PD courses delivered in this way were not going to be effective. Meanwhile the mascil team developed more strategic links with the Maths Hubs leads and held ‘launch’ meetings for local schools. Success was however only achieved when the PD was aligned to current curriculum issues, schools/colleges were approached directly and PD packages were customized for each school.

Attracting Teachers

In the Netherlands, one of the implementation challenges was to convince the teacher training institutions about the usefulness of the mascil resources for professional development courses (in-service and pre-service), how they connect to the new science education programs and why they also address the need for extending the teachers’ repertoire towards inquiry-based teaching methods. The measure we took was a large scale dissemination action oriented on newsletters, websites and workshops, mainly published and organized by ECENT, the national platform for science teacher educators.

In addition, the biggest challenge for us was to convince mathematics teachers for the need of a mascil-related training course. We had the feeling that raising interest and enthusiasm would be the best dissemination measure to try to involve them in mascil as external measures were hardly available.

The major challenge in Lithuania was also to attract teachers. The strategy of dissemination was reconsidered and some new steps were involved. Two ways of

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disseminations were implemented, namely: (a) the information about mascil implementation was announced regularly through the teacher portals, teacher development center and educational ministry, and (b) the workshops in different cities of Lithuania were organized during the first and second year of project. The aims of them were to inform teachers about mascil activities and to invite to educational mascil seminars for teachers. These workshops had impact for the teacher community.

In Turkey, the major challenge was to find suitable time for all participants to attend the follow up mascil workshop. There were 38 participants in the 1st mascil workshop (January 10-11, 2015) but only 26 of those also attended two days follow up workshops (9 -10 May 2015). Therefore, we preferred to run only two-day workshops in later stage of the project. Thus, 5th, 6th and 7th workshops lasted two days training.

Similarly, in Spain, the most challenging one has been to involve teacher in PD courses and to motivate them to go beyond the course, really trying to implement IBL in their classrooms. As it has been said before, this challenge has been overcome by exploiting the strong connections the mascil team had already established with key actors (Teachers Centers, Safa foundation, and INTEF-Ministry of Education), and also by designing PD courses that go beyond out-of-school sessions, including periods in which teachers have the opportunity to experience IBL themselves.

Connecting IBL and WoW

In Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Romania, and Czech Republic the biggest challenge was the connection of IBL with the WoW. This was a challenge for the local team for the following reasons: (a) Although workplace provided a context for exploring the existence/emergence of mathematical/scientific ideas in particular professions in the last two decades, the idea to exploit workplace as a context for designing classroom tasks for mathematics and science is a rather new perspective in the country. (b) The educational system is highly centralized, thus teachers are not used to work with (design and implement) contextual tasks. (c) The teachers themselves expressed their difficulty to connect classroom teaching and WoW.

The work on the project, the experience of the other partners (and especially the Problem of the Month) turned out to be very helpful in this direction. Also good collaboration with the teachers from some professional schools in Bulgaria and Cyprus appeared to be helpful. Many of the educational resources developed by the teams during the implementation of the project are closely related to the WoW and refer to practical situations.

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In Greece, the following measures further assisted in overcoming the challenge: (a) Presentation of ideas and tasks in the PD meetings where connections with WoW was evident (task analysis, presentation of similar approaches by postgraduate students, group discussion etc.). (b) Encourage teachers to implement tasks where the context was authentic and/or giving to their students a professional role. (c) Present in the PD meetings successful implementations of the above tasks in terms of students’ engagement and participation. (d) Invitation of professionals in the classroom/PD courses.

Other Challenges

In Norway, the main challenge was all other ongoing national projects (e.g. Ungdomstrinn i utvikling, Forskerføtter og leserøtter, Nøkler til naturfag, Den nasjonale skolesekken, Skoleutvikling i naturfag, S-TEAM, INSTEM), which compete to get attention. We decided to work with mainly one district – Melhus municipality - that has an especially dedicated school contact (Ingrid Sjoner). She works in direct contact with the policy makers in that district, and she disseminated the project in a brilliant way, both before and after the PD courses. She initiated several meetings in the rectors’ forum (for all rectors in the district), she applied for and got national resources to “teacher specialists” (teachers dedicated to improve mathematics and science teaching in their own and nearby schools, three of our multipliers got such resources), and she initiated further workshops for multipliers the year after the mascil PD courses ended. Thus, they will arrange 4 workshops during 2015-2016 in Melhus municipality, without HiST mascil employees, because the rectors (school leaders) wanted mascil to continue. We are also trying to publish mascil on the national platform for science teachers, naturfag.no (we are in the process of discussing how to do it). Through the national policy workshop, we managed to consolidate the importance of IBL and WoW approaches amongst the teacher education community; to disseminate the importance of such approaches to school and government authorities; and emphasize the important role mascil plays in this. In particular, we were able to engage the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research through their representative at the workshop, we improved the connection between HiST and the Ministry; and we established a vision for more cooperation and alignment of projects with IBL and/or WoW approaches and discussed the opportunities for sharing resources.

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2.4 Good Examples of Dissemination

One example of successful dissemination activities from each partner country is presented in this session. This selection of disseminating activities covers various target groups, uses different media, and aims to work as a toolkit for future dissemination activities (beyond the lifetime of the project).

European STEM Professional Development Center Network in Germany

The European STEM Professional Development Centre Network grew out of the idea that these national centers should be connected and work together at the international level since have similar aims and agendas, namely: investing in teacher professional development to substantially improve STEM education as it happens day-to-day in schools. The research and practice-oriented 2014 conference “Educating the educators - International approaches to scaling-up professional development in mathematics and science education” served as a platform for connecting PD Centers across Europe: in the course of the conference the first meeting of European Professional Development centers involved in math and science education took place.

Owing to the resonance the first meeting found, the conference and PD Centre meeting hosts decided to facilitate further meetings. Meanwhile, the second meeting of the now informally founded PD Centre Network took place in May 2015 in Vilnius, Lithuania and the third meeting in December 2015 in Sofia, Bulgaria. The cooperation between diverse Professional Development Centers is planned to be even closer. The centers would like to give a structure to their work and connect each other by submitting a PD Centers proposal Erasmus+ program.

The main issues/topics that the European STEM PDC Network is dealing currently with:

How can the Network and single PD Centres take profit from the offer of other European platform (e.g. Scientix)?

How to foster the cooperation between key actors: PD centres, researchers, schools and teachers and policy making entities?

How to establish and improve the discourse between PD centres and policy makers?

Drafting common standards and guidelines for PD courses

To initiate the exchange of resources (knowledge, experiences, materials as well as personal resources)

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The establishing of the network was possible due to familiar connection to some representative of PD centres. However, the network and its sustainability base on a good quality of the materials and cooperation as well as on the significance of the common work. On the one hand, the establishing and coordinating of such network is very time-consuming. Therefore, everybody who opts for such kind of dissemination needs to be conscious of the work load and costs that are connected to. On the other hand, such kind of dissemination activities is long term oriented, can be very fruitful and is for sure an enriched experience.

The mascil policy workshop in Austria

Up to date Universities and Pedagogical Colleges have not managed to develop a shared understanding of how our traditional dual teacher education system should be merged into one. Work is still in progress. However, those responsible for taking up innovative learning opportunities or mascil ideas are teachers not policy makers. Those who train in-service teachers to take up “new ideas” into their daily practice are pedagogical colleges. Any teacher training dedicated to reach a wider audience of in-service teachers need to be organized in cooperation with pedagogical colleges.

Thus the Austrian mascil group which is based at the University of Innsbruck and University of Vienna had to find a way to bridge current gaps amongst pedagogical colleges and universities and to motivate representatives to come together and discuss a joint engagement in implementing mascil goals in the future. Against this background it was important to inspire confidence and trust amongst stakeholders and provide a space for discussion and planning in a clearly defined area separated from those, which are the reason for current disagreement. It was important to engage in a topic, which is not well addressed in Austria yet. The Austrian mascil group therefore went for focusing on learning about Biology and Mathematics in the context of agriculture and landscape management. In addition, we assume that the most effective way is not to simply talk about good ideas but to develop concrete steps for their implementation.

Therefore, the main goal for the policy workshop was to motivate all those involved to go for one short term goal, which will be developing teaching materials for the mascil website and one long term goal which will be an in-service teacher and LOtC educator training course to train professionals in teaching biology and mathematics in the context of agriculture and landscape management.

The national platform for science teacher educators in Netherlands

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This action included publications in the ECENT-newsletter, on the ECENT-website and through workshops on conferences organized by ECENT, the national platform for science teacher educators. And we connected these publications with a workshop at the Ecent conference for science teacher educators. We first presented Primas-results and positioned IBL in other related research (learning to do research and to foster inquiring minds). Next, aims and strategies of mascil were presented. The workshop included two activities. The first activity introduced the mascil Brines task to get a discussion about task characteristics that relate to inquiry learning and the World of Work. In the second activity we took examples of 'tasks' from science textbook series and asked them to try to re-design these tasks and to reflect on mascil (re)design principles related to inquiry learning and the world of work.

The newsletter:

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and the publication on the Ecent-website:

Symposium at a STEM Center in UK

The national STEM center has a central role in coordinating and providing professional development for England. Although the main interest and engagement has arisen from teachers of science subjects, this research conference involved contributions from researchers, teachers and teacher educators from science, mathematics and several technology subjects. The mascil team was invited to provide a full symposium (1.5hrs) by the conference organizer, who is the deputy director of the national STEM center, situated at the University of York. The invitation arose from informal discussions between one of the mascil team members and the national STEM Centre about the scope for developing connections. The existing relationship, built on previous work together in the past, was important in gaining the trust and respect that resulted in being invited to make a substantial contribution to the conference.

The symposium involved four different but linked contributions from members of the mascil team, which included a visiting academic from our Spanish mascil partner and a teacher from a local school who was one of our mascil multipliers. This combination of presenters worked well due to the contrasting styles of presentation and varied content. At this stage in the project it was possible to showcase several connected aspects of mascil: the historical progression of IBL through the curriculum, the theoretical

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principles, the international flavor of the project, the research aspect, the professional development and the implementation of IBL (using our multiplier to explain the method of implementation and impact in her particular school as a case study). The benefits were that these contributions were grounded in theoretical principles but were made accessible through reference to case studies and empirical evidence of impact. For a mixed audience of researchers, teachers and teacher educators this composition of theory and practice seemed particularly effective.

There was considerable interest in the case study from the teachers present and many questions in the following discussion about practical aspects of using IBL. Not only was the symposium varied and informative, but the case study was accessible and particularly relevant to those present who came from similar situations. This stimulated engagement and interest amongst the audience. Furthermore, the content was strongly connected to the theme of the conference and therefore well matched to the expectations and interests of delegates.

Workshop in Bulgaria

One cannot implement something new in the Bulgarian educational system without the positive attitude to it of the Regional Inspectorates for Education (RIE) which are the local branches of the Ministry of Education and Sciences (MES) and act as policy makers for the educational system in the corresponding region. Because of this, the experts for Mathematics and for Information Technologies from RIE were considered as „priority group“ with respect to the dissemination activities.

Mrs. Sophia Dimitrova which is a member of MASCIL NAB and a president of the Foundation „Prosveta“ (“Enlightenment” Foundation) organized a three-day seminar (February 16 – 18, 2014) for such experts in Bankia, near Sofia. Its focus was on the unsatisfactory performance of the Bulgarian students at PISA 2012. Since IBE is something that can help improve the performance in PISA, our MASCIL team was invited to demonstrate the Inquiry approach to education and this was the most substantial part (also in terms of duration) of the seminar. There were representatives of all RIE in the country and the idea of IBE was spread successfully. This workshop got a very good media coverage: two interviews with the Bulgarian National TV.

Newspaper article (Ukeadressa) in Norway

As a consequence of our cooperation with schools in Melhus community, we were interviewed by the local newspaper, which is also one of the biggest newspapers nationally. Pr 2014 it has about 61 000 subscribers for their printed stock. They wrote an

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article about ongoing mathematics teaching in Melhus schools, as part of the mascil project. It was published as one of the main news in this newspaper the first Saturday in December. Thus pupils, teachers, rectors, school authorities and our HiST mascil team were presented. The press release was initiated by Ingrid Sjoner, Melhus community. Readers and subscribers all over Norway had the opportunity to read about the very exciting ways of working in primary schools in Melhus. A broad audience, including teachers, parents, grandparents and teacher educators were recipients.

Figure 1: Excerpt from newspaper article.

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Research activities in Greece

Another positive example of dissemination was that many of the teachers were involved in research-like activities on their mascil experiences. Initially in our PD meetings we refer to the importance of active participation of teachers in research activities associated with their professional practice. At the same time, we supported the establishment of groups/communities of teachers that engaged in mascil philosophy through participation in research-like activities. Particularly, during our PD meetings we (a) posed possible research questions that could be of interest to explore; (b) supported participants in writing their research reports; and (c) encouraged them to broaden their perspectives.

As a result, 13 out of 28 dissemination activities (e.g., oral presentations in conferences/workshops, papers in conference proceedings) were made exclusively by teachers who participated in mascil. The events took place across the country and vary from conferences on didactics to conferences on scientific research and to their audience (teachers from a specific discipline and a specific level of education to teachers from a variety of disciplines and all levels of education). Teachers’ engagement in research activities related to mascil philosophy on one side supported them to reflect on their involvement in the project and on the other facilitated the dissemination of mascil aims to the wider Greek educational community. This maximizes the impact of dissemination and the sustainability of mascil outputs.

Science Fairs in Spain

Science Fairs (6th and 7th science fairs in Úbeda; III and IV science fair in Jerez). This can be considered as a very positive example. First of all, because several schools have been involved in preparing the fairs, what means that tens of teachers and students have been experiencing IBL oriented learning and connections with the work of scientist. Second, because these events have been quite successful in attracting visitors (students and teachers from other schools, parents, policy-makers, and other groups), what means that thousands of people have had the opportunity to experience other ways of doing mathematics and science in school.

High-level policy meetings in Cyprus

Since policy makers have been identified as one of the very crucial target groups for the mascil project, the local mascil team has succeeded in informing about IBL, WoW, and the mascil objectives in particular a large number of high level policy makers in Cyprus.

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During the lifetime of the project, the Cyprus mascil team had both informative and collaboration meetings with the Dr Kadis, Minister of Education and Culture, Dr Athena-Michaelidou-Evripidou, Director of the Cyprus Pedagogical Institute and Chairperson of the Committee for the New Curricula in Cyprus, Dr Kyprianos Louis, Director of the Secondary Education Directorate, Dr Elias Marjadhis, Director of the Secondary Technical and Vocational Directorate, Mr Elpidoforos Neocleous, Director of the Elementary Education Directorate, Mr Filios Filaktou, Chairperson of the Elementary Teacher Union, and Mr Sotiris Christofi, Vice-Chairperson of the Cyprus Parents Association.

Problem of the Month in Czech Republic

The dissemination of ideas from own teaching practice. In the program ideas of inquiry-based learning and the project mascil and Czech Problem of Month were presented. Participating teachers were asked during the workshop to prepare proposal for the content of Czech Problem of Month for mascil project. We detected many different ideas from the teaching practice and they all were the “hot topics” of all discussions during the whole action.

Figure 2: Students working on the problem of the month.

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The event was a closing ceremony for the activities that were implemented during the school year by several participants of the PD courses in several different schools, so it offered a deep insight into the work that has been done (a lot of end-products were exposed) and on the other hand due to the workshops it was interactive, the parents had the opportunity to discuss with teachers and students about their former work, about mascil activities.

Figure 3: Teachers working on the problem of the month with an expert.

International Mathematics Competition in Romania

International Mathematics Competition in Miercurea-Ciuc, with 220 student and 80 teacher participants from 5 different countries (Slovakia, Ukraine, Serbia, Hungary, Romania).

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Figure 4: Photo from the International Mathematics Competition.

The competition was for 14-18 years old students in 4 different age-groups. Students had to solve 6 problems in 4 hours. For each age-group one of the problems was a mascil task (related to the Bookshelf mascil material). There were also special discussions for teachers about these problems and several presentations related to mascil. We also had an invited speaker from the SAILS project. Several mascil related people were involved in the organization of the competition, in the problem committee (from the mascil Academic Team and also from the NAB) or as accompanying teachers. The mascil task was completely unexpected for students and teachers. It was about regular and non-periodic plane tiling, but for solving it each student got a set of polygonal shapes in order to be able to experiment different types of tiling. This was also an unusual feature, which was welcomed by students.

Mascil cooperation with Turkish companies in Turkey

To get a real insight in how math and science are used in the world of work, the participants of the mascil teacher workshop visited the “R&D and manufacturing company of automobile technologies”. This company produced the first Turkish electrical car. On location, the teachers received first-hand information from the engineers on the application of scientific and mathematical knowledge into the real world problems. Also interdisciplinary approaches the engineers used to solve real world problems were addressed. They also pointed out that these problems are mostly of interdisciplinary nature; therefore, applications of scientific and mathematical knowledge to the world of work are important aspects of school teaching.

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Figure 4: Participants in the workshop in Turkey.

2.5 Effectiveness of Dissemination

Based on the examples provided in the previous session, which are of course a small sample of the many good examples of successful dissemination in all partner countries, we present here some ‘key elements’ that identify the effectiveness of our dissemination actions. These ‘key elements’ refer to both quantitative measures (e.g. number of participants) as well as qualitative measures (e.g. accreditation of courses, collaborations with teacher training providers, etc.).

From national organizations there have been some promising responses to informal dissemination, particularly from those with shared interests in IBL or professional development models. Presentations made at conferences or other events have often led to further invitations for dissemination by the mascil team at national events. Several national organizations are also intending to be represented at the final mascil conference in Freiburg.

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In Germany, mascil offered a program for children, a 30-minute workshop for groups of about 10 children inviting them to experiment with and investigate cube triplets, quadruplets, quintuplets … About 190 children participated in that program, while their accompanying teachers could observe them and get into a conversation with the mascil team. We invited them for a mascil PD program for primary school teachers, which was very well received later on. During the event we had numerous interesting conversations with: (a) Teachers and educators, who were interested in the concept behind our program, wanted to know how to implement tasks like that in their classrooms, and some of them immediately signed up for our PD course; (b) School administrators, teacher trainers, and policy representatives, who came to our stand after the official opening of the fair. Here is the feedback of a school inspector: “Well, your program indeed is different from the others at this science fair. Usually ‘research’ means that the adults show an experiment and the children imitate it. But in your program children are really doing research by themselves!”

Registrations to our PD courses after conducting a dissemination activity – some of our dissemination activities aimed to reach teachers for our PD courses and our expectations were fully met. By the dissemination activity about using smartphone in the classroom we received a lot of feedback and request on the PD courses, so that we decided to conduct a PD course about this topic. Continuously we receive requests on the IBL materials. In these cases, according to available resources, we try to send a small packet with materials sample, or if it is not possible, we provide the interested person with information, where the materials are available online

The press pays attention to our dissemination events and seems to be especially interested in the connection between school and industry in our activities, in science education for small children, and in the topic “use of smartphones” in science teaching. Therefore, we had a lot of press articles about mascil.

In Austria, local team managed to convince most pedagogical colleges (PH- Vorarlberg, PH-Tyrol, PH-Upper Austria, PH-Lower Austria and PH-Vienna) to run mascil teacher training courses with them in 2015 und 2016. Thus local team has achieved a national wide coverage, which it is assumed is a great achievement.

Those who attended the courses gave a multifaceted feedback and promised to tell their colleagues about the teacher training course as well as about the mascil website link. Some teachers told that they have heard about mascil already, as they were very much involved in activities about inquiry based learning in the 7th framework program already. Local team had lively discussion about mascil activities published on the

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website during CPD courses and teacher feedback was manifold. The mascil Bio teacher training course at Pedagogical College Vienna was overbooked although it is currently a challenge to motivate teachers to sign in for CPD courses.

PH Vienna, Mag Doris Mistinger, sent an email and asked for further training courses in 2016/17 thus they will run mascil bio training courses even after the mascil project will be finished. Having established such a good working relationship with pedagogical colleges in the Viennese area is good evidence for doing a good job in disseminating mascil outcomes as well as preparing the ground for implementing mascil ideas sustainably. Further, so far there are more than 17700 clicks on the national website (2014 and 2015), 98 teachers have participated in mascil training courses for in-service teachers, and 862 teachers joined courses for pre-service teachers.

In Netherlands, during workshops the discussions were lively and the teachers and teacher trainers were enthusiastic about the resources offered by mascil. A returning issue was the flexibility of these resources to use them in daily practice (no large task sequence or modules). At the end of the workshops participants stayed in the room for further questions and information related to the mascil project. This also showed their interest in mascil.

The teacher college in Rotterdam asked local partners to participate in the organization of a minor for science teacher-students related to ways to integrate workplace contexts in science education. We supported them in setting up this minor and more than 20 of their students were interested in the minor and followed it in the first year of its availability.

In the UK a common feature of the dissemination events was the interest shown by participants during discussions, through the nature and number of questions asked and from other verbal feedback. This is not easily evaluated but participants often offered positive feedback verbally to the convenor and asked perceptive questions about the issues for teachers, particularly with respect to IBL. Although opinions varied on the need for changes to pedagogy and how this fitted into tight content-based schemes of work, there was often lively debate. This indicates how issues associated with IBL are very pertinent for teachers and that opportunities for discussion, such as those offered in mascil dissemination, have fulfilled a current need.

Further, feedback after events has been positive and participants have often been able to identify specific areas where their thinking has been stimulated or challenged.

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Representatives at each of the initial ‘launch’ events showed enthusiasm and genuine interest at the prospect of their further involvement with mascil.

In Cyprus the effectiveness of dissemination was also evident in a number of cases. First, at the high policymaker level, it can be considered very successful the fact that the Minister himself, as well as all education directors of the Ministry of Education and Culture have been informed about the mascil project in a number of meetings. Specifically, the Minister Dr Kadis, Directors Dr Louis, Dr Marjadhis, and Mr Neocleous, had more than one meeting with the local mascil team. Further, strong collaboration took place with Dr Michaelidou-Evripidou, Director of the Cyprus Pedagogical Institute and Chairperson of the Committee for the New Curricula in Cyprus. Consequently, all mascil PD courses in Cyprus were accredited. Further, mascil PD courses will be provided to teachers in Cyprus in 2017, after the end of the project lifetime.

A second dimension is related to other appropriate collaborations with the Chairperson of the Elementary Teacher Union, and the Vice-Chairperson of the Cyprus Parents Association. Invitations to present mascil in their annual meetings was not only useful to attract teachers to our PD courses, but also important to inform and convince parents on the necessity to integrate IBL and WoW in the school curricula. Collaboration will continue in 2017, while mascil local team members have been ivnited to serve as keynote speakers in some of their events.

In Greece, the total number of teachers (136) from three different areas of Greece, who attended finally the PD courses, as well as other teachers’ requests, are indicators of the success of the initial phase of dissemination. The degree of attendance and completion of the courses, as well as teachers’ interest during the activities in both meetings and school implementation show the impact of mascil activities in the Greek case. Teachers come from different schools, so the implementation of mascil activities (including lesson videotaping) has attracted other teachers’ attention inside schools. The organization of policy seminar designated the ideas and the potential of the project and issues of sustainability were discussed.

Good practices, classroom activities and PD experiences: (a) have been presented in different local meetings and in national conferences by participant teachers and the Greek team, (b) have been exposed to student-teachers and in-service teachers of the courses, in which the Greek mascil team is normally involved. Activities or mascil ideas continue to be used and applied in classrooms. Finally, interviews with the teachers revealed their enthusiasm with both the ideas of the project and the type of PD course as organized in Greece.

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In Norway, many of the dissemination activities have focused on informing school teachers, teacher educators, school owners, policy makers, national centers and other national IBL-projects about the mascil project and the core ideas of mascil, not all of those opened for substantial discussions with the audience. Further, there is some strong evidence that the dissemination of mascil has been successful on the local level. In Norway, we chose to use regular teachers as multipliers. During the training period of the multipliers, they formed a well-established and engaged community. When the training period was over, it was an outspoken wish from both the multipliers and the local school authorities (Melhus municipality) to continue the collaboration in a teacher network meeting regularly to discuss, develop and share mathematics and science inquiry activities, related to the word of work. In fact, the school authorities consider the content of mascil and the role of a teacher network meeting face to face to be so important that they have decided to expand the group to include teachers from all primary and lower secondary schools in the municipality. The teacher network has regular meetings (four meetings in 2015/2016).

Another evidence that the dissemination has been successful on the local level is that the local paper (Adressa) in December 2015 wrote a 12-pages article about the ongoing mathematics teaching in Melhus primary and lower secondary schools, as part of the mascil project. The reporter from the newspaper visited several mathematics classrooms, and interviewed both multipliers in the mascil project and regular teachers, and the article shows that teachers are aware of and use the resources (mascil tasks) on the national mascil website. Representatives of the mascil group were also interviewed in this article.

On the national level, it is harder to see the immediate effect of dissemination activities. There are many projects and initiatives pulling in the same direction, which of course is a great strength for the project ideas, but it also makes it harder for one particular project to “stand out from the crowd”. We have had several dissemination activities focusing on collaboration between projects, discussing how to share resources and how to spread the approaches to a bigger audience. As a result of this, the mascil project is mentioned in a report on effective teaching, published by the Norwegian Centre for Mathematics Education (Nostrati & Wæge, 2015), and links to the mascil national website are provided (or soon to be provided) on the websites of National Centre for Science Recruitment, Norwegian Centre for Science Education and Norwegian Centre for Mathematics Education. This will make the mascil resources visible to a wide range of teachers.

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The number of clicks on the national website (mascil-norge.org) was 643 in 2013 (website operative from December), 28 693 in 2014 and 53 264 in 2015; total 82 600. Total number of „visits“was 89 in 2013, 3973 in 2014, 7611 in 2015; total 11 673.

In Spain, the case of the science fairs, the evidence is the number of schools, students, and teachers involved in the organization of the fairs, and of those visiting the fair. Also, as an open event, the number of parents and out-of-school people that visited the fairs. The data provided by the organizers is that, in total, in each fair thousands of people were involved. The fairs were also visible in local and regional media (radio, press, TV), and can be considered as very successful events.

In the case of the dissemination through teachers’ centres and the ministry of education, the evidence is the request we had to organize PD courses based on the mascil materials. Courses have been organized in the Teachers’ Centre of Jaén, Ubeda, and Almeria. In the case of the dissemination through INTEF (National Ministry of Education), the evidence is the request we had to organize PD courses based on the mascil materials. Mascil has organised and run the online phase of two summer courses (2014 and 2015). Besides, mascil organized and taught the face to face part of the 2014 course, and offered a workshop in the 2015 edition. Also in the case of the collaboration with the Safa foundation, the evidence is the request we had to organize 10 workshops for teachers and an online PD course. Altogether, around 250 teachers have had the opportunity to know more about IBL, and to implement IBL to experience IBL with their students.

In Czech Republic, several teachers participating in the above mentioned events required more detailed information about the project – these teachers usually were active participants of courses held within the mascil project, they actively discussed with single Czech mascil team members.

From participants of PD courses we have several feedback e-mails with very good evaluation of the content and structure. They were satisfied and willing to take part in following event. One example: “Good morning, thank you, that you offered me this interesting course. It is really right approach to instruction, which one I consider for most contributive and most amazing for learners and teachers, too. I am looking forward to next events with similar content.” Next one example is founding the after school extracurricular hobby activity “Science is amazing” at participating school inspired by mascil course of the concerned teacher.

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In Romania, local team received a lot of oral feedback from students, teachers, parents, local stakeholders about the usefulness of mascil activities. Further, they observed the active participation of parents and stakeholders in workshops, they received many requests from teachers to provide more materials and more information about IBL, WoW, while teachers from PD also proposed presentations, workshops for dissemination events, they also initiated dissemination actions on their own (independently of the mascil team).

The mascil team was invited to several schools, local events, conferences (both on local and international level). Local team have more than 50 registered participants for the PD courses that will be organized in 2017 (after the end of the project lifetime), while members of the mascil team were invited to conduct workshops for teachers in Covasna county in 3 different regions in 2017. The number of views for mascil related albums on the Facebook grew from the initial 2-300 to more than 5000 (also the number of shares and likes grew from 1-2 to 50-100).

In Lithuania, focus was on the policy-level. The main aim of the national policy workshops was to foster cooperation and synergies among research, and practice fields, by producing strategies to support the widespread uptake of inquiry-based science teaching. Twenty-one key-persons and policy makers were identified in Lithuanian. The representatives from the Ministry of Education and Science, the Educations Development Centre, the Centre of National Exams, the high schools and universities took part in the workshop. The vice ministry of the Ministry of Education and Science and the mascil National Advisory Boards participated in this event. We invited persons from fairly wide domains of education: policy makers, teachers’ trainers, teachers and members of National STEM group. We see IBL implementation perspectives in relation with STEM implementation in Lithuania.

In Turkey, the mascil project is possessing a great success in Turkey. This is due to an excellent dissemination work on many different levels like teacher workshops, conferences, media coverage or diverse cooperation with different stakeholders. Thus, mascil has been making a substantial influence on policy makers, researchers and practitioners in Turkey. Around 300 pre-and in-service teachers participated in the two-day mascil teacher workshop in three cities: Ankara, Nevsehir and Adana. The success in Ankara workshops got the attention of teachers and policy makers in other cities as well. Local director of Ministry of Education approached us from Nevsehir and Adana to run a mascil workshop in their cities. Thus, we organized mascil workshops in Nevsehir

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and Adana. By considering the significant number of teachers reached by such workshops, more than 30.000 students will be influenced by mascil in Turkey per year.

Until now, more than 900 teachers filled a form to participate in mascil workshops (http://mascil.hacettepe.edu.tr/index.shtml). To meet this high demand, we are planning to disseminate mascil materials at 2nd STEM teacher conference and run mascil workshops in this conference (http://www.stemandmakers.com).

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3. Conclusions and Recommendations

The conclusions and recommendations are based on the outcomes from the different sessions presented in the previous chapter. This chapter is presented in three strands, namely (a) the essential conditions for a successful dissemination implementation for such a dissemination project, (b) ways to further improve the dissemination results in all partner countries, and (c) a sustainability plan.

3.1. Essential Conditions for Successful Dissemination

Partners have been identified a number of essential conditions for the best possible dissemination results, not only within mascil project, but also for similar dissemination projects that focused on topics like IBL, STEM education, making connections to the World of Work, teacher education, and mathematics and science teaching and learning.

High quality of products

The products offered to the audience (teaching materials, marketing materials, PD courses, events, workshops, exhibitions etc.) need to have the highest quality. As participation in the activities/events is facultative for all attenders the highest quality is necessary to attract the visitors. The products/activities need to be marked by a unique feature to attract the visitors. We need to offer something special, something useful and something that the participants cannot receive somewhere else.

In regards to the activities, these need to be target group specific. As different target groups have different needs, we need to focus on a concrete target group, in order to ensure the successful dissemination. It is possible to organize an activity for more than one target group, but it is necessary to consider/plan separate slots, where concrete needs of each target group can be addressed.

Links with other organizations and local authorities

Since mascil group was a research team rather than a recognized provided of PD, strong links and partnerships were needed with national organizations that could support the PD element of mascil. Such partnerships needed to have clear mutual benefits since partners would have to self-fund their contribution to planning, marketing and delivery. Second, in order to have an effect on national scale, there needed to be early identification of national organizations with related interests who could support

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dissemination by cascading information through their own networks and providing platforms such as conferences for presentations of mascil. Existing links to such organizations from mascil team members were useful to facilitate this.

In addition to having national organizations to work with, dissemination is successful when there are effective structures in place and well-established networks into which mascil project information and professional development can be introduced. In times of instability and changing roles it is difficult to find effective ways of working with clusters of schools or having the desired widespread impact.

In many countries, the first success factor was the close collaboration with the local school authorities, and devoted school contacts. These helped us to inform and engage multipliers, which in turn established strong learning communities at their local schools. The other factor is the ongoing communication with the national science and mathematics centers and other local and national projects focusing on IBL and WoW, in order to reach a broader audience for the mascil ideas and the mascil resources.

Connections with Stakeholders

For the successful implementation of a project like mascil in our countries, we consider that connections with high level stakeholders, PD provides and teachers associations are crucial. In order to organize PD courses that can be successful in attracting teachers, these have to be offered through existing structures. In some cases, we exploited the connections with the Teachers Centers, the Ministries of Education), and other bodies (e.g. the SAFA foundation in Spain).

Importance of workplace contexts

An important condition that is necessary for improving the success of mascil is the awareness of the importance of using workplace contexts in science and mathematics education to better prepare students for future jobs. This awareness should result in measures like the inspection asking schools what they do in that direction and policy asking from schools to include performance measures that use workplace contexts. As a result, schools and teachers would feel the need to extend their repertoire to using inquiry-based teaching methods and (re)designing and using workplace contexts in their teaching.

Flexible Dissemination Strategy

Experience from also earlier projects (PASCIGARDEN, INQUIRE, etc.) has shown that the approach of focusing on “Dissemination of Awareness” and “Dissemination of

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Understanding” first is as effective as “Dissemination of Activities” and in particular their outcomes is more rewarding at the end of the project. Thus we assume that one essential condition necessary for success of the mascil project is a more “flexible” dissemination strategy. For instance, minor variations, like those necessary for a better implementation of the national policy workshops could result in much better outcomes.

Accreditation of courses and Ministry’s license

Ministry’s license for all the schools of the participant teachers concerning mascil activities facilitated the implementation of innovative activities in classrooms and further disseminated the basic ideas of inquiry learning and world of work in the learning and teaching of Mathematics, Science and Technology.

Collaboration with local authorities and Ministry of Education is important. Teachers need to see the value of the mascil workshop and get a certificate that Ministry of Education accepts or approves. Teachers may need support after the workshop while implementing mascil activities in their classroom. Creating such a dynamic support mechanism is important.

3.2. Further Improvements

Dissemination activities have been implemented in all partner countries very effectively, and with success. However, to ensure even bigger success, our design and implementation could consider the following issues, ideas, and approaches.

First, it is important to raise awareness for the idea that school knowledge is something people will need in their future life, but it is not a remedy for all challenges students face when learning STEM subjects. In addition, linking school knowledge to the world of work is not emphasized by mascil only, but by many other initiatives in STEM education all over Europe. Further, it is important to:

(a) Make use of existing materials, networks, contacts – before you start to implement dissemination activities, you need to consider the current state of supporting materials/circumstances/structures in order to use them in the most optimal way;

(b) Be open for opportunities – from time to time some opportunities can occur, that make the dissemination easier/cheaper/more effective – e.g. new contacts, new

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materials, availability of relevant resources, another event that you can use to disseminate your thing etc. – it is important to make use of such opportunities;

(c) It is important to make the changes sustainable even if it requires a lot of efforts;

(d) It is important to evaluate the needs of the target groups. Only if we respond to their needs we can reach them;

(e) Try to receive important information and valuable advises from experts – it helps you to act in a targeted manner.

In addition, since the current curricula at teacher training institutions are rather overloaded with content-related and general pedagogical courses, mascil (and similar projects) should make explicit their added value and the new method they provide. We were successful in penetrating some institutions in all countries, but still this could be improved, and even larger audiences could be reached. Also for this target group we would like to be inspired by best practices from countries beyond the mascil consortium.

Dissemination events are likely to be most effective when the content is matched to the interests of the participant group or can be effectively connected to their primary focus. Participants need to become aware of the relevance and value of the project with respect to their current priorities and concerns. This was eventually achieved in the dissemination and implementation in many countries, particularly through the PD sessions, especially when there was careful planning and adaptation to local situation, in collaboration with the school or college.

For pre-service teachers in various countries, the preparation of sessions that can be embedded into existing courses in teacher education seems the most effective way of moving forward after the mascil project. This requires some longer term planning with providers of teacher education and some strategic liaison to embed inquiry-based approaches into teacher education on a wider scale.

In further planning and dissemination, it remains important to work on developing strategic partnerships that can move forward and promote similar aims once the mascil project comes to an end. It will also be important to work with partners to develop and establish a professional development model that is sustainable. This is key to ensuring effective PD continues and has a positive impact on pedagogy. Further use of connections to emerging curriculum issues will also contribute to the effectiveness of any follow up work with mascil aims.

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The dissemination of mascil among the teaching profession, using workshops, courses and/or PD activities, has proven to be effective if a good relation between mascil and PD providers (Teachers’ Centers, Regional and National Ministries of Education) exists. However, these relationships can always be stronger. For a wider impact, a closer collaboration is needed. Working together in defining an ensemble of professional competencies that every math and science teacher should acquire (been inquiry-based teaching an important part of them) could also be very beneficial. And, according to this, orchestrating PD structures longer that courses or workshops, in order to support teachers to develop these competencies.

The dissemination among parents and out-of-school groups through the collaboration with teachers’ associations and already existing science fairs has also proven to be effective. We would recommend strengthening this kind of collaboration. Besides, involving other providers of informal science education (like, for instance, science museums) could also be a good way of disseminating mascil among a wider audience.

3.3. Sustainability

Based on their prior to mascil project expertise, but also on the rich experiences from the mascil dissemination activities implementation, partners have further identified the significance of developing a sustainability plan. These key elements are presented below.

We plan to ensure the sustainability of the dissemination of the IBL and the WoW through the following channels:

(a) Continue working with high level officials, stakeholders and networks that have been informed about the mascil project; project consortium will keep informing new teachers, and other key target groups about the mascil teaching material.

(b) Continue working towards the official accreditation of mascil based courses for teacher education.

(c) Ongoing distribution of materials – we try to make the mascil materials as well as materials from previous projects dealt with IBL (primas, compass, lema) better available for teachers. We are in progress of adding these materials to the Scientix database of materials.

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(d) At the same time the materials will still be available through the mascil website. mascil website is linked to the websites of the previous projects and over sites, (like the German www.offeneaufgaben.de). This can ensure that people who will look for open tasks online will be redirected to the project website.

(e) It is important to provide teaching material that addresses topics as well as approaches that are not commonly used in some countries. Thus we are preparing mascil teaching material that takes advantage in supporting a systematic development in science knowledge as well as in inquiry skills. We ask teachers and their students to ascend different levels of inquiry learning starting at a low level in grade 5 and achieving a very high level in grade 12 while continuously focusing on one socio-scientific topic. We assume that this approach will help teachers to implement inquiry learning more often as they gradually improve their science content knowledge and their pedagogical content knowledge while scaffolding inquiry learning in class.

(f) A stable international network of PD centers has been established after the conference Educating the Educators. The network that counts more than 20 PD centers from different European countries meets on regular basis two times a year and they will continue their cooperation through a recently funded Erasmus+ program.

(g) The mascil conferences “Educating of Educators II” bring together researchers, teachers and policy makers from the whole world. In this way we hope to establish a strong network, who will deal with the topic of education of teacher trainers as well as with the special significance of the IBL and WoW in the teacher training.

(h) Additional submission of the new proposals is planned in order to ensure the continuality of the work on IBL and WoW as well as the sustainability of the existing/established networks.

(i) Continue working with the National Advisory Boards.

(j) Maintain and exploit the presence of mascil on platforms for educators (e.g. Ecent and Elwier) and regular publications of classroom resources and experiences (e.g. from master and phd students).

(k) Continue to discuss the content of curricula at teacher training institutions as they are rather overloaded and have the risk to easily replace mascil-related courses by other (new) content.

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(l) Implement the mascil-ideas into the running programs for teacher professionalization that also have an emphasis on the importance of connections between schools and industry (e.g. Jet-Net and Teacher Academy).

(m) The PD toolkit builds on previous work at the Centre for Research in Mathematics Education at the University of Nottingham and this will continue to underpin future work in related areas. Materials from the toolkit will therefore be used in their existing forms or revised for use in subsequent projects with similar aims.

(n) Discussions with national organizations to develop formal and informal partnerships focused on developing and researching the establishment of effective and sustainable professional learning communities in colleges.

(o) Networks of teachers (old and new participants), as well as student-teachers have been established to sustain mascil ideas and activities to carry on.

(p) Preparing reports for the national Ministries, accompanied by recommendations for integrating mascil ideas in mathematics and science curriculum.

(q) Collaboration with different groups that organize science fairs and other informal education actions, offering our expertise and participating with stands, talks, workshops, etc.

(r) Use of social media, so participants can easily follow the upcoming mascil events and other resources. This is also good for multipliers to communicate with teachers and guide them online.

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4. References

DfEE (1998). Dissemination in Practice.

DfEE (1998). A Guide to Dissemination.

European Commission. Overview of Dissemination Methods. Retrieved from: http://ec.europa.eu/eahc/documents/management/fact_sheet/Factsheet_6_Elaborating_dissemination_plan_OVERVIEW_OF_DISSEMINATION_METHODS.pdf

European Commission. Basic Template for Dissemination Planning. Retrieved from:

http://ec.europa.eu/eahc/documents/management/fact_sheet/Factsheet_6_Elaborating_dissemination_plan_TEMPLATE_FOR_DISSEMINATION_PLANNING.pdf

FDTL (1999). Projects Bulletin. Disseminating Effectively.

Harmsworth, S., & Turpin, S. (2000). Creating an effective dissemination strategy. TQEF National Co-ordination Team.

Rogers, E. (1983). Diffusion of Innovations (3rd Edition). New York: The Free Press.

TLTP (1996). Dissemination Guidelines.

International Comparative Report on the Dissemination Activities · 2016-10-25 · International Comparative Report on the Dissemination Activities . 2 ... (IBL), connections to the

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