PetrSU Presented its Experience in the Field of STEM-Education at the International Symposium in Helsinki
This year over two hundred people representing various countries from Taiwan and Korea to Great Britain and Canada took part in the symposium.
Helsinki hosted an annual international symposium on STEM-education (International LUMAT Symposium: Research and Practice in Math, Science and Technology Education). This year over two hundred people representing various countries from Taiwan and Korea to Great Britain and Canada took part in the symposium.
Petrozavodsk State University was represented by the senior teacher of the Department of General Physics of the Institute of Physics and Technology Ekaterina Teteleva. Her report “Developing Student’ Creativity by Interplay of Alternatives”, based on the work of the STEM-cluster of additional education of the Republic of Karelia, stirred great interested and generated discussion.
The report featured the practices of studying simple and comprehensible subjects from the perspective of physical laws. To see physics in everyday objects and offer various alternative solutions to one problem is one of the skills of a modern person, which is developed in schoolchildren in the framework of STEM-education. For instance, the task of measuring the height of a tree, a quite common problem that is widely used in project activities of the pupils. There are several possible solutions; many of them are not mentioned in the literature or on the Internet. More precise analysis of the problem of estimating the number of pine needles allows integrating the term fractals (object each part of which wholly or partly repeats itself), which are commonly used in the studies of non-linear processes, such as turbulence, diffusion, macromolecules etc.
At the symposium, representatives of different countries presented their practices in all the areas of STEM-education, from specific problems on robotics, mathematics, or project activities, to developing study programs that include STEM, as well as administrative and financial issues. In particular, Finnish colleagues told about their experience in the interaction between a university and a school, how the classes are structured, what projects are implemented by the youth. Colleagues from Taiwan shared their experience of holding classes at country schools, drawing from the culture and traditions of local people. The problem was related to studying the flying fish from the viewpoint of physiology and the reasons for such behavior.
One of the days of the symposium featured presentations of the works by Finnish and Swedish schoolchildren and students, who demonstrated their projects in various areas, from robotics to models of different installations.
The participation in the symposium showcased that the study areas pursued by Petrozavodsk State University in the field of STEM-education follow the latest world trends in this area.
