Our digital society is characterised by pervasive use of technology, traversing almost all dimensions of our everyday life, even more so now due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This pushes educational systems to deploy science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics (STEAM) education more efficiently and to foster digital competences, all of which have become key quality of life factors for students [1]. Yet, we see an unwanted trend in youth disengagement from science learning and science-related careers, while at the same time the digitalisation of society poses an increasing demand for science-literate individuals in the labour market [2, 3]. Feinstein [4] emphasises the need to deploy innovative didactic approaches to “help people learn how to engage with science in more desirable ways”, showing the relevance of science learning in everyday life. One effective way towards youth (re)engagement in science learning, contextualised to societal demands [5], is to include families in authentic, real-life learning activities alongside students [6].

Family members, especially caregivers, have a crucial role in influencing students' interest towards science learning as potential role models demonstrating the relevance of science in their own professional careers and zealous facilitators of science learning at home [7]. Also, strong home-school collaboration (HSC) has been shown to enhance motivation for learning and promote cultural intelligence, understanding and social cohesion [8]. It follows that combining strong HSC with innovative approaches to science learning could be a powerful strategy to (re)engage youth in STEAM learning and to boost science literacy [9]. One such innovative science learning approach that has been proposed is open science schooling (OSS) [10], where students are immersed in missions related to real-life issues that affect their local context in close collaboration with community stakeholders and resources. Families, as the core unit of the students’ local community, can become involved in their children’s OSS learning activities by developing STEAM-rich environments at home or by promoting children’ STEAM-related identities, stressing the value of science in developing society [7].

However, families can also act as strong demotivators of science learning if they do not value STEAM domains or do not have the repertoire and self-confidence to support it – even if they attribute great value to helping their children learn science [11]. To this issue, Anderson and Minke [12] have shown that it is crucial for teachers to encourage parents to be involved in educational activities with their children; hence, it is critical for parents to feel invited to participate actively. This implies that schools need to be dynamic centres involving families in the learning experience when deploying OSS implementations. However, the literature has also reported that teachers may not feel adequately trained to work with families [13]. Therefore, a major challenge is to build capacity in secondary schools for teachers to become the initiative-takers and drivers of such family-based OSS approaches.

Within this context, our research agenda aims to critically investigate how family-based OSS develops from a holistic level involving teachers, caregivers and local community resources as co-creators of meaningful learning experiences alongside students. The role of all these stakeholders is to engage in understanding and proposing solutions through science to challenges that affect their surrounding environment. Such educational actions have yet to be undertaken at systemic level in Europe and, consequently, little guidance is available to schools, teachers, families, and other social actors. Therefore, our mission is to develop practical guidelines for secondary schools on how to facilitate family-based OSS based on empirical deployments in a range of contexts. The guidelines are intended to address local particularities based on rich practical experimentation through co-creation with young students and their families.

Our research investigates the deployment of OSS activities involving local community resources and students’ family members in five countries (Lithuania, Greece, Poland, Bulgaria and Turkey) in order to draw a better picture of plausible guidelines that can be used in different contexts representing the wide EU reality. Higher education institutions and secondary schools alongside other local community stakeholders (private companies, science centres, public authorities, etc.) play a vital role as resources for student teams to learn science through immersive missions related to science in their society, together with their families [14]. The deployment of the science missions engaging with real issues affecting the local community involves student teams in developing and driving forward two long-term science missions in which their families are also involved [15]. This is achieved through co-designing, co-creating, implementing, and documenting science missions in the community [10]. Since this is an exploratory longitudinal study, the level of involvement of family members is likely to vary among the participating countries and will be decided locally according to the local team members’ needs. Within this co-creation methodology, teachers, students and family members are the protagonists of the educational endeavour, which is supported by local community actors and resources, and concretised through transdisciplinary science projects. Together, the protagonists choose which community needs and inquiries they are interested to work on as missions (problem contextualisation); plan and organise the main goals and learning objectives as well as test plausible solutions (knowledge and competencies acquisition); reflect on the accomplishment of the mission steps to reach a final solution while documenting the learning process (e.g., through videos, learning diaries, etc.); and present the learning outcomes and achievements to school and to local and online communities (sharing the learning experience) [10]. The students’ continuous reflections on their learning experience as well as management of their science missions through teamwork aim at facilitating the development of their 21st century skills as well as fostering deep learning at a cognitive level. As a starting point for the co-creation methodology, the project researchers have developed observation protocols, interview practices and questionnaires to collect data and monitor the process of family involvement in the students’ science learning experiences. Furthermore, attention is given to train the teachers in collaboration and communication protocols documented in the current literature to create strong HSC links [11] so that they can motivate parents regarding their important role in their children’s science learning.

We expect HSC to be improved due to the close cooperative work that teachers and families will undertake to enrich the learning experience of students, even more so due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Family members will become active participants facilitating the learning experience within their own capabilities and interests. For example, the participating family member(s) could bridge local community resources to the learning experiences of the children by: - introducing students to the adults’ professional networks (e.g., SME, NGOs, local municipality, etc.) that could be potential partners in the development of the students’ missions; - facilitating science at home, by highlighting where science is in everyday life (with the collaboration of teachers); - understanding the importance and impact of their attitude towards science as perceived by the children (in collaboration with teachers). In the short-term, this project will yield a guide pack providing information and guidance on students’ cognitive gain and affective impact as well as practical activities to foster capacity building for schools and teachers in best practices for involving families and the local community in science learning. As mid- and long-term impacts, we expect that students who otherwise would not be interested in a science career could develop a more positive perspective towards a STEAM career path. Participating teachers will experience innovative, student-centred, collaborative, and inquiry-based STEAM education, which they can apply to other cross-subject classes in the future. At the local level, we expect to see families and their immediate communities become more integrated with schools thanks to the contributions that the students will have brought to them. At the national and international levels, we expect the outcomes of this project to assist authorities in EU countries to become sensitised to the relevance of learning science through real-life experiences and engage in breaking the mould of conventional learning mechanisms.

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