A closer look into our Round Table on Proactive anticipatory policies

A closer look into our Round Table on Proactive anticipatory policies

With the participation of more than 50 researchers, professionals and students, the roundtable organised by FEDORA last Thursday 3 November at the University of Bologna conveyed a myriad of reflections through the contributions of its 4 keynote speakers and the conversations sparked during the event. Facilitated by Dr Antti Laherto,  professor in Science Education at the University of Helsinki,  the event kicked off with a presentation by Dr Olivia Leverini, Coordinator and Lead of the FEDORA project. She walked the audience through the main components and achievements of the EU-funded project, which is looking deeply into the dissonances between the historic science education models and the needs and questions of modern societies. The bottom line is how to grasp the future and enable action and agency in the present through science education.

Dr Levrini highlighted that the studies, interviews and surveys deeply tried to understand interdisciplinarity from different angles and the fact that we need disciplines. They are lenses through which we can look from diverse perspectives and help to understand boundaries and moreover, inhabit boundaries. Metaphors become helpful to bring understanding to the complexity of where we live and it is here where new languages are needed and are invited to guide us through possible paths that foster actions in the present, thinking into the future.  

Each of the invited speakers contributed from their field of expertise to what the conference aimed for: an active exchange of different perspectives, coming from transdisciplinary fields of work.

• Giacomo Bergamini, from the University of Bologna, Rector’s Delegate for Sustainability, introduced the audience to the set of actions deployed by the University to bring the whole community into a mindset that considered the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals as a constituent part of their strategy, that would lead them to a more compromised way of dealing with the climate change and to community resiliency.
• Guia Bianchi, JRC and co-author of the recent GreenComp: The European Sustainability competence framework invited the audience to explore the framework and put into practice the areas that resonate with each one’s local context because the GreenComp is an adaptable and contextualised framework. 
• Erica Bol, representative of  Teach the Future stressed the importance of being conscious about the future, that change exists permanently and even though the future hasn’t already happened, foresight thinking is a way to imagine and anticipate what can happen, and what are our desirable futures. 
• Sibel Erduran,  from the University of Oxford, and president of the European Science Education Research Association (ESERA) engaged the audience with her reflections on the role of time and cultural nuances when planning to deal with global problems.  She celebrated the participation of researchers from different backgrounds, not only from science education because this made the studied issues less peripheral. She showed an old black-and-white photograph as a metaphor for the way schools still look today and from there she built the case about the urgency of tackling the blind spots recognised by FEDORA.

A poster session was installed on one side of the auditorium and participants were invited to share their thoughts and questions, while looking at the answers given by the public on "Postcards for the future".

 You can enjoy the video, which summarises the whole event: Video FEDORA roundtable  and our gallery with a selection of pictures of the day!

On the next day, the FEDORA project participated in the Conference on Interdisciplinarity in STEM Education organised by the IDENTITIES project. It was a synergy action that brought together 6 different European projects that are researching different aspects of science education and open schooling. For more information, please visit  https://identitiesproject.eu/conference-on-interdisciplinarity-in-stem-education/