AN ACTION TO BRING SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY CLOSER TO SECONDARY SCHOOL

This paper presents the experience of an initatve, the EXPLORE courses, designed to bring science and technology closer to secondary school. The EXPLORE courses, organised by “EXPLORATORI: Natural Resources” project, are partcularly addressed to secondary school teachers and are conducted at Catalonia (North East of Spain). The main objectve is to provide secondary school teachers with the opportunity to explore the natural resources. Based on a combinaton of face-to-face and online learning, the programme of the courses uses an interdisciplinary approach, integratng Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematcs (STEM) and STEAM (STEM + art) felds. Data presented in this paper correspond to the 2012 and 2013 editons. The results, which were obtained from a writen questonnaire completed by teacher partcipants of EXPLORE courses, indicate that more than 70% of secondary school teachers were encouraged to introduce some course contents on their teaching classes afer partcipatng in an EXPLORE course.


INTRODUCTION
Over the past decade, the number of students in science and technology felds has increased in absolute terms in most European countries, but their proporton of the total student populaton has signifcantly decreased during the same period (ERT, 2009).Recognising that a highly qualifed workforce in the areas of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematcs (STEM) is vital to the economic prosperity of Europe, the declining interest in these studies among young people has been a mater of internatonal concern in several studies and policy reports (for example: EU, 2004;EU, 2007;OECD, 2008;Osborne, Simon & Tytler, 2009).
The situaton in Catalonia, in the North East of Spain, is not diferent from the rest of Europe: the number of frst-year enrolments on scientfc, technological, and mathematcs courses in Catalan universites is critcal.In this sense, a recent study (Everis, 2012) revealed that the total number of students choosing to pursue studies in Informaton and Communicaton Technologies (ICT) feld at the Catalan universites had declined by more than 50% from 2001 to 2010.This trend was even more pronounced in the case of technical engineering.Furthermore, the study also reported that the majority of Catalan students found the careers in science and technology felds atractve, to have high social prestge, and to ofer good employment opportunites.Nevertheless, many of them do not choose them because they have low expectatons for own success.Results from the Programme for Internatonal Student Assessment (PISA) for 2006 (CSA, 2008) indicated a tendency for Catalan students to show relatvely lower levels of interest in science than other OECD (Organisaton for Economic Cooperaton and Development) countries.In general, students expressed more interest in learning about health or safety issues that they perceive as being relevant to their lives than those that they perceive as being of litle relevance to themselves (Bybee & McCrae, 2011).
To overcome this situaton, scientfc and educatonal organizatons across the country have been working on developing and implementng actvites and projects designed in part to increase young people's interest in STEM careers and grow the number of qualifed workers with STEM skills and knowledge.This paper presents our own experience with one of these initatves: the EXPLORE courses.
The EXPLORE courses are an acton addressed partcularly to current science and technology teachers in secondary level educaton, organized by the "EXPLORATORI: Natural Resources".The "EXPLORATORI: Natural Resources" is a project from the Barcelona Knowledge Campus (BKC), presented by the "Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya • BarcelonaTech" (UPC) together with the "Universitat de Barcelona" (UB), and the Berga Town Council.The main objectve of the project is to bring science closer to secondary school students, their teachers and the society in general.To achieve this, the "EXPLORATORI: Natural Resources" organizes actvites related to scientfc and technological topics, with a common background: the use and exploitaton of natural resources.
The specifc purpose related to the EXPLORE courses is to provide tools for teachers to be used aferwards in their lectures with students.The program courses primarily focus on secondary school teachers as the main target of this initatve, but are also addressed to university students and environmental science professionals.

METHODOLOGY 2.1 The singularity of the EXPLORE courses
Although there are many training programs for educators, EXPLORE courses have an important distnctve feature compared with other courses: the theory lectures are combined with workshops and visits to sites of scientfc and technological signifcance where samples can be taken for the workshops.For this reason, these actvites are carried out in the "El Berguedà" region, given the value of its rich natural landscape.In fact, feldbased learning is not new; it appears partcularly in studies related to Earth sciences (biology, geology, environmental science...).However, it is also true that this methodology is not commonly applied in teacher training courses.Moreover, learning connected to the nature has the potental to decentralize knowledge that currently fulfls an important responsibility of the University.Table 1 shows the structure of an EXPLORE course.In additon, the workshops provide teachers with a set of tools of easy implementaton in the classrooms, as they atempt to use as much as possible accessible material and samples collected at the visits.For example, in the "Constructon of simple meteorological equipment" workshop of the EXPLORE meteorology course, an anemometer and a thermometer were constructed using low-cost and easily available material in any school, such as plastc cups, drinking straws, rubber bands, pencils, etc.

Sessions
The contents of the EXPLORE courses focus on the theme of natural resources, and the main topic of each course is chosen by the organizers of the "EXPLORATORI: Natural Resources" project according to the tme of year.Appendix A collects the topics of the EXPLORE courses ofered in the 2012 and 2013 editons.Each course covers diferent aspects of the topic selected, from diferent disciplinary perspectves simultaneously.This multdisciplinary design actvity is in line with the STEM educaton model.
In the ninetes, the Natonal Science Foundaton (NSF) developed the word STEM as a generic label for any event, policy, program, or practce that involves one or several of the STEM disciplines (Bybee, 2010).For educatonal policies, programs, and practces, the acronym should mean an interdisciplinary approach to learning where rigorous academic concepts are coupled with real-world lessons as students apply science, technology, engineering, and mathematcs in contexts that make connectons between school, community, work, and the global enterprise (Tsupros, Kohler & Hallinen, 2009).In other words, STEM educaton removes any boundaries between the subjects and imagines them taught as one (Roberts, 2012).The teaching of the integrated subjects of STEM is gaining importance in some parts of the world, including the United States (Dugger, 2010), but it is stll litle known in Catalonia.
Furthermore, the contents of some EXPLORE courses connect the artstc or creatve side to all the STEM components.This strategy to integrate the arts in the STEM educaton is called STEAM, by adding an "A" to the acronym STEM.A notable example of an EXPLORE course designed with STEAM educaton is EXPLORE natural pigments.The partcipants could examine natural pigments from the scientfc perspectve (physics and chemistry of colour, mineral deposits and resources, identfcaton and characterizaton of pigments by Raman spectroscopy...) and arts (paintngs and artstc techniques of Catalan Romanesque art).

Partcipants
The total number of enrolments in EXPLORE courses ofered in 2012 was 219, and this amount was raised to 32% in 2013, with a mean number of partcipants of around 30 per course.With regard to geographical distributon, the partcipants of 2012 editon came from 76 municipalites in 27 regions (two of them out of Catalonia), while in 2013 editon partcipants came from 93 municipalites in 30 regions (three of them out of Catalonia).The regions primarily belong to the provinces of Barcelona and Girona, but also a large number of partcipants came from the provinces of Tarragona and Lleida.

Tools
All of the partcipants of the EXPLORE courses, which included mainly current secondary school teachers and university students, were invited to complete a questonnaire afer atending the courses.
The inital version of the questonnaire used in the EXPLORE courses was designed to determine the partcipants' overall satsfacton level on the organizaton.Since 2013, a new version of the survey was developed for being used in the following courses.The purpose of the fnal variant of the questonnaire is to collect informaton not only about the level of satsfacton with the actvites but also about the efect of the EXPLORE courses on partcipants in general and secondary school teachers in partcular, who will transmit the knowledge learned to their students.
The fnal questonnaire is composed of three parts.The frst part is designed to obtain informaton about the profle of partcipants.In the second part of the questonnaire, respondents are asked to provide their opinion about the organizaton of the EXPLORE courses.The informaton collected in this secton is useful partcularly for "EXPLORATORI: Natural Resources" organisaton to measure partcipants' overall satsfacton level with the course and to reconsider and improve the negatvely valued aspects for future editons.The last part of the questonnaire includes questons about the impact of the contents that the secondary school teachers have learned during the course on their teaching practces.In other words, the informaton requested in this secton aims to identfy and quantfy the impact of the EXPLORE courses from the teachers' perspectve.The purpose of the last questons of this part is to determine the specifc type of educatonal resources and knowledge (theoretcal, methodological or practcal) that the partcipants have acquired during the EXPLORE course and they are expected to introduce the same resources in their day-to-day teaching work.The questonnaire items are presented in the Appendix B.

RESULTS
The numerical results that corroborate the observatons are obtained from responses of the questonnaires completed and returned by partcipants at the end of each EXPLORE course.In this secton, the most signifcant results of the questonnaires that were administered to the teachers afer partcipatng in a EXPLORE course in 2013 editon are discussed.It is important to note that the answers from the questonnaires have been taken into account only if the number of teachers enrolled in a EXPLORE course was over 15.
In most of the courses in the 2013 editon, more than half of the enrolled teachers were specialized in teaching one or more subjects at the secondary school level in the feld of science and technology, such as physics, chemistry, biology, technology, natural sciences or Earth sciences (Figure 1).Even though the topics of the EXPLORE courses are related to natural resources from a scientfc and technological perspectve, in some of the courses, a high percentage of partcipants were teachers of non-scientfc-technical felds.This fact partcularly corresponds to the cases of EXPLORE the forest (61.5%) and EXPLORE food (71.4%).

Figure 1. Percentage distributon of teacher partcipants in 2013 according to their specifc feld of expertse
Figure 2 shows the assessment of the teaching quality for all EXPLORE courses in the 2013 editon.As shown in the fgure, a large majority of teacher partcipants reported a high level of satsfacton with the teaching quality in EXPLORE courses, with an average valuaton of 8.2 points (SD = 1.1) on a scale from 0 to 10.
Figure 2. Assessment of the teaching quality in EXPLORE courses on a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 indicates "not at all satsfed" and 10 is "completely satsfed" Figure 3 presents the impact of the EXPLORE courses contents on the teaching practces of teacher partcipants from their own perspectve.The analysis in the fgure reveals that the majority of teachers agreed that some EXPLORE courses contents will clearly have a positve impact on their teaching classes.In additon, the degree of impact of the course contents on their practce is relatvely high from their own point of view, with an average score of 6.6 points (SD = 2) on a scale from 0 to 10.

Figure 3. Assessment of the impact of the EXPLORE courses contents on the teaching practces of teacher partcipants on a scale from 0 to 10
Several signifcant fndings were obtained from the responses to the queston "Will you apply some of the EXPLORE course contents in your class?"As shown in Figure 4, the percentage of afrmatve responses to this queston is close to or higher than 90% for the most of the courses.These results indicate that many of the materials and tools provided in the EXPLORE courses are certainly applicable and useful for secondary school teachers.

Figure 4. Percentage of responses to the queston: "Will you apply some of the EXPLORE course contents to your class?"
The results of the queston "Will you introduce some theoretcal contents of the EXPLORE course in your day-today teaching work?" (Figure 5) show slightly diferent percentages of responses, depending on the EXPLORE course.However, it is important to note the partcipants' responses to that issue for the EXPLORE the snow (100%).A possible reason for this is that EXPLORE the snow has partcularly received much approval and positve comments from partcipants referred to the visits and workshops for its technical content.

Figure 5. Percentage of responses to the queston: "Will you introduce some theoretcal contents of the EXPLORE course in your day-to-day teaching work?"
Based on the responses to the queston "Will you introduce some practcal contents of the EXPLORE course in your day-to-day teaching work?" (Figure 6), it is possible to observe that a higher percentage of partcipants gave an afrmatve reply to that queston in the cases of the EXPLORE the mineral world (82.4%) and EXPLORE natural pigments (83.3%) courses.The reason can be related to the practcal lessons of these courses.A large number of workshops were organised in EXPLORE the mineral world and EXPLORE natural pigments, in comparison with other courses, which were surely useful for teachers in their practcal day-to-day work.

Figure 6. Percentage of responses to the queston: "Will you introduce some practcal contents of the EXPLORE course in your day-to-day teaching work?"
Finally, the responses to the queston "Will you introduce some methodological contents of the EXPLORE course in your day-to-day teaching work?" (Figure 7) allow to evaluate the feasibility of applicaton of the methodology of EXPLORE courses, based on the STEM method.These data reveal that a substantal number of teacher partcipants at the EXPLORE courses (between 39.1% and 85.7%) were encouraged to introduce this innovatve methodology in their daily teaching work.Looking back at the Figure 4, a signifcant percentage of secondary school teachers (minimum of 73% for EXPLORE meteorology to maximum of 94% for EXPLORE the mineral world) believed that they will apply all three types of educatonal resources and knowledge.According to the last fgures shown (Figure 5, 6 and 7), theoretcal knowledge was the most chosen opton (mean of all answers is 76%), followed by practcal contents (63%) and then by methodological contents (61%).
It is interestng to menton that the partcipants in EXPLORE courses establish a special connecton with science and technology professionals who deliver the sessions.This connecton appears especially when partcipants and professionals move out of the classroom into countryside sites to visit places of interest and when they share their meals together.As a result, face-to-face sessions last about 10 hours each day.In all these situatons, which may seem insignifcant initally, interestng synergies arise between professionals and partcipants.Promotng the extra-academic relatonship in this way allows to enrich science learning experiences, which have received a very positve feedback from partcipants.
Furthermore, analysis of the responses to the questonnaire reveals that between 30 and 45% of teacher partcipants at the courses had already atended a previous EXPLORE course.This confrms that the methodology was considered as appropriate by partcipants and they have a very positve opinion about the extra-academic relatonship, as seen in the open-ended questons: The issues that I have been satsfed with at the EXPLORE course are...

… the transversality of contents.
… the combinaton of actvites, theoretcal, practcal and visits where one can see things in situ.
… the adaptability of practcal lessons in the classroom at secondary school.
… the treatment of the organizers and professionals.
… the implementaton of some theoretcal content, such as the workshop of food databases and food research.

CONCLUSIONS
An initatve designed to bring science and technology closer to secondary school, the experience of the EXPLORE courses, is described and analysed in this paper.Data for this study were obtained from a writen questonnaire completed by partcipants of the courses in 2013 editon.
Based on the responses to the questons of the questonnaire, it is concluded that teacher partcipants evaluated the teaching quality of the courses positvely.The results also show that EXPLORE courses encourage secondary school teachers to introduce some educatonal resources and knowledge in the classroom related to natural resources.In other words, the contents of the EXPLORE courses can be useful for teachers in their dayto-day teaching and can contribute to the professional development of teachers.
In additon, the design of the EXPLORE courses is closely in line with the STEM method because each topic covers at least two or more diferent disciplines.Therefore, the experience described in this paper demonstrates the great potental for expanding STEM learning at the secondary level and may serve as a reference for those who implement STEM programs in the future in Catalonia, where they are not currently applied.
As a report by European Schoolnet (Kearney, 2010) shows, two actons are at the heart of the drive to make STEM studies and professions a more popular opton for young learners: the development of efectve and atractve STEM curricula and teaching methods, and improved teacher educaton and professional development.As a result, developing ways to implement STEM teaching and learning in schools is essental for increase students' interest and promote scientfc and technological vocatons.There are a number of ways that STEM can be taught in schools today.For example, in most United States schools today, each of the four STEM disciplines are taught with more emphasis going to one or two of the four (Dugger, 2010).However, the f nal decision on implementng STEM educaton and reforming the current educaton system has to be taken by the government.

Figure 7 .
Figure 7. Percentage of responses to the queston: "Will you introduce some methodological contents of the EXPLORE course in your day-to-day teaching work?"

Table 1 .
Structure of an EXPLORE course