Identification of Good Practices
A "good practice" project in the context of the STELLA project can be defined as a project that is well and effectively presented though the use of multimedia tools, and that supports student involvement at all project stages, as a way of promoting maths, science and technology (MST) education at school. In addition, reflecting its European nature, "good practice" in the Stella context also means that a given project approach or selected project elements can be transferred to other settings, e.g. countries, schools, subjects, etc.
The identification and selection process followed a two step approach. The first step was the analysis of selected practices according to a set of previously defined criteria (see below). A short summary of the proposed initiatives at national level was created. The second step was a detailed description of the initiatives which was evaluated and endorsed by the coordinating partners. For this purpose, three types of data collection process were carried out: analysis of the STELLA questionnaire (primary data); analysis of secondary data, such as additional multimedia resources including PPT presentations, video, blog etc.; interviews with teachers.
The following four criteria have been used by the Stella consortium for the identification and analysis of the selected practices:
- Is the project well presented?
- Is the outline of the project sufficiently comprehensible to get an effective overview of the project aims, approaches and results?
- Is the detailed information provided in the questionnaire, and in additional multimedia resources like PPT presentations, video, blog etc. sufficient to understand the realisation and results of the project?
- Is there a good level of interactivity on the part of the students?
- Did students participate in the development of project activities?
- Did students participate actively in the realisation of the project?
- Were students involved in the reporting and presentation process?
- What is the degree of transferability?
- How easy is it to implement and use the initiative?
- How flexible is the initiative for the purpose of being adapted to different settings and contexts?
- Is there any inherent reason why the project cannot be transferred to other settings?
- Is it correct as far as the subject is concerned?
- Is the information provided correct (i.e. accurate and reflective of current thinking and convention) from a subject point of view?
According to these criteria, the selected practices have been described by analysing and integrating data from the STELLA catalogue and the associated webpage. The resulting detailed descriptions of the selected initiatives have been gathered together and are presented in the STELLA eBook "Science Education in European Schools - Selected Practices from the STELLA Catalogue".
