Methodology

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The STELLA web portal is organised in specific sections, conceived to foster communication and interaction among users at different levels: national, European and thematic.

The "Communities" represent a virtual and open space for exchanging practices and ideas among schools, teachers and science education practitioners all over Europe. The national communities of practices are edited in the national languages (BG, DE, FR, IT, PT), while the European Community as well as the Thematic Communities, on science education in Europe and equal opportunities in science, are in English, in order to allow communication among users from different countries.

The core of the web portal is the "European catalogue of science education initiatives", collecting information about initiatives from all over Europe, by means of online questionnaires directly filled in by teachers, and validated by the central team of the project.

To facilitate the exchange of experiences and the transfer of results, a "set of multimedia tools for transferability" has been developed. Directly downloadable for free from the web site, these tools are aimed at helping teachers to describe in an interactive way their projects and activities, by encouraging also pupils and students to take part in the documentation process.

Starting from the experience of those who make use of the set of multimedia tools, the "Guidelines for Documenting Science Education Projects" describe and illustrate the multimedia tools developed in the scope of the STELLA project in order to enable teachers to plan, implement and enrich the documentation of their science education initiatives.

The most interesting science education initiatives included in the European catalogue have been analysed in more details and included in the "Pool of good practices" which is available online in form of an eBook entitled "Science Education in European Schools – Selected Practices from the STELLA Catalogue".