From a student's perspective, teachers are often considered to be a role model. A motivated teacher is able to greatly influence and empower students for critical inquiry so that they can become active members taking roles of social actors in a developing society. Skills of effective learning, inquiry and research-based teaching methods allow educators to expand pupils’ scientific literacy skills and help mold lifelong learners. Additionally, pupil skills in effective learning, propensity to innovate, and basic practical skills of analytical problem analysis has to be acquired in early youth. Moreover, research shows how pupils stabilize their tendency toward future career by the age of 14 (Osborne et al. 2003). They tend to choose career based in STEM if they find those topics fascinating and interesting, and not if it is boring to them, especially in adolescence if they recognize job opportunities (Eurobarometer 2005). Many state legislations have underscored the importance of developing students’ abilities and performance in STEM topics. Those approaches teach pupils skills for critical inquiry and problem solving that are applicable in a diversity of contexts, regardless of career choice. By applying research-based education, teachers can become an active participant in new models of education development (Schleicher, 2012) thus becoming 21st century educator.

We propose you to take a trip with us to enrich your teaching methods while transversely boosting your self- motivation. We will share specific tools of self-evaluation and adaptation in knowledge transfer within evolving school environments. We will enable you to create interesting content for students and highly interactive learning atmospheres through various teaching and learning techniques. We have carefully developed a modular training that consists of eight days, with two modules entirely devoted to globally enrich existing skills, as well as enhance the creativity of your approaches for STEM teaching and knowledge transfer. Overall, this training exists to boost your enthusiasm and offer practical skills. Each two days module marks an independent and separate focus, while altogether creating effective tools for adopting innovative STEM teaching and learning processes.

We present to you 4 innovative training modules:

• Learning through research - The European commission (2007) recognized the importance of this, as well as the importance of empowering youth interest for STEM fields. Pupils are introduced to practical topics and experiments as well as research-based activities, which have special importance in high cognitive activation and conceptual learning opportunities with ability to face open questions. We will help you to create opportunities for active pupil participation which are usually among most challenging tasks for teaching processes.

• STEM communication & literacy skills - reading, writing, oral presentation, discussion, questioning and argumentation are crucial for STEM understanding and implementation (Paerson et al. 2010). We will give you tools to activate entire the classroom in critical inquiry-based learning.

• Body involvement - using approaches in education that combine theatre, drama, and art with STEM teaching develops different types of understanding and experience. You will learn how to share knowledge and help your pupils to conceptualize it without standard teaching approaches, eg. without writing anything or using multimedia.

• Short activities / Huge impact - it is a challenge to develop, discover and implement new content, both in small and large scale, within existing curriculum. We will introduce you to a design toolkit for activity creation specially designed and adopted for your environment so pupils can engage in learning through longer timeframes. You will discover ways to efficiently transfer knowledge while creating small changes in methodology.

Our workshops are highly interactive and require full mental and bodily participation. They are based on teachers experience and their needs on an everyday basis. The methodology of our work is independent from prior experience and is suitable for young and as well as experienced teachers.

DAY 1 SUNDAY

• Participants arrival
• Meeting in a hotel
• Practical information about the city, currency, etc.
• Walk through city center
• Dinner in one of Vukovar restaurants

Day 2 MONDAY

Module 1 : Introduction to research based STEM education

Beauty of discovery and questioning are characteristics typical for research. Enthusiasm of discovering nature's simplicity and interconnections of natural laws is by itself an empowering process. Teachers need to share effective ways of transferring enthusiasm, experiences, and advice with their colleagues and at the same time with experts in other fields. Enabling pupils to experience research processes is an important part of sharing motivation toward STEM topics.

Participants are guided and trained on how to develop their own research-based activities and projects, with a special focus on implementation within existing curriculums. Examples of easy and low-cost pupil research projects are shared and analyzed. Participants will be enabled to develop questioning and practical problems-solving while building knowledge with their students.

Day 3 TUESDAY

Module 2 : STEM communication and literacy skills

Performance and non-verbal communication is known to create enthusiastic environment. STEM teachers and educators should be able to guide their students in processes of effectively presenting their ideas while at the same time encouraging audience to actively participate in discussion.

Participants are introduced to various techniques of empowering students to communicate with different stakeholders and develop critical thinking. These techniques include different opportunities and approaches for presentational, literacy and communication skills for STEM topics. They will become aware of different ways how to enable dialogue, manage collective work while at the same time open awareness to the historical, social and economical impacts on knowledge creation.

• Guided visit to city Ilok and dinner near river Dunav (Ilok’s famous vine cellars) OPTIONAL

Day 4 WEDNESDAY

Module 3 : Strengthening practical teaching skills / Body involvement

Drama techniques used in STEM education greatly improve understanding and connection while strengthening conceptual relationships of certain topics. Through variety of body/personal involvement, pupils with different personalities can engage actively in learning.

We deliver good case examples of activities while adopting and analyzing them in various classroom situations and different STEM education topics. Participants are guided to explore different teaching-learning techniques such as drama, theatre, movies, games and debates as techniques which acquires pupils to participate in active and not a passive way. They will learn different approaches in active education and create their own set of activities.

Day 5 and 6 THURSDAY/FRIDAY

Module 4 - 2 days: Action design / Design small actions with huge impact

Teaching is often a solitary profession even though teachers are continuously surrounded by pupils and colleagues. They need to constantly adopt to new and different teaching / learning environments. They need to be motivated, encouraged and able to create opportunities for small changes in their approaches. Creation of such opportunities for changes is a challenging task.

We guide participants through creative process and help them to create and develop meaningful solutions, activities and ideas for classroom. Participants will examine small changes in their approaches and analyze its effects in knowledge transfer. Participants will discover ways how to continuously evolve their knowledge transfer and student engagement.

SOCIAL PROGRAM-THURSDAY AND FRIDAY

• Certificates ceremony
• Writing reviews