Lab4U Talks. Episode 3: Resetting the way we teach science is vital for all our future

In the previous episode we talked about how we could solve the problems of science education by building a better future, focusing on leading it in schools because this would make it easier to hear the voice of those who face these kinds of challenges.

For Lab4U, science is vital for learning and marks a guide in moments of change or adjustment in the way of delivering education.

In this third episode, Komal talks with two leaders, Nathan Marks and Javier Baeza, about readjusting the way we are teaching science, an idea raised in an article by the World Economic Forum.

The article, which was the result of the sixteenth forum of young world leaders, explains how COVID-19 has forced major reforms in the way education is delivered, rethinking a radical change in which science, technology, engineering and mathematics are crucial to our future.

Don’t miss this episode about the dialogue of two young people who have led projects with schools, and which highlighted the challenges of implementing educational technology, even more so taking into account the context in which the world is currently moving. 

Episode outline:

• 00:00: Presentations
• 02:00: How are we rethinking education from a science perspective?
• 03:40: What do we think about what we are living?
• 09:00: How do we help the school community in the development of skills?
• 14:30: How will we face the future in education?
• 16:50: Is it possible to experience the classroom from the virtual?
• 25:00: We must think about the challenges and opportunities of education in the future 
  

The new education

The current context that we are living with the COVID-19 pandemic has forced the school communities, both teachers, managers and the more than one billion students who had to leave the schools, according to the WEF.

In Lab4U we have space to know what happens in the classrooms, well, the new classrooms, and how from the virtual it puts on test teachers and complete educational communities, fearing to think that they will not be able to end a process or not knowing skills that the current context and the difficulties have not allowed them to learn and acquire. 

Thus, the daily struggle of schools to survive a crisis not only in education, but also in areas of such social impact, such as the economy and the occupation of public spaces that cannot be so easily replaced by teleworking or tele-education, is affecting the teaching of young people.

A world of opportunities of which we want to be a part

The work of LAB4U has been to open spaces of opinion that, from science, mathematics, engineering and other technological areas, allow the work of strengthening the educational communities from a common dialogue between teachers, board members, students and communities of parents and guardians.

This opens a possibility of opportunities of how we imagine learning with the new skills that teachers and students must acquire to bring the classroom to the imaginary of a video call.

Some of the main topics discussed in this episode were

• Changing the Rules of the Education Game During the Pandemic.
• Adapting to a new reality that demands the attention of both teachers and students.
• Rethinking the future with collaboration, critical thinking, creativity and communication (4C).

On the first point, Nathan commented on how the landscape of students and teachers has changed, considering the challenge of an entire semester through the virtual mode, and how this accelerates the challenges of further increasing skills, delivering tools and infrastructure and acquiring learning that allows rethinking the new education.

As for the second, Javier explained that the focus must be on education to give a much better future to students around the world, but do not forget that this experience is totally different from the regular circumstances to which the students were adapted. 

A solution with an answer that considers everyone in society and that allows the discussion among various actors in education of the commitment that means a common effort to deliver better skills and tools to teachers to face a difficult context such as the current one.

Helping teachers and knowing is what we need

Accompanying teachers in the educational process is part of what we do at Lab4U, that is why it is so crucial to hear opinions about how the content, educational skills and teaching process is being delivered to teachers and how they are taking it to the virtual classrooms.

Nathan, points out that working in communities and maintaining processes in a way that builds equity in education is key to facing moments of crisis. Double’s challenge! 

Understanding what is happening and bringing it into the educational process is a task that requires a lot of attention. Therefore, one of the themes of this episode is how we refocus education from a model that considers the 4Cs (critical thinking, collaboration, communication and creativity).

One of the difficulties teachers are facing, Javier emphasizes, is generating spaces for face-to-face dialogue with students, since the lack of physical distance that should exist today to protect us can be a risk factor in how we will face education in the future.

It is not easy to bring the most sensitive emotionalities or abilities of the human being to the current context in which students live, often running the risk of losing the imaginary of community that emerges in schools.

The challenge of the virtual classroom and the lack of skills

The new codes of education or distance work in educational communities have accelerated the challenges of having adequate infrastructure and content to continue the professional development skills of educators and promoting communication with their students.

Teaching in person is totally different from teaching through tele-education, so the links between teachers and students are experienced in another perspective. Nathan and Javier agreed on this point, which shows how difficult the daily learning has been, the way of evaluation and the search for questions that arise in the classroom.

Educational experiences are based on relationships and that is the great challenge of how we imagine education will be in a few more years, if it will deliver a future in which both educational learning and distance communication can be developed, in an environment with a focus on the digital.

In this sense, the opportunities for teachers and students must be at the center of the policies of deconfinement, being fundamental how the disease develops in the future, since it will allow the gradual return of students to their schools and of teachers in their work spaces.

This should be a task that unites families, students, teachers, directors and all kinds of individuals in the educational chain, since this process is structured from a joint effort, supporting teachers in the delivery of skills to meet future challenges.

So, in Lab4U we present you this episode that seeks to give opinion about the recommendations that education should live in the future, the rethinking from the sciences and how the conversation of the educational communities should go in the right direction of the creation of skills, support tools and search of knowledge that allows to face the changes and new realities of the pandemic.

Related post

Science education in times of COVID-19

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