Bridging STEAM practices and home economics in teacher education

STEAMkitchen aims to reach changed teacher training practices that would support increased capacity of mostly female stakeholders for implementing STEAM into home economics learning practices with...

STEAMkitchen aims to reach changed teacher training practices that would support increased capacity of mostly female stakeholders for implementing STEAM into home economics learning practices with the focus on sustainability issues. Noticing and experiencing STEAM in a home economics context enables content-based learning and knowledge transformation into everyday related activities. STEAMkitchen goes for professional (also digital) development in all levels of teacher education stakeholders.

The content development starts with staff training and is established through co-designing, including also preservice teachers. To ensure the quality of the results, several validation activities, like focus groups, handbook piloting in schools or e-course piloting in university studies are organised. A lot of attention in the project is given to dissemination activities, like- training days for inservice teachers and active coverage about the project in social media, to reach a broad audience.

STEAMkitchen has three interdependent results: the guidelines, the handbook and the e-course, included to partner universities’ teacher education programmes and applicable to other schools in EU. The instruments alone will not guarantee the changes. Therefore, beneficiaries need to be aware of the content and results of STEAMkitchen and trained to plan interdisciplinary teaching and implement instruments in their lessons; students to notice STEAM in sustainable everyday life situations.