Welcome to FEDORA

Regenerating the ecosystem of science learning by developing a future-oriented model to enable creative thinking, foresight and active hope as skills needed in formal and informal science education.
OUR AIMS

FEDORA developed a future-oriented model to enable creative thinking, foresight and active hope as skills needed in formal and informal science education.

But what does "future-oriented" mean?

We recognized that we can't keep navigating a fast-paced changing present time with the old maps that have been accompanying us as society. Therefore, we need to give imagination the right place in the way we envision our systems, territoires and ways of doing. Imagination has been the driving force that will lead FEDORA's paths and proposed methods into new ways of understanding and practising science education. We wanted to creatively regenerate the ecosystem of science learning and intensify those approaches that would lead to open, collaborative, imaginative and curious way of thinking and doing.

OUR METHODOLOGY

Which was our starting point?
FEDORA recognizes three misalignments.

They are true dissonances that can be brought into a nicer piece! We saw a clash between, on one hand, the vertical and hyper- specialized organization of teaching in disciplines and, on the other, the inter-multi-transdisciplinary, character of innovation, and the efforts to make research and science an open and collaborative space. We see a second mismatch between the formalized and exclusive languages used in schools and the needs for new languages to enhance imagination and the capacity to talk about the contemporary challenges and last, but not least, we identify a discrepancy between the a-temporal or historically oriented teaching approaches and the need to support the young to construct visions of the future that empower actions in the present.

How was FEDORA organised?
The project has 7 Work Packages, designed in order to unfold the development of FEDORA's vision and work plan.

Learn more
  • Work Package 1
    Aligning science teaching/learning in formal contexts with the modus operandi of R&I - Analysis of blind spot 1 led by Kaunas University of Technology, LT
  • Work Package 2
    Exploring new languages, narratives and arts in science education - Analysis of blind spot 2 led by Formicablu, IT
  • Work Package 3
    Futurizing science education - Analysis of blind spot 3 led by the University of Helsinki, FI
  • Work Package 4
    Toward a model for science education for the society of acceleration and uncertainty led by the University of Bologna, IT
  • Work Package 5
    Recommendations for proactive and anticipatory policymaking led by the University of Oxford, UK
  • Work Package 6
    Behind the scenes: communicating and disseminating FEDORA in its making led by Formicablu, IT
  • Work Package 7
    Project coordination and management led by the University of Bologna, IT

News & Journaling

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FEDORA partners investigating students’ perceptions of the future, science, technology and agency

Antti Laherto and Tapio Rasa, University of Helsinki.
A lack of stable future horizons, caused by global crises and accelerating societal and technological development, obscure young people’s relationship with the future. At the same time, future-oriented transformative actions are needed more than ever. Science education has a significant potential to provide students with tools for connecting with, and finding agency within, their personal […]

Recreating openness and innovation in science education

Andrea Troncoso, formicablu and Giulia Tasquier, University of Bologna.
Cycles are part of life, and it resembles a circular path the fact that we are now, as researchers and science education professionals, seeking to get outside the classroom in pursuit of innovative ways for meaningful education.  Open schooling wants to reach beyond the walls of the classroom and its school, and create a beautiful entanglement […]

Creating trading zones for boundary-crossing experiences

Olivia Levrini, University of Bologna.
"...summoning up your memories one by one, your wolf will have become another wolf, your sister a different sister, your battle other battles, on your return from Euphemia,  the city where memory is traded at every solstice and every equinox." - Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities. When we designed the proposal and planned a study group […]

Partner Institutions

How are we going to make it? We will shed a light into these blind spots by combining the skills of our team and at the same time, by exploring what is currently happening in the different layers that interact in science education. We will dig into the culture, into the conceptual paradigms and how institutions face the present and future in our field. Multiform sets of research methodologies will be put in place, in order to feed anticipatory polices that will mobilize visionary attitudes, sustainable and creative participation in science-related societal issues.
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FEDORA, Future-oriented Science Education to enhance Responsibility and Engagement in the society of acceleration and uncertainty, is a 3-year EU-funded project. It started in September 2020 and will deploy its activities until August 2023. It gathers 6 partner institutions from 5 European countries.

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FEDORA has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement no. 872841