DkIT lecturer Co-ordinates European Education Summer School in Greece

Dundalk Institute of Technology (DkIT) are delighted to report that Dr Bridget Kelly, lecturer in the department of Life and Health Science is one of the co-ordinators and participants at the NEXT STEP summer school this week, at Marathon, Greece. The NEXT STEP is an EU Erasmus+ funded project which engages with local schools to increase the levels of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics) educational methods in teaching education. The NEXT STEP summer school is one of many summer schools taking place in Greece and is investigating ways that schools can integrate STEAM methods in a whole school way of teaching.

Next semester, the DkIT project team will work with St Louis Secondary School in Dundalk and St Joseph’s National School in Kingscourt, to develop creativity in school education using the NEXT STEP ideology. Through the NEXT STEP project, researchers across Europe are exploring new approaches to STEAM education that seeks to develop shared resources that support teachers and lead to collaborative opportunities. The Irish schools will benchmark themselves against other schools across Europe and develop activities relative to their existing engagement in STEAM education that will be shared with similar schools in other countries. It is hoped that the project will open up international collaboration opportunities for these schools, mirroring the network already established by researchers at DkIT.

DkIT has been part of an international network of researchers seeking to develop STEAM education over the past ten years. Previous Erasmus+ projects include IP CREAL (2012-2015) and SPACE (2016-2019), while students in the Department of Creative Arts, Media and Music also participated in the Global Science Opera 2018.

Next semester, the DkIT project team will work with St Louis Secondary School in Dundalk and St Joseph’s National School in Kingscourt, to develop creativity in school education using the NEXT STEP ideology.