Go there instead of ignoring - how previously unreached target groups can be reached with STEM offers
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Securing skilled workers in the STEM field is a key challenge. In order to master these, we have to inspire and qualify young people for STEM subjects. There is still a lot of untapped potential here. For example, children and young people who, for various reasons, have not yet found access to (MINT) educational opportunities.
We would like to take a closer look: Who are these groups of young people who are hardly or not at all reached by STEM offers? Which factors play a role? Which designations are used? And how must offers be tailored to reach this group(s)?
Im ersten Teil This article is intended to provide an approximation of the term "Easy-to-ignore groups“, as it is also used for these groups, which have so far hardly been reached by educational offers. By this we mean in particular children and young people with different, challenging life situations and educational histories. We focus on MINT offers and look at how and at which locations this target group(s) can be reached. The second part of the article deals with the role of the easy-to-ignore groups in the work of zdi.NRW: Who are the groups that we are not yet reaching with our STEM offers and how can we change this? In the third part we show approaches and practical examples of how outreach MINT education can succeed in the zdi context and which steps will be necessary for this.
You can download the full text as a PDF here:
Which groups are currently often overlooked in the zdi context?
Easy-to-ignore groups are not homogeneous groups. Depending on the context, other people can be meant by it. In the zdi context, easy-to-ignore groups are children and young people who have not yet found access to extracurricular MINT education for a variety of reasons - from the challenging life situation to their individual educational history. The reasons for this can be individual or varied, they can lie in the person, in their environment, their other living conditions, also in school contexts or in the attractiveness or design of the offers. Typical examples are limited personnel or infrastructure conditions at schools that are cooperation partners for zdi offers, transport-related access to extracurricular learning locations, content-related unattractive topics of the offers, offers that are methodologically or pedagogically unsuitable, unsuitable forms of communication, etc. According to estimates, this group makes many Fields of action (also in STEM education) make up 40% to 95% of an age cohort.
Although thousands of young people are reached throughout NRW every year, a look at the zdi monitoring shows that the zdi networks maintain partnerships with grammar schools much more frequently than with primary, secondary or special schools. If you look at the offers of the networks, there is also a clear tendency towards offers for grammar schools and comprehensive schools.
Figures from the zdi community
The zdi networks maintain around 2.000 school partnerships (for the sake of completeness, this also includes day-care centers). It turns out that most of the partnerships are with grammar schools. Children from primary, secondary and special schools are less reached through this cooperation.
At zdi.NRW, a distinction is made between two types of offers: offers within the "zdi-BSO-MINT" funding program and offers that run outside of this program. These are collected and analyzed in two separate monitoring sessions. Here, too, it can be seen in both cases that offers are aimed much more often at high school students and less often at secondary school students. (Note: The sum of the percentages is more than 100%, since an offer can be aimed at several types of school. The basic number of defined offers is around 1300.)
The proportion of students from high schools who attend zdi-BSO-MINT courses exceeds the number of students from other types of school: The proportion of students who attend a type of school with a high school level is just over 76% here. .
Whether a young person belongs to an easy-to-ignore group or not does not depend on the type of school attended. However, the numbers show that we have so far reached less students from certain school types in the zdi context.
The aim of zdi.NRW is to win over young people from the large and heterogeneous easy-to-ignore group for extracurricular MINT education and to work out the conditions for success. A promising way to get there is the early and co-creative involvement of young people in the development and implementation of the programs and offers. One possible approach to this is outreach STEM education.
Outreach STEM education: How can we reach children and young people in their living environment?
In order to address the above-mentioned target group(s), the “outreach educational work” approach was developed. This term comes from educational and social work and aims to bring educational opportunities to people by "visiting" them in their familiar environment. In this concept, people do not have to approach educational institutions, but rather they come to them.
The educational offer is thus directly present in the living environment of the young people. The development of educational offers is co-creative, involves young people and thus offers the opportunity to respond to individual life situations. Active participation and the feeling of being heard can encourage sustained engagement.
This approach is defined as follows:
“[In outreach educational work] the classic come structure – the addressees come to the educational institutions – is supplemented by a go structure. In this way, proximity to life can be created, but above all, parent and family education can overcome access barriers to their traditional places of education through personal contact.” [1]
It is also emphasized: "Educational work must be linked to concrete life support in order to present a recognizable benefit that can be realized as quickly as possible and a meaningfulness for the target group."[2]
Note: This contribution represents a working status and not the conclusion of a discussion. Rather, it shows a level of development and an approach to certain terms and forms the basis for further steps in the MINT educational work of the zdi community with certain target groups.
Back to Part 1 - What does "Easy-to-ignore" mean and who are the young people we easily overlook?
Continue to Part 3 – Outreach STEM education in practice
If you have any questions about the topic or the offers in the field of outreach MINT education/zdi-BSO-MINT-Lab, please contact:
Consultation:
Communication:
[1] “Family education, primary school and milieu – an expertise as part of the project: Family education during primary school. Careful parenting 'five to eleven', published by the state working groups for family education in North Rhine-Westphalia, authors: Prof. Dr. Helmut Bremer and Dipl. Social Sciences. Mark Kleemann-Göhring, University of Duisburg, 2012: https://familienbildung-in-nrw.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Images/Content/fachkraefte/Familienbildung_Grundschule_Milieu.pdf (accessed on 25.07.2023)
[2] "Outreach educational work - more equal opportunities and participation", Adult Education Association Baden-Württemberg eV; https://www.vhs-bw.de/projekte/aufsuchende-bildungsarbeit/ (accessed on 25.07.2023)
[3] "Outreach educational work - more equal opportunities and participation", Adult Education Association Baden-Württemberg eV; https://www.vhs-bw.de/projekte/aufsuchende-bildungsarbeit/ (accessed on 19.07.2023)
