The low success rates of students in science courses and the negative attitudes and perceptions towards these courses are frequently mentioned in the science education literature.As a solution of this problem,out of school environments can provide important contributions as a complementary tool in formal education.In this project,it is aimed to develop an out-of-school curriculum for teacher education programs by following these steps:(i)finding out about different out of school learning environments,approaches and resources used in countries where out-of-school education has been successfully conducted over years,(ii) acquire and possess high-quality skills, competences,knowledge and skills related to strategies,methods and techniques that can be used in out-of-school activities,(iii) collaborate with partners to construct scaffolds which will help us to develop an out-of-school curriculum,and(iv) test and refine the curriculum first in Hacettepe University (the applicant university)(v) translate and apply the curriculum in participant countries.The curriculum will consist of following aspects:interdisciplinary connections, STEM education,using mobile applications,virtual museums,augmented reality, assessment.Although in service and pre-service teachers (PSTs) know some out of school environments such as science centres,they have difficulty in planning how to follow a methodological way in these environments and learning how to use them as a complementary tool in their teaching.As a result, these kinds of trips are often an ordinary sight-recognition visits.To overcome these deficiencies,teacher education programs need a structured curriculum which will provide pre-service teachers opportunities to experience and implement out-of-school lesson plans.The goal of this curriculum is to combine the theoretical background with applied activities by creating on-site learning environments. The theoretical knowledge will be developed via intensive collaboration with the input emerged from national and international out of school practices and examples given by the teacher trainers and project experts.In order to support theory with practice,pre-service teachers will create learning environments by choosing one of the out-of-school learning environments (e.g. planetarium,museum,zoo, etc.)The project will start with a need analysis collecting input from different stakeholders (e.g. academicians, teacher educators from formal (private school [Sınav Koleji] and public schools [Etimesgut District National Education Directorate]), and informal institutions (Muğla BİLSEM). The need analysis will inform us what teacher educators, pre-service and in-service teachers expectations are from a new curriculum, what they believe that is important to focus on out-of-school learning.The project will be carried out by four program member countries (Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Turkey) and three associated partners from Turkey. As a result, a common training content will be developed with the participation of each member. In this process, each country will hold a meeting and prepare a visit to out of school learning environments in that country. During these visits,out of school practices will be experienced in the European dimension.These meeting will facilitate to establish the theoretical infrastructure of out-of-school curriculum, and the team members will have access to reliable sources of information.The project will produce two major outcomes:(1)Out-of-School Learning in European Countries as an ebook,(2) The out-of-school learning curriculum for teacher education programs.To measure the effectiveness of the project; the quality of the out-of-school learning environments developed by PSTs during the implementation of the newly developed curriculum will be analyzed. Additionally, we will have different assessments for PSTs to help us identify how their ideas about out-of-school learning developed.These assessment tools include interviews during the course, documentation which presents PSTs’ experiences during the course (e.g. pre-service teachers’ journals),field trip evaluation form, lesson plan evaluation rubric, and course evaluation survey. Totally 7 partners will organize appropriate dissemination activities and meetings with relevant institutions.At these meetings, outputs of the project will be discussed in detail and detailed analysis will be carried out along with stakeholders in all participant countries.This last meeting of the project will host an Out-of-School Learning Conference including invited paper and poster presentations.The purpose of this conference is providing an opportunity for researchers to make connections with the practitioners and enable dissemination of the curriculum and the ebook.The project will be followed up on the webpage after the project ends with an emphasis on how the curriculum will be applied in different universities to ensure dissemination.

For years, research and policy have been calling for science teaching that motivates student learning through relevant phenomena and problems, provides students with opportunities for meaningful peer collaboration, and focuses on building a need-to-know about a small set of core science ideas during a series of connected learning experiences. We refer to such instruction as “coherent”, and while coherent instruction has long been advocated within science teacher education programs, new teachers struggle to implement pedagogical approaches emphasized within science teacher education programs and abandon those in favor of more traditional methods. In a recent project called PICoSTE, partners collaborated to identify promising practices for helping new science teachers to enact coherent science instruction, and we recognized that while planning and reflection tools have the potential to function as powerful bridging elements between university-based courses and school-based field experiences, a consistent and coherent set of planning and reflection tools for science teacher education in a European context did not exist. The central objective of this project is to design and test a suite of planning and reflection tools as well as associated learning modules for supporting preservice teachers in both better understanding the principles of coherent science instruction and enacting coherent science instruction in schools. Partners in this project include a group of science teacher educators from Germany (Leibniz Institute for Science and Mathematics Education (IPN), University of Duisburg-Essen), Norway (University of Bergen), Sweden (Halmstad University), Denmark (University of Copenhagen), Finland (University of Helsinki), and Turkey (Usak University). Project leaders at each institution have extensive experience in science teacher education and the design and enactment of coherent science instruction, and project teams include university-based master teachers, school-based mentor teachers, and research specialists responsible for designing and empirically testing tools and modules developed within the project. The planning and reflection tools and science teacher education learning modules are developed and tested using an iterative design-based, outcome-driven process. To begin this process, we clarify outcomes by collaborating on the creation of a core ideas framework for coherent science instruction, which is based on existing research literature and policy documents. This framework guides the identification of observable target performances and the elaboration of benchmarks on the way to meet those target performances. These benchmarks then guide the development process and provide a roadmap for conducting ongoing formative assessment that informs iterations based on evidence and feedback from stakeholders (e.g., preservice science teachers, mentor teachers). This design process results in tools and modules that are consistent and coherent with each other and have been tested and revised through practice. The developed tools and modules will finally be discussed and shared among local, national, and EU stakeholders for science teacher education. The central objective of this project is to provide new science teachers with a coherent set of learning experiences and a consistent set of concrete planning and reflection tools that will help span the current chasm between university-based science teacher education, school science instruction, and ministry goals. Through these efforts, we hope to progress toward the ultimate goal of broadening school students' access to science instruction that is more engaging, more comprehensible, and more meaningful to their lives outside of school.

The Council Resolution on A New Skills Agenda for an Inclusive and Competitive Europe (21/11/2016), reflects a common vision about the role of skills for jobs, growth and competitiveness. Skills can help to secure jobs and enable people to fulfil their potential; they promote social cohesion as well as determine competitiveness and the capacity to drive innovation. To equip people with the skills that are needed - to help them find quality jobs and improve their life chances - our society needs competent adult educators able to meet the needs of the diverse group of adult learners. The project “Open IT Up” dealt with developing educators’ competences in order to improve the quality of basic (linguistic and digital) and entrepreneurship skills formation in adult education. The direct target groups of the project were educators who teach to vulnerable groups of adults (low-qualified/low-educated, NEETS, unemployed, refugees, migrants, etc) and adult learners from these groups who have benefitted from better-equipped and trained adult educators. Under the situation of unemployment that many adults face in different European countries, when work seems nowhere to be found, one of the options to enter the labour market is to start your own business. It is quite a challenge for low-educated adults to start their business without basic skills, such as literacy and -in the world of global digitalization - digital skills as well as basic knowledge of entrepreneurship concepts. The Open IT Up project aimed at supporting and empowering adult educators who teach vulnerable groups of adults ICT and English (or a language of the country of the residence) providing them with an attractive and high quality LLL opportunity: a course “Start Your Own Business” to reinforce the basic competences of their adult learners, such as language and digital skills, and at the same time, provide them with effective instruments for employment/ self- employment. The course has a “hybrid nature” and uses the CLIL approach teaching both the language and the ‘field-specific content’ (ICT notions and business-related content). The course was developed based on a collaborative model, in which both language and field-specific teachers had joint input into the development and/or teaching of the course. The course is available on the Open IT Up website www.openitup.eu in two versions: teaching materials for adult educators and learning materials for adult learners. By developing the project transnationally, it was possible to create a self-enriching synergies of the approaches, methods and tools used by adult educators around Europe which was reflected in the open educational resource aiming to support educators and learners through: 1) design and development of teaching and learning materials for the course “Start Your Own Business”, 2) videos about EU start-ups with subtitles in partner languages - based on real stories which the project team members found in local communities or at the communities of their partners; 2) elaboration of an ICT (innovation - communication - technology) Tool Kit for educators, which includes a series of webinars on the use of digital tools and technology in adult education in partner languages; 3) creation of an interactive database of Business Idea which describes ideas of businesses taken as an example those created in the partners' communities. Within the project, there was organised the piloting of the developed courses with adult learners, transnational meetings, and multiplier events. “Open IT Up” has greatly promoted cross-sectoral and cross-cultural cooperation between partner organisations and their communities, involving in the project not only associated partners, but much wider public, inlcluding start-ups, Chambers of Commerce, educational centres and public authorities on local and regional level. Due to the developed materials and an extended cooperation network, adult educators reinforced their professional competences, including digital ones, and adult learners got an opportunity to improve their basic skills as well as facilitate their integration into the labour market. Thus, the project “Open IT Up” has promoted the development, transfer and exploitation of innovative practices in adult education through elaboration and piloting of teaching and learning materials and tools and extending of educators' competences who will be able to improve the basic skills of their learners to upskill their pathways.

The goal of the REAL project is to contribute to the integration of unemployed graduates into the labor market by enhancing their entrepreneurship skills and competencies. The project focused on the needs of those who wants to start their own business but did not have necessary skills and know-how. The fear of unemployment and changes in today's labor market inspired people to look for new paths to find a new work place and/or to create their own. The project's main objective is to transfer and develop of the innovative e-learning platform and blended course contents and activities focused upon entrepreneurship enhancement. The project is aiming to implement a realistic, competitive and sustainable Virtual Learning Community, which promoted a specific entrepreneurial training/mentoring program offering an integrated guidance to entrepreneurs from the early stage of motivation and idea generation through a personalized support in implementing business projects.The project partnership- 10 partners from 8 European countries - the selection is based on the geographical status, expertises and capacity of the partners. We intended to form the partnership especially from the Mediterranean countries considering that the economic chaos is affecting that part much more.The objectives of the project: The main goal of the REAL project is to help unemployed people to integrate into the labor market by becoming entrepreneurs and creating their own work place. 1- to identify the needs of the unemployed youth and labor market2- improving the level of key competences and skills, with particular regard to the young peoples' relevance for the labor market3-supporting participants in training and further training activities in the acquisition and the use of knowledge, skills and qualifications to facilitate personal development, employability and participation in the European labor market 4- fostering quality improvements, innovation excellence and internationalization at the level of participating education and training institutions, in particular through enhanced transnational cooperation 5- promoting entrepreneurship education to develop active citizenship, employability and new-business creation6-increasing participation in learning and employability between education and training providers and other stakeholders7- developing the basic competencies of target group8- developing the university - industry and labor market relations9- developing inter-disciplinary and international cooperation of the organizations from different sectorsOur results and outcomes :1- The target group needs identified;There was surveys conducted to the unemployed graduates to analyze the needs of the target group and also another survey was conducted to the industry representatives to identify the needs of the labor market 2- Entrepreneurial course materials, tools and activities transferred, translated and adapted in each piloting country; The participating institutions created on-line courses with new 6 educational modules, animation videos and e-marketing platform for new international marketing strategies. 8 power-point presentations per each module were created and they were supported by voice texts in English. The tools were translated into English, Turkish, German, Spanish, Italian, Greek, Bulgarian and Swedish.3- E-learning platform developed with simulations, case studies and activities focused upon entrepreneurship enhancement; The entrepreneurial tools were published on the e-learning platform. The target group can register on the website to join the Online courses and use the educational Online materials4- Blended learning course organized and piloted in 3 countries for enrolling 75 participants (the participants were selected by various sectors in order to create interdisciplinary synergy.5- Training and tutoring provided to the learners’ groups; 6- 12 trainers trained in short term joint staff transnational courses/ 4 trainer per pilot groupThe trainers of the pilot groups went to the module holder institution for shot term courses, to see the best practices and share experiences for 5 days7- Booklet & Guide: participating institutions created a booklet for target group in order to show pathways to entrepreneurs. And also the activities and the outcomes of the projects were presented in this booklet8- DVD Online course and animation videos were installed on a DVD for disseminating the project to the relevant stakeholders. Additionally this DVD was provided available for those who want to take the courses after registering on the web portal9- University - industry relationships developed10- partnership culture was developed and this enhanced and promoted international and inter institutional cooperation and coordination.

The general purpose of this project is to improve the managerial, financial and business competence of young entrepreneurs by the open-access training modules. Equipped young entrepreneurs with core competencies will ensure the development of business life and of course their nations in EU standards. Within the existing entrepreneurship training, entrepreneurs are introduced to the business plan concept. This training consists of only 30 hours. During training, entrepreneurs, who are already stranger to concepts, don't get enough information to manage a successful enterprise. Theoretical training doesn't provide enough information and experience in order to prepare their feasibility plans. They should be trained not only in a class in a given period but also every time they need it. Thus, by this project, an e-learning platform is constituted. Beside this need, entrepreneurs aren't trained about foreign trade and marketing (including e-commerce and social media). These are big deficiencies. These arguments are indispensable in toady's globalising world. Each entrepreneur should consider interacting with global world and social networks in order to enlarge his/her businesses. Therefore, entrepreneurship training should contain modules of foreign trade and marketing including e-commerce applications and social media marketing. In order to achieve this goal, it was constituted a “Small Business Development Centre” including applied methods. It was generated training curriculum, materials, documents, and media in order to use it in business life effectively. So, the professional qualifications of the youngsters will be developed and the differences will be reduced. The target group of the project is young entrepreneurs who want to make an investment. Through the outputs of this project, youngsters can improve their professional qualities themselves via ICT tool and training materials. - There are 4 partner countries and 6 partners. Applicant and 2 partners are from Turkey, UCLL is from Belgium, DRPDNM is from Slovenia and OECON Group is from Greece. - 4 intellectual outputs were obtained. - 4 transnational project meetings were conducted in each partner country to overview project activities. - 4 main multiplier events were conducted in order to disseminate project results. Expected results of the proposal are briefly listed below: 1. Current Situation and Need Analysis Study: ‘Current situation’ and the ‘needs of the young entrepreneurs’ were analyzed. For this analysis, a literature review for each country was performed. Also, survey-based research was applied, and accordingly, a questionnaire with 28 questions was prepared. 300 respondents participated in the survey. Belgium: 42 pcs (14%), Greece: 41 pcs (13.7%), Slovenia: 38 pcs (12.7%), Turkey: 151 pcs (50.3%), Other EU Countries: 28 pcs (9.3%). Besides, Focus Group meetings with 53 participants were handled as follows: Belgium: 1 meeting, Greece: 1 meeting, Slovenia: 1 meeting, Turkey: 2 meetings. 2. Training Program: Training methodology and related modules for entrepreneurs were prepared in accordance with their needs. Training materials were developed. 11 modules as training curriculum including handbook, interactive material, theoretical manual are generated in order to use in business life effectively. 3. NGO-young entrepreneurs relation: It was improved thanks to developing vocational training modules for current and potential youngsters. 4. E-learning Portal: The flexible learning process in line with entrepreneurs' needs and objectives was formed, and so the use of digital training was promoted. Thanks to this e-learning platform, entrepreneurs can make self-training and get professional knowledge without limitation of space and time. So, they can improve their competitive advantages. 5. A Policy Report: It was prepared for the policymakers by providing professional and methodological tools. It was conducted in order to recommend and guide near future policies and strategic activities, to ensure and to continue the dissemination and speed up the multiplier effect. 6. 4 Multiplier Events: Dissemination of project outputs to the stakeholders and the target groups was conducted. 7. Open Access to materials, documents and media are provided that are useful for learning and training. 8. A sustainable network for the continuous training of entrepreneurs was generated. 9. A best practice for young entrepreneurs at national and international levels was developed by implementing a new innovative project 10. Cooperation and Partnerships: By this project, continuous relations between the partners at the local, national and European level has been ensured. They have an impact on the internationalization of young entrepreneurship.