Our schools should be incubators of exploration and invention. They should be accelerators of innovation. They should promote Open Schooling. School leaders should set a vision for creating learning experiences that provide the right tools and supports for all learners to thrive. Teachers should be collaborators in learning, seeking new knowledge and constantly acquiring new skills alongside their students. A holistic approach to innovation is needed. We need to facilitate the process with a provision of the necessary catalyst: This is the foreseen role of the OSOS Coordination Action, to describe and implement at scale a process that will facilitate the transformation of schools to innovative ecosystems, acting as shared sites of science learning for which leaders, teachers, students and the local community share responsibility, over which they share authority, and from which they all benefit through the increase of their communities’ science capital and the development of responsible citizenship. In this framework the proposed coordination action is aiming to support a large number of European schools to implement Open Schooling approaches by a) developing a model that promote such a culture, b) offering guidelines and advice on issues such as staff development, redesigning time, and partnerships with relevant organisations (local industries, research organisations, parents associations and policy makers), and c) suggesting a range of possible implementation processes from small-scale prototypes through to setting up an “open school within a school” or even designing a new school while it is testing and assessing them in more than 1,000 school environments in 12 European countries. The themes of the project activities developed and pursuit in participating schools that will take place will focus on areas of science linked with the Grand Societal Challenges as shaped by the EC, will be related to RRI and will link with regional and local issues of interest.

This project aims to provide for real-world implementations of Water Framework Directive (and other water related legislation), as well as the Circular Economy and EU Green Deal packages by showcasing and validating innovative next generation water resource solutions at pre-commercial demonstration scale. These solutions combine WATER management services with the recovery of value added renewable resources extracted/MINED from alternative water resources ("WATER-MINING"). The project will integrate selected innovative technologies that have reached proof of concept levels under previous EU projects. The value-added end-products (water, platform chemicals, energy, nutrients, minerals) are expected to provide regional resource supplies to fuel economic developments within a growing demand for resource security. Different layouts for urban wastewater treatment and seawater desalination are proposed, to demonstrate the wider practical potential to replicate the philosophy of approach in widening circles of water and resource management schemes. Innovative service-based business models (such as chemical leasing) will be introduced to stimulate progressive forms of collaboration between public and private actors and access to private investments, as well as policy measures to make the proposed water solutions relevant and accessible for rolling out commercial projects in the future. The goal is to enable costs for the recovery of the resources to become distributed across the whole value chain in a fair way, promoting business incentives for investments from both suppliers and end-users along the value chain. The demonstration case studies are to be first implemented in five EU countries (NL, ES, CY, PT, IT) where prior successful technical and social steps have already been accomplished. The broader project consortium representation will be an enabler to transferring trans-disciplinary project know-how to the partner countries while motivating and inspiring relevant innovations throughout Europe.

SALL proposes the living lab methodology as a new technique of unique value and possibilities for the development of open schooling activities linked to science learning. The project positions the technique of living labs as a new, powerful element of the impactful OSOS framework for open schooling, and demonstrates this through the use of the food system theme, due to its strong links to science education, current challenges, as well as ambitious European policy making. SALL brings together school communities, including teachers, students and their families, research institutions, science museums and centres, spaces of informal learning and open innovation such as existing living labs, as well as policy makers, and engages them in intensive dialogue, mutual learning and exchange, so as to: a) co-construct the proposed living-lab-based open schooling methodology, by building on existing knowledge and best practices as well as on the power of synergy in the stakeholder community of contemporary science education; b) closely study living-lab-based open schooling practices and their impact, through implementation and evaluation in real-life conditions in school communities in different European countries; and c) prepare the ground for sustainable living-lab-based open schooling activities in Europe’s schools after the end of the project, through strong community-building, networking, dissemination, as well as policy-oriented interventions. In this way, SALL proposes a concrete new way for schools across Europe to approach their science education programmes, in order to make STEM teaching more relevant, systemic and inclusive for their students, collaborating with their local communities and research centres, and with the active support and involvement of science centres and museums in this process.

Hypatia will bring about lasting change in the way schools, science museums, research institutions and industry engage teenage girls in STEM across Europe. Bringing these stakeholders together with gender experts and teenagers themselves, Hypatia will develop, pilot and disseminate a unique modular toolkit of activities and guidelines for engaging teenagers in STEM in a gender-inclusive way. These innovative activities, based on existing European good practices, will be implemented in 14 EU countries and further afield, in schools, science museums and by institutions in research and industry, thanks to hubs of stakeholders strengthened through the project. The activities will have a central focus on gender-inclusive ways of communicating STEM, empowering teenage girls and exploring the range of skills that are needed for the great variety of STEM studies and careers open to young people. The Hypatia hubs will provide a sustainable basis for these activities to be carried out on the long term, with a focus on dissemination through networks and stakeholder engagement allowing the project impact to multiply.