The ICT sector is one of the fastest growing sectors in the world economy, and it is essential that the EU builds on current excellence to become a dominant player, worldwide. A skilled workforce is an essential prerequisite. At present, the take up of ICT-related careers by women is very small; this has two important consequences. First is the loss to the economy of the talents of a significant part of the potential workforce; second is the direct economic implications for women, many of whom are excluded from very well paid jobs. PREDIL’s central concern is on the harmonization of societal needs and pedagogical practices.
PREDIL is built on the premise that evidence based gender sensitive pedagogical methods and teaching approaches can be catalytic in increasing both the quality of educational provisions and pupils’ motivation in STEM related fields. In light of that the project’s goal is to increase understanding into the processes that underpin the great imbalance in take up of ICT by boys and girls at school and university level and on such a base to develop a coherent and comprehensive gender sensitive pedagogical strategy supported by a self reflective (diagnostic and self-observation tools) framework for in-service teachers in order to address and remedy the imbalance.
The project intends to map (via a discursive approach) current teaching practices onto pupils’ preferences with regard to ICT applications in the curriculum and in doing so develops support tools for teachers. In parallel mapped -via concept mapping type of methods, will be pupils perceptions of STEM and ICT related fields, their instructional needs with respect to specific subjects, their personal attributions for success/failure in these subjects , and appreciation of ICT processes and tools. The process helps to deepen understanding into pupils' mental representations of/on learning technologies, as well as defining indicators on ICT and learning.
This study facilitates the formulation of the framework for encouraging (and supporting) teachers to reflection on classroom practices.
Tutor UB: Mario Barajas Frutos
Participants UB: Jordi Quintana Albarat, Anna Trifonova, Frederique Frossard
Participants:
- Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas / Institute of Applied and Computational Mathematics, Greece (Coordinator)
- Catholic University in Ruzomberok, Slovackia
- Università della Svizzera italiana/New Media in Education Laboratory, Switzerland.
- Universitat de Barcelona, Spain.
- Universität der Bundeswehr, München, Germany.
- Université Paris Descartes, France.
- University of Durham, Great Britain.
- University of Information Technology and Management, Poland.
Financial entity: European Commission – LLP Programme, Comenius Action
Date: 2007 – 2011