Guillaume Caillaud

The Disco+ Project and Critical Thinking

The Disco+ project and critical thinking

Guillaume Caillaud

University of Caen, France

Abstract

The Disco+ project is an Erasmus+ project for the initial and in-service training of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) teachers in various European countries (Lithuania, Romania, Hungary, Spain, Italy and France). The objectives of this project are to train teachers to include students with special needs, to focus on science teaching and to implement an intercultural approach. The cooperative practice of teachers working in transnational teams to design their teaching situations is at the heart of the project. 

                      Teaching science, even with the aim of including as many pupils as possible, must involve the development of critical thinking, because teaching science and getting pupils aged 8 to 14 to do science means making them understand that data can be questioned, and that methods can also be questioned. Including students does not mean lowering standards.

The project is divided into four phases:

- four eTwinning training sessions involving around 100 participants (and 12 trainers), culminating in posters (STEM, inclusion, critical thinking, gender equality) which were presented in Vilnius last week.

- the production and testing of a serious game designed to question inclusion in STEM situations.

- the production of STEM sessions that will be tested identically in the six countries, in order to extract comparative analyses in which the question of critical thinking will be an important focus of analysis.

- the production of a MOOC combining all the work carried out to offer open-source training.

We are currently at the stage of summarising the posters, which show that critical thinking in science applies both when initial representations are made and processed, and when the experimental results obtained are discussed. The game is currently being tested and will be improved in mid-June 2024.
Keywords: Critical thinking, science, inclusion, teacher training, teaching.

Biography

Guillaume Caillaud studied natural sciences and then began his career teaching in primary schools for several years. He then passed a competitive examination to teach life and earth sciences to young people aged 11 to 18, which he did for around ten years. He was then recruited as a trainer to prepare Master's students for the job of life and earth sciences teacher at the University of Caen, which is done in France via a Master's degree and preparation for a difficult competitive examination. He is now involved in international science teaching training through projects such as Disco+.
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