Fairness in Teaching - Closure Event

Summary of the keynote speech

A core aspect of teaching is the interpersonal communication, which is affected by biases arising from different factors, like personal experiences. In today's multicultural working environment, schools call for an understanding of different cultures and different types of communication. In this context, prejudice can arise and have an impact on the work of educators and students. The presentation will discuss the concept of equity and the different types of prejudice, how they arise and their impact on teaching. It will include examples of real cases and measures to mitigate the effects of prejudice.

Short Biography

Lorenza A. D'Alessandro studied systems biology in Turin (Italy) and completed her post-doctorate in Heidelberg (Germany). In the course of her scientific career, she was appointed Head of Equal Opportunities and Diversity at the German Cancer Research Centre in Heidelberg. Whilst there, she became involved in raising awareness of unconscious prejudice and microaggressions and is continuing her training in this field at Oxford University. Lorenza is a scientific coordinator for EU projects in Hamburg and a freelancer with EQUDIV "Equity, Diversity and Inclusion for a healthy and safe workplace".

Summary of the talk

Fairness in teaching has become a core skill to be developed in educational systems and needs to be accompanied by an advanced approach. The FIT project provides primary and secondary school teachers with tools they can use to help them understand how to make their teaching more equitable in their day-to-day practice. These tools are available on the FIT website (https://www.fairnessinteaching-project.eu/). Teachers can freely browse the teaching materials with a multi-criteria search, suggest new materials, thus contributing to the FIT community of practice, attend dedicated training courses, and fill in questionnaires to assess the fairness of their teaching and access adapted teaching materials.

Short Biography

Dr Marie Gallais joined LIST from Université de Lorraine, where she earned her PhD in social and management sciences. Her research focused mainly on cognitive and learning approaches to the digitisation process in SMEs. She is currently interested in gender issues in science and the design of equitable and inclusive technologies. She has been an investigator in several projects aimed at combating gender stereotypes in the design of science and technology. She is involved in the European Network for Gender Balance in Informatics (EUGAIN), as well as the Luxembourg working group on gender equality in the research sector, led by the Fonds national de la recherche (FNR). She leads the HUMOD research group at LIST, which works on human-machine collaboration, contributing to the implementation of personalised technologies and intelligent systems, with the aim of meeting the challenges of improving human skills.

Summary of the panel session

STEM* is seen as a key skill in the green and digital transition. But how to get students interested in these subjects earlier, regardless of their gender, ethnic and socio-economic background, and disabilities? This is the question addressed by the FIT project and its Community of Practice (CoP). The FIT CoP is made up of education experts and practitioners who contribute to the development, testing, improvement, and dissemination of the FIT Toolbox. During this panel session, members of the FIT CoP will provide relevant testimonies about stereotypical situations they have experienced and best practices they have developed to deal with them. They will also share their feedback on their FIT project journey, concluding with tips, lessons learned and perspectives for their teaching practice, including beyond STEM disciplines.

* Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics

Short biographies of the panel members

• Alice Severi, Environmental Science and Agronomy Degree, teaches science at ISIS Follonica (Gr - Italy). She holds coordination roles within the school, such as for curricula evaluation and didactics assessment, for ICDL training and STEM projects, but also as responsible for the INVALSI tests. She has gained specialization concerning teaching methodologies for the inclusion and integration of students with specific learning needs, and the enhancement of differences. Mrs Severi has also published articles about didactics / inclusive education and teaches courses about STEM subjects, combining the scientific inquiry method, digital learning and inclusion.
• Ibtissam Bargache, the Data and Digital Coordinator for Primary at St George’s, has spent the past eight years introducing innovative tools and dashboards to empower teachers and enhance students' learning experiences, promoting the use of data to support informed decision-making. She is dedicated to making STEM accessible to everyone and to supporting building an inclusive educational ecosystem.
  Ibtissam believes that forging links with local experts and strengthening community ties is essential for schools to address the challenges of the 21st century in Education.
• Dr. Athanasia Tziortzi is an elected member of the Board of the Girl Guides Association of Cyprus (full member of the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts) serving at the position of Public Relations Commissioner. She is also an active volunteer and a member of the Training team of the Girl Guides Association of Cyprus and is involved in the development and execution of non-formal education programs directed at girls and young women.
• Filippo Jonathan Facco lives in Piazzola sul Brenta, a small town in northeastern Italy. He graduated in 2009 in International Relations and Human Rights and has had some experience abroad in the field of international cooperation. Back in Italy, he worked with an association in the education sector and in 2017 he obtained the Master's degree in Science of Primary Education. He's now working as a teacher in a primary school.
• Patrick Lay is a French science and technology teacher, digital consultant, designer and regular prescriber of STEM activities for young secondary school students. Patrick Lay has also been involved for more than ten years in the French system of "cordées de la réussite", which promotes equal opportunities (girls/boys, social background, etc.). By regularly involving groups of learners in various concurrent engineering systems promoting scientific and technical fields ("Course en cours", "F1 at school", "Technobot", etc.), he has also been able to contribute to various experiments linked to research in the field of pedagogy, collective work and the development of HMI (Human Machine Interface).

Description of the booths

• Are you looking for an activity to run in your classroom, “maison relais” or youth house? Then you might be interested in the Gender Game (GG)! The GG is a giant board game designed by researchers to deconstruct gender stereotypes through questions & answers from research and science. For children over eight, young people and adults.
• Privileges at the starting line! The privilege STEM walk is a digitalised and interactive exercise to visually realize and become aware of one’s privileges and/or difficulties in walking STEM education and career.
• Support the learning of self-regulation in school activities. TanISe (which stands for Tangible Interface for Self-regulation) allows the student, with or without the help of the teacher, to control the programming of 4 characteristics of an activity. These are materialised by totems that can be manipulated to programme the dimensions to be self-regulated.
  TanIse is developed by the Perseus Laboratory (https://perseus.univ-lorraine.fr/) from University of Lorraine and supported by Direction de Région Académique du Numérique pour l'Éducation (DRANE).