School is one of the most important spaces in any community. A starting point for children to learn social skills, it also has the potential to become a focus point that promotes and inspires good practices in its surroundings. But it can only fulfill its full social function when it establishes partnerships, both within the school environment itself and with universities, institutions and companies.
“Every school is relevant and crucial to the country’s development,” says Tatiana Arce, education director at Fundación Educacional Comeduc, an institutional partner of the Solve for Tomorrow program in Chile. “The link with the territory is key to educational improvement, and in this way the school and its work generate local opportunities. In the neighbourhood, for example, schools broaden the sense of community by offering opportunities through learning.”
But it is not always easy to close the gap between school and community, because as Arce explains, most educational spaces produce knowledge in a compartmentalized way: “We have, for example, a curriculum that comes from a fragmented and disciplinary tradition in Chile. So it’s important that we integrate knowledge. Cognitive development is not a piecemeal thing, it has to be integral and systematic.”
It is often the case that the school community itself has difficulty seeing students’ potential and their ability to think about interdisciplinary projects. This is where the flexibility of STEM projects (acronym in English for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) comes to the surface, demonstrating that they can be great allies in the formation of alliances both inside and outside school.
STEM projects foster partnerships within the school environment
By their very nature STEM projects have an interdisciplinary character: they bring together areas such as the exact sciences, biological sciences and languages as well as encouraging the development of soft skills, such as empathy. All this in order to create prototypes that result from a real problem and that have a social impact. In Comeduc’s educational projects, as reported by Arce, learning integration journeys take place, bringing together teachers from various different areas, such as languages or mathematics, together with other school professionals, such as educational assistants or cleaning assistants. As a result, it is possible to look at a project in a systemic way and promote a diverse dialogue.
“When I talk about internal networks, I think of collaborations that break with fragmented structures and make integration possible,” explains Arce. “For example, those of us who provide a technical-professional education, if we have a logistics project, young people can work together with others who are studying programming. Therefore, they have far greater resources and contents that can be included in their prototypes, which increases learning possibilities.”
Networks created within schools have a positive impact on relationship networks: teachers need to articulate in order to use and activate spaces such as laboratories and libraries. Students with diverse skills come together to solve problems, and turn to different teachers to deal with multifaceted issues. The school community itself becomes a target audience for testing, pitches, and feedback, with young people finally assuming the lead roles in this space.
“Levels of motivation and self-esteem increase. Understandably this leads to better learning outcomes, but in particular to leadership, with young people playing a key role in transmitting their enthusiasm to others. The cultural transformation starts off from an individualized and uncertain view of oneself shifting to something much more empowered, purposeful and safe. Young people become agents of mobilization towards a citizenship that we regard as being more committed, flexible and full of resources”, adds Arce.
A good example of this type of committed project is Agro-Detect, which was the winner of the Solve for Tomorrow program in Chile in 2022. A group of young people, who were studying at an institute run by Comeduc, came up with the idea to create a safe pesticide detector based on their relationship with the local community, which consisted predominantly of farm workers. Knowledge from various teachers was used in creating the prototype and for its testing.
Partnerships with higher education and companies
Universities, which often produce knowledge closed in itself, become important allies for STEM projects developed within schools. Numerous initiatives of the Solve for Tomorrow program show that universities act as partners, both when university experts help students solve problems or when their facilities’ spaces are used for tests and feedback.
A good example of this is the Cianobacterias project, which was one of the finalists of the 2023 edition of Solve for Tomorrow in Uruguay. To create a filter of the blue-green algae that plague the country’s beaches, the group presented a prototype to the city’s Technical School of Repairs, Naval Buildings and Annexes, which provided a pH meter to detect water conditions. In addition, the research will also be leveraged by a local university to explore biofuel production.
“The education system must deliver on its promise of offering opportunities with quality education. When students leave the Comeduc school, we have to hook them up with universities in order to give them a chance to improve their knowledge in higher education. It is a continuous learning path “, reports Arce.
This path also includes a direct relationship with companies and industry, which are where these young people will work in the future, as the education director concludes. “Again, I come back to the idea of avoiding the fragmentation of education. When students work with STEM, they have contact early on with companies, with the labor market, boosting their own value as well as adding value to the market. Education is the key to a generation of basic skills that we as a society require in order to live up to the idea of development, so that we finally achieve a critical mass of people who fill jobs and have a significant impact on creating a better society.”
