European Co-construction of a Science Webcomics Series : "Bombastics"

Science education in Europe is struggling with multiple challenges. This project aims to address the following issues: a) address the reported problem of lack of interest in the STEM areas by European students, b) strengthen the link between
research and teaching through an innovative way, namely using science comics, c) Include environmental issues as a transversal topic in science education capable of harness the youth interest and motivation about climate change, energy and biodiversity, to increase their interest in STEM areas, and d) reinforce and enlarge an existing network of artists, teachers, science education researchers and researchers in science in order to achieve a sustained and lasting cooperation able to develop ready to use high quality materials for teachers. A major international effort has been devoted to the production of resources about environmental issues in recent years. Most of these projects focus on education about their impacts and the actions needed to mitigate and adapt to it. In addition to these essential approaches, our project aims to develop teaching resources that focus on the scientific foundations at the heart of those issues. The belief under this intention is that understanding the conceptual bases of climate, energy and biodiversity is a fundamental key to
citizen education. The dissemination of a rigorous scientific knowledge (integrating natural sciences as well as human and social sciences) allows students to build confidence in the discourse of scientists, develop critical thinking skills, and encourage them to act at different levels (individual, school or community) to meet the challenges that our societies are facing. This project aims at providing science teachers with original and motivating teaching resources about big ideas in science, in particular about climate, energy and biodiversity. The need for resources about those topics comes from the
fact they have been introduced or reinforced in the european science curricula very recently. This common context motivates the realization of our project at the transnational level, so that the produced educational resources will be useful
to the whole European teaching community.