Hosted by , contributed by Kyriaki_Vakkou on 13 December 2022
A main challenge of school education is to promote scientific literacy through studying natural phenomena. Besides this, by studying natural phenomena that have a great societal impact, schools can become educational hubs for their communities and provide informed action to protect lives and property on local, regional and national level. Moreover, this will increase the opportunities for cooperation and collaboration between schools across European countries and the encouragement of relationships between stakeholders of both formal and informal education to develop and/or sustain an open schooling culture. Furthermore, the establishment of a school network can on one hand increase student’s interest in science, on how science is made and how it affects everyday life, and on the other to stimulate teacher motivation on up‐taking innovative teaching methods, subjects and practices to enrich and renew the science curriculum.
Projects related to educational seismology (especially for countries of the European South that experience frequent seismic activity) offer the opportunity to study real data, do analysis of real seismic activity in real time and communicate the findings to the local community. Surveys in the field demonstrate that the general public is not well informed on the necessary measures that have to be applied to minimize the societal impact of this natural phenomenon. A complicated geophysical phenomenon like earthquakes is possible to be studied in the classroom with the use of a simple instrument and results can be obtained with the combination of data from the collaborating schools that are active in citizen seismology. Seismology and specifically the availability of real-time data from a school network engages students in employing scientific practices and problem-solving skills and offers the inclusion of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) principles since students deal with real seismic data that they have acquired themselves while they have to communicate their findings to the local communities.
Educational seismology projects facilitate the collaboration between schools that share data, experiences and ideas and encourage the development of relationships between stakeholders (e.g., researchers, seismologists, NGOs). Seismology in school education also promotes scientific literacy at all levels but its benefits go far wider than simply providing scientific knowledge about this natural phenomenon; It provides the basis for informed action to protect lives and property on local, regional, and national levels.