Astra

Background:

Astra is the National Center for Science Education and we are a self-governing institution associated with the Ministry of Children and Education. Our main focus is to strengthen science education in Denmark as it benefits all of society. Astra is funded 1/3 by government and 2/3 by private foundations.

Astra’s main area of work is primary and secondary schools. Moreover our interests lie in the transition from daycare to schooling, from primary school to youth education and from youth education to higher education.

Astra as the National Center for Science Education works with:

• the formal educational system, including teachers, educators, educational framework and knowledge, and the many stakeholders, who shares Astra’s vision
• strengthening the coordination of the efforts from society concerning the natural sciences.
  We are furthermore in a continuous dialogue with leading researchers in the field to ensure that our work takes place on an informed basis.

Strategy

There has been a STEM strategy for the period 2017-24 with five goals:
1.    Strengthened motivation and narratives about science ideas
2.    Academically and didactically even more skilled teachers in science
3.    Continuous professional renewal of science subjects
4.    Strengthened talent development and new technological opportunities
5.    Local prioritization, professional networks and collaboration

The strategy had a government budget of 20 mio. Euro, but has more important created a political focus that has made it easier and more legitimate for private foundations to invest much larger sums into STEM education activities.
Sadly, there are no political plans to renew the strategy and furthermore we have cuts in number of lessons for the youngest as well as government support to experimental facilities in high school.
We are working within a strong national alliance of STEM organisations to inspire the political focus back on a new STEM education strategy. 

Best practice and objectives

Astra works to inspire both pupils, teachers and political decisionmakers (local, regional and national). We have big talent programmes for pupils age 12-18, we inspire teachers through materials, events and the annual Big Bang teacher’s conference, we run 4 national networks for teachers and coordinators and are involved in many working groups in the ministry of education.

Reach

A lot. A few examples: The recent national science week had 709 schools participating. We’ve just finished our annual mass experiment with 30.000 pupils participating. We have 2.000 pupils on 3 day camps in our talent centre, there are 1.800 teachers participating in the Big Bang conference. 

Impact

Evaluations show that we have a strong inspirational effect on teachers and that we contribute clearly to make STEM education more interesting and motivating.