Empowering Students, Science Teachers and Educators to Carry Out Resp...

Our vision is to enhance interest and engagement of young people in general and environmental science by fostering their curiosity and their sense of responsibility. This can be attained in schools by combining inquiry-based learning and citizenship education with socio-scientific issues. The large scale EU-project PARRISE (Promoting Attainment of Responsible Research & Innovation in Science Education) connects the knowledge of teams of scientists, educators and teachers in fourteen European countries who share existing best practices and develop learning tools and materials for teacher training courses. The outcome is a transformation of the practices of the teachers and educators towards more inquiry and collaboration and a better understanding of the nature of science, the power of participatory research and the framework of educational politics. This is typified by an Austrian subproject carried out by a team of university researchers and teachers of several secondary schools in collaboration with the provincial government about the impact of traffic on climate change and alternatives for a sustainable future.