Education+: Creativity and Multidisciplinary Skills
- Paper number
IAC-07-E1.I.07
- Author
Ms. Päivi Jukola, Helsinki University of Technology, Finland
- Year
2007
- Abstract
The world is undergoing rapid changes. Strategic decisions such as space policy and military space, space business and space applications affect lives of all of us. Policies are being made without the big public in the wealthy western world, or in the developing countries, even realizing there was a timely decision to be drawn. The young and the adults are as important future decision-makers, although our decisions are often based on limited education or information given by authorities. While textbooks in the primary and secondary education levels offer little information on current human space endeavors, or economic and cultural benefits of space systems, they are unlikely to awaken interest to gather proper knowledge on one’s own. Mobile entertainment, computer games, TV and feature film stories taking place in outer space are popular, though, often misleading. The paper discusses opportunities to broaden general education by integrating space topics not only in science classes but also in liberal arts. The article is based on observations gathered in test-classes in Finnish elementary and secondary schools. According to the paper it would be more feasible to re-develop both students’ textbooks and teachers’ teaching material since there is hardly time, knowledge or funds available for specialized courses in the already busy curriculums. By simply teaching first graders to read and write, to calculate and draw with examples also from space exploration human space endevours become part of daily life, just a normal topic among all the others. Novel curriculums can offer a substantial base of extra knowledge along the regular history, economics or language classes over the following 12 years. Since wild dreams are often necessary steps towards scientific investigation and major innovations multidiciplinary art, science and technology classes play an important role by encouraging the young to research their potential in creation of their own experiments and designs. The study paves the way for discussion on interdisciplinary lectures and international team works with engineering, economics and design students in the university level.
- Abstract document