Symposium: Drawing rich pictures of open schooling and its implications for sustainability and science education. Our contribution: OPEN SCHOOLING FOR SCIENCE AND SUSTAINABILITY EDUCATION - CASE STUDIES FROM NORWAY

Open schooling is a way to answer the call in the European science education policy to expand opportunities for science learning, in formal, non-formal and informal settings. Within our European open schooling project, students work with sustainability questions taken from authentic, realistic problems faced in real life (waste and energy). Students not only apply, analyze and evaluate their existing scientific knowledge, they also are encouraged and engaged to create new knowledge in terms of the solutions proposed in cooperation with local community members. In this paper we discuss key features of good open schooling projects, main barriers for successful implementation, participants perceptions and evidence for impact on students’ learning and sustainability consciousness, based on two examples of Norwegian case studies. From our findings, we recommend that open schooling projects should stem from authentic problems for students, the students need to see the benefit of solving them making the project meaningful, the project should be closely related to the curriculum goals, teachers and students should feel the ownership to the project, and teachers/school leader and external actors (community members) should communicate closely.