STEAMTEACH seminars/workshops were held in three locations. The activity focussed on the STEAMTEACH professional development framework, and in particular in project-based learning. Teacher trainers, teachers and student teachers undertook a 2-hour workshop and were asked to work in small groups and present a project outline. These were examined for evidence of the presented framework and five project based learning features described by Thibault and adopted by the STEAMTEACH project: content integration, problem-centred, inquiry-based, design-based and cooperative learning (NB: not as an evaluation of the project outline but of the 2-hour session). Further steps are outlined.
The workshop agenda commenced by presenting a theoretical STEAMTEACH project overview and first interviews with five Austrian expert teacher trainers relating to a STEAM framework to build a portfolio of integrated STEAM projects. The second experimental section addressed the professional development framework including curricular context and started with a detailed sports project worked example plus two other projects illustrating Project Based Learning: content integration, problem-centred, inquiry-based, design-based and cooperative learning approach. It was followed by two further projects: Zero Cost Energy Bike and Chain Reaction, in which teachers were invited to consider their own curricular contexts and project based learning features. In the third section, teacher trainers were asked to work with teachers in small groups to attempt an initial lesson design: develop their own ideas, and finally give a 2-minute presentation and discuss next steps.