USE OF ESA EARTH OBSERVATION EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES IN VOCATIONAL EDUCATION AND TRAINING - LIFELONG LEARNING: TOWARDS STEM PROMOTION AND DEVELOPMENT OF SKILLS

Abstract

Vocational Education and Training (VET) and Life-Long Learning (LLL), stand at the forefront of Europe’s strategic policies in Education, in response to the lack of students’ interest in STEM and the emerging needs for new skills in the labour market. Space can be a particularly useful platform for attracting students to STEM, environmental as well as topics related to geospatial information, as many state-of-the-art technologies used in everyday life are space-based, while space seems to also be creating a genuine interest among most learners. This study focuses on the plethora of European Space Agency (ESA) Earth Observation (EO) education material readily accessible, at no cost and available in several languages. Undertaking the effort to optimize/extend the use of these existing EO educational resources also in VET and LLL, for promoting STEM subjects, as well as for the development of green and geospatial skills, would be to the mutual benefit of both ESA and the European Union. Finally, it is proposed that an assessment of the utility and potential for the overall ESA Education resources (other than EO), but also of other Space Agencies and relevant institutions active in space education, in VET and LLL would be of particular interest. Keywords: