RESTARTS
Raising European Student Awareness in Aeronautical Research through School-labs
- Other specified
- Air transport
- Passenger transport, Freight transport
- Decarbonisation, Societal/Economic issues, Deployment planning/Financing/Market roll-out
- Other
Currently, a downward trend in interest in aeronautics can be observed. This trend needs to be reversed.
Raising European Students Awareness in Aeronautical Research Through School-Labs is the main objective of the RESTARTS project. The project aims to contribute toward reversing the current trend of disinterest of young people towards aeronautics.
In this project, the partners of the aeronautical research and training institutes set out to develop informative material about current research topics in aeronautics including basic aerodynamic fundamentals like 'How does an airplane fly?' or special challenges the aeronautical research is facing like 'How to green air transport?'or 'How to ensure satisfaction, safety and security of passengers?'. This demonstrates the direct link between research and society.
The scientists work in cooperation with a pedagogic team and teachers of local schools to compile understandable teaching material, which also includes simple experiments to demonstrate the physical phenomena being investigated. The school lessons based on this material give a first impression of the challenges of modern aeronautical research.
The school-labs established at the research institutes provide more sophisticated experiments and enable school classes to obtain a hands-on experience in scientific work. Additional visits to the laboratories of the project partners and their industrial partners completed the programme. This built bridges between school theory and applied research by delivering an insight into the work of research organisations.
The ambition is to stimulate young people's interests in a R&D career in aeronautics and to create a European network of Aeronautical School-Labs.
- Public institution
- Public (EU)
The Deliverables produced within RESTARTS consisted of resources of written documentation and protocols for experiments for primary and secondary teachers. The reputation of research and training centres such as CIRA, INCAS, VKI and DLR in terms of scientific research was already established, and therefore the scientific information they provided was a good reference. The participation of experts in pedagogy, ULEIC, made that the RESTARTS project became a pilot for a process that will generate strong motivation towards aeronautics for a large number of children and students, that will also lead to a better image in the public.
During the pilot there were RESTARTS inititiatives at:
Three Primary Schools (6-12 years old)
- Clair Vivre (Belgium)
- Grundschule Friedland (Germany)
- Liceul Teoretic 'Eugen Lovinescu' (Romania)
Four Secondary/High Schools (12-15 / 15-18 years old)
- Athénée Royal D’Uccle 1 (Belgium)
- Liceo Scientifico Statale Enrico Fermi DiAversa(Italy)
- Liceo Scientifico Statale Enrico Fermi DiAversa- Video (Italy)
- Paper Planes Tested In The Small Portable Windtunnel (Belgium, VKI)
Two Non Formal Educations
- La Scientotheque (Belgium)
- DLR School Lab (Germany)
Innovation aspects
Based on the pilot, the project resulted in teaching material on aeronautics. Beyond this pilot phase, RESTARTS wants to demonstrate the efficiency of school-labs to motivate young people and in particular young women towards aeronautics.
- Unclassified
- Non-technology