What is a teacher placement?
Teacher Placements are professional development experiences, work placements or internships in business and industry, which enable teachers or career counsellors to spend a period of time working with an employer. Teacher placements are optimal to facilitate STEM education through hands-on and real-life experiences, providing a full range of skills.
Teacher Discovery Placement Scheme
For this reason, the STEM Alliance has developed the Teacher Discovery Placement Scheme, an initiative in collaboration with the SYSTEMIC project that highlights existing placement programmes and help ensure the success, promotion and development of these placements.
Benefits for Schools
- Through placement, teachers can upgrade their competence, knowledge and skills regarding STEM subjects, providing up-to-dated insight about the current situation of STEM careers.
- Developing the knowledge of STEM subject can open the opportunities available for students, enhancing their potential and stimulating their curiosity and attention by bringing careers in classrooms.
Benefits for Companies
- Companies involved profit from attracting new generations of students into STEM careers.
- STEM industry can benefit from the opportunity of a low cost, small-scale investment for long term, consistent impact on the future of skilled workforce.
- Placements support the talent pipeline and improve companies' recruitment process
- Foster local partnership between STEM organisations and schools for educational opportunities such as workshops and apprenticeships.
Benefits for Policy Makers
- Ensures lifelong learning opportunities for educational staff and provides continuous teacher training and upskilling with real life experience in STEM industry.
- Facilitates young people's professional development and their transition into the job market.
- Ministries of Education benefits from an ecosystem to engage teachers in placements in industry.
'Developing a Successful Teacher Placement Scheme' is a new Guide for Companies that complements the efforts of STEM Alliance to promote STEM teacher placements in industry through the Teacher Discovery Placement Scheme. The STEM Alliance works to fill the need for more STEM-skilled workforce in Europe and to support the central role STEM teachers are playing to motivate young people to pursue STEM studies and careers. Following the 'Teacher Placement Initiatives – Collection of Best Practices', the guide has been created by a team of education and corporate experts for businesses that are committed to championing and promoting education and employability in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM). The guide is addressed to those in charge of different types of departments, including Human Resources, Communication, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Outreach or Community Activities, and Education or Training. This publication constitutes the second part of the Intellectual Output 4 ‘Guide on contextualisation of STEM teaching' of the SYSTEMIC project. SYSTEMIC is funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union. In this publication we include guidelines and conditions of success for this type of school/industry collaboration and some analysis on how teacher placements contribute to improve teachers' STEM skills and their capacity to influence students' studies and career choices. |
The STEM Alliance has published the "Teacher Placement Initiatives – Collection of Best Practices" booklet, containing a selection of 15 initiatives collected from 10 countries around the world, providing inspiring examples of STEM teacher placements in industry. One of the main aims of this "Teacher Placement Initiatives – Collection of Best Practices" is to help overcome the lack of awareness of career development opportunities for teachers, taking into consideration the urgent need to bridge employment gaps by sustaining cooperation between school and industries. The publication contains precious insights for industry on how to attract new generations of students into STEM careers while understanding the workforce available, allowing a tailored targeting of specific candidates. Teacher placements are one of the best means to ease the integration of company-sponsored programmes in school curricula, helping policy makers meet the challenge of a lack of resources in schools and expand their knowledge about STEM subjects. |