Background
Working Group Meeting
OBJECTIVES
The S&T camp, which is pursued on a platform of South-South cooperation and triangular (North-South-South) cooperation, raise awareness of the importance of interactive Science and Technology education and development of hands-on science curricula in the education system in the Southeast Asian Region.
The project also aims to encourage interaction among youth with different nationalities and promote collaboration and mutual understanding among countries in the region.
This region-wide programme links Science, Culture and Education for knowledge promotion and greater public understanding of Science, Technology and Engineering.
OVERALL BACKGROUND
In terms of experiencing a ‘science culture’, children in the Southeast Asian region have had a distinct disadvantage relative to their peers in more developed nations. They are often excluded from the benefits of interactive educational and hands-on learning opportunities of engaging in experimentation and laboratory classes, due to the lack of financial resources, curriculum development experience and skilled technical human resources.
Primary and secondary school children are thus discouraged and prevented from entering the field since an early age. The negative impact of this trend has steadily diminished the interest of young people in taking science courses or going into scientific or technical fields, further lowering the quality and quantity of science human recourses, and overall deterioration of scientific and technological literacy in the region.
Though governments in the region have repeatedly strived to reverse this trend over the years through a series of national education policies, experts have emphasized time and again that the only way to jumpstart a wave of change would be through cooperation and links through external initiatives that include the private, non-governmental, or intergovernmental sectors.
Utilizing the tried and true popularity of robot competitions in developed countries as a starting point, UNESCO Jakarta is teaming up with robotics researchers, science centers and experienced robot contest organizers to use the strong publicity of “Robots” to approach these problems in the regional science education system.