BUILDING RESEARCH COMPETENCES IN SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS THROUGH HANDS-ON EARTH AND SPACE SCIENCE EDUCATION PROJECTS

Recent reforms of secondary education in Flanders have given schools time but also mandate to work on making youngsters (more) competent researchers, whatever their field of study. Schools are free to choose the way in which they achieve the objectives in the 'research competences' guidelines of the Ministry of Education. In Flanders, the STEM-oriented options in general secondary education are Sciences-Mathematics, Modern Languages-Sciences, Latin-Sciences, Greek Sciences and Economics-Sciences. All but the last option are offered at Sint-Pieterscollege Jette. In this paper, the endeavours of students in the Sciences-Mathematics branch will be treated as a case study. As it is preferable that the students choose the field in which to carry out their scientific research project, a number of possibilities is offered to help them guide their selection process.