Fostering Natural and Data Science Skills of School Kids

While on the labour market there is a high demand for employees educated and skilled in the field of natural sciences, engineering and information technologies, a lack of interest in these fields of expertise can be identified in young people. The aim of our research is to leverage a scientifically founded and empirically validated approach and contribution towards promoting interest and motivation in dealing with data science and scientific and technical subjects. To this end a novel pedagogical approach and a related learning environment has been developed and used in a first pilot phase. This approach was implemented using research and exploration questions on weather forecasts and data from temperature measurements as an example pedagogical scenario. The pilot study was executed in real-world settings of three primary and two secondary schools. The results demonstrate high interest and motivation in the science project and related data science tool.