THE FUTURE OF SCIENCE EDUCATION IN EUROPE

Despite the high demands of scientists and technicians in the European labor market, the current trend is a reduction of the interest of young European students in science studies and scientific careers. Shortage of workers in these areas can jeopardize future development of European countries, so decision makers are analyzing the problem and putting up programs to try and solve it. One of the possible causes of lack of interest of European students in scientific careers is the way science is taught at schools: the majority of the citizens believe that science classes at school are not engaging or attention catching, and that the authorities should do something about it. In this paper, some of the areas of improvement in this field are explained, and the inquiry-based learning methodology is proposed as a solution. The inquiry-based method involves making the students so interested about a particular science topic that they learn about it by themselves, under the guidance of the teacher. Also, some of the actions taken by several European countries in order to increase the number of European science students are discussed.