Abstract:

ResBios (Responsible Research in Biosciences) is an European HORIZON 2020 project drawing on the expertise of 12 partners from 11 countries to bring sustainable institutional changes (https://www.resbios.eu). The goal is to embed Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) practices within universities and research institutions in the field of Biosciences. RRI with the key elements societal engagement, gender, ethics, open and access provides a framework for bringing research closer to the needs and values of society. The biosciences sector is hereby seen as a crossroad in the relations between science and society.

The project is coordinated by the University of Rome Tor Vergata, and four European institutions have been selected for putting RRI into practice: Ivan Franko University of Lviv, in Ukraine; Democritus University of Thrace in Greece, Marine Sciences Institute of the National Council of Scientific Research in Spain and the University of Zagreb in Croatia. These four organizations will implement a series of “Grounding Actions” based on the four key elements of RRI.
They are supported by „experienced“ partners - so-called mentors - coming from research institutions in Germany, Italy, Slovenia, Poland and Bulgaria. The mentors participated in the former EU project StarBios2, which ran between 2016 and 2020, setting the scene for transformative practices in institutional change in regard to RRI (http://starbios2.eu).

In ResBios, the partner University of Bremen (UB) is responsible to support the four beginning institutes as a mentor for their implementation of Grounding Actions in regard to the RRI key element SCIENCE EDUCATION. Therefore, based on the GA plans 10 mentoring meetings were conducted and evaluated.

The themes of the mentoring meetings were about:
- Capacity building on rri at institutional level
- Establishing (informal) education activities at university level
- Science education at school level carried out by researchers
- Lifelong learning activities and rri
- Establishment of a strategic alliance between research organizations and schools

At the content level the following aspects were discussed: Sustainability and sustainability literacy; Health literacy; Ocean literacy; Formative Assessment of RRI activities; Communication with different target groups; Raising awareness of RRI at institutional level.

Each mentoring meeting lasted 2-3 hours. After short presentations of the educational experiences of the mentor UB in regard of the RRI implementation, the partners discussed their own experiences and GA concepts. Based on the analysis of the GAs, the mentoring meetings and reflective interviews a guideline about „Science Education in regard to RRI“ was developed. It could be of interest for an international audience working in the field of RRI and will be presented first time at the conference.

Acknowledgements:
The project has received funding from the European Union´s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the grant agreement number 872146 (RESBIOS).

Keywords:

Responsible Research and Innovation, Science education, European project, mentoring, institutional change.