Il(LUMA)nating the Finnish perspective on STEM education

Growing Scotland’s STEM capacity is critical to its resilience and future prosperity. Scotland has many initiatives and learning pathways to support this vision, yet many learners continue to overlook the value of STEM careers. Since the last STEM Education and Training Strategy expired in 2022 - with no successor in sight - it is time to consider a fresh approach to delivering STEM education and attracting talent where it’s needed most.  

Finland has emerged as a world leader in STEM education and offers important lessons for Scotland. Join Professor Martin Hendry FRSE, Chair of the Learned Societies Group for Scottish STEM Education, in conversation with Professor Jan Lundell, Director of LUMA Centre in Finland.  

You will hear how LUMA combines political will, innovative teaching, effective outreach, and continuous teacher training to build a thriving STEM ecosystem, one that inspires young people and meets national skills needs. These insights will reveal how the Finnish model compares with Scotland’s, and what both countries might learn from one another.  

Chair:

Professor Martin Hendry FRSE (He/Him)

Professor of Gravitational Astrophysics and Cosmology, Vice Principal and Clerk of Senate, University of Glasgow , Vice-President (Public Engagement), RSE

Martin Hendry is Professor of Gravitational Astrophysics and Cosmology at the University of Glasgow, where in 2022 he was appointed Vice Principal and Clerk of Senate. Martin is a senior member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration which (with their colleagues in the Virgo Collaboration) made the first-ever direct detection of gravitational waves in 2015 – a discovery awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize for Physics.Martin is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland’s National Academy, where he is currently Vice-President (Public Engagement) and also chairs the Learned Societies Group on Scottish STEM Education.

Speaker:

Professor Jan Lundell

Professor of Chemistry, University of Helsinki, Director, LUMA Centre Finland

Jan Lundell is a professor of Chemistry at University of Helsinki, Finland. His professional tasks are shared between chemistry, especially research on interaction between light and matter, and the STEM-related education and societal outreach as the Director of the LUMA Centre Finland. Professor Lundell has extensive experience in academic supervision and quality management. At the same time, he has worked in a variety of teaching and research competence evaluation tasks, from academic theses to the career and qualification requirements of academic teaching. In addition to popularizing science, he has also taken a stand on social issues of education in his writings to bring out a research perspective on wide-ranging changes in education with the aim of supporting and facilitating learning. All these activities are related to the development of research-based training for teachers, long-term systemic thinking and meaningful teaching, as well as qualitative and constructive evaluation of teaching.

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