4.5
European Meteorological Society and Education in Atmospheric Sciences
Tomas Halenka, Charles Univ., Prague, Czech Republic; and M. Belda
In most European countries the necessity of education in Science and Mathematics to achieve higher standard and competitiveness in research and technology development has been formulated after the Lisboa meeting. However, the reasonable development of position of these subjects in educational systems in individual countries across Europe is not so fast. The European Meteorological Society is trying to observe this process. Unfortunately the position of meteorology and climatology is not so well developed in framework of these subjects, there are some traces of our science in physics, but most of the small abundance of these topics are covered rather by geography. The low content is in contrary with the overall quite high interest in environmental issues in Europe.
One of the important task of the EMS is the activity to promote public understanding of meteorology (and sciences related to it), and the ability to make use of it, through schools and more generally. EMS is performing this task through the Educational Committee which is trying to work under this EMS mission and objectives to help the process by means of its own activities and supporting some activities of EMS as a whole, e.g. organizing educational session of EMS Annual Meetings, cosponsoring other educational meeting etc. One of the elements of its own activity is the analysis of the position of atmospheric science in framework of curricula in educational systems of European countries as well as in more general sense, the place of Science education in the system.
In most European countries the process of integration of education at university level was started after Bologna Declaration with the objective to have the system where students on some level could move to another school, or rather university. The goal is to achieve the compatibility between the systems and levels in individual countries to have no objections for students when transferring between the European countries. From this point of view EMS is trying to provide the information about the possibility of education in meteorology and climatology in different countries in centralised form, with uniform shape and content, but validated on national level.
Session 4, University and Professional Educational Outreach in the Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Hydrologic Sciences: Beyond the Conventional Classroom
Tuesday, 13 January 2009, 8:30 AM-9:45 AM, Room 125B
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