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ABSTRACT For many years, comprehensive data demonstrate a persistent lack of interest in the field of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) among students in European and North American countries. This lack of interest is regarded as one reason causing underrepresentation of diversity, especially that of female students within the field of STEM. Obviously, students—although possibly highly talented—refrain from choosing STEM careers only because their attention is not sufficiently attracted to STEM at the right time at the right place. In particular, this fact significantly affects the field of material research and, therefore, identifying opportunities for sparking students’ interest in materials is a crucial challenge in the framework of a modern STEM education. Here, we present the outline of the novel project “Metal Matters”, which aims at establishing an interdisciplinary approach to foster the field of materials in education. In essence, our research focusses on the omnipresence of metal as material. By exploring the K-16 continuum, we aim to identify windows of opportunities for raising awareness of the relevance of materials. Our approach is to stimulate interest in the relevance of materials by explicitly promoting metal as a topic across the curriculum. Our project is deliberately not restricted to STEM, but also covers history, society, economy, health, sports, literature, and language. Here, we present one part of the project contrasting the scientific relevance of metal with the students’ ideas about metal. For the present exploration and data collection, we employed a mixed-method design consisting of linguistic frequency analysis of scientific publications as well as the qualitative analysis of students’ written responses and drawings. 

ABSTRACT We present an evaluation carried out on a large-scale teacher training activity, the festival “Science on Stage” (SonS) 2013. SonS is a European initiative offering teachers the opportunity to share ideas and teaching practices both on the national and international level. We evaluated the project’s effectiveness in pursuing clear objectives, in clearly defining the target group, and in internationally disseminating teaching projects. Our study documents the transfer of knowledge from the festival to the classroom, aims to identify the prerequisites thereof and, finally, allows formulating key factors for successful future large-scale science communication activities.