Part of the ARMAQoL team travels to the Dominican Republic to consolidate the second edition of the course in STEAM methodologies for teachers.

The University of Valencia and the UASD, Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo (first university of America, with more than 250,000 students and branches all over the country) have maintained a solid and fruitful collaboration in training and research for decades. In particular, several professors of the ARMAQoL team were initiated by the hand of our beloved honorary professor Consuelo Cerviño, deserving of distinctions for her career in cooperation and the nickname of the “Great Lady of Cooperation”.

This visit has been possible by combining the tasks and efforts of UV cooperation (Sylvia Georgieva, Adrián García-Mollà and Sara Enrique) and OEI (José Manuel Tomás and Amparo Oliver), as the visit was of these ARMAQoL members all with very active and intertwined agendas. Overall the team's agendas have involved meetings with Radhamés Silverio González, Vice Rector of Research and Graduate Studies and César Díaz, Director of Research at UASD. As well as university management personnel and their representatives. We also met with the OEI's General Directorate of Education in the country and the Vice Minister of Education, Ancell Scheker, as well as the head of AECID, Esteban López-Plaza Martin, and the director responsible for education, Bélgica Bautista Brito. In addition to collaborative meetings to support the STEAM methodology and thus the strategic improvement of quality education in the country, meetings were also held in relation to the initiation of actions to support cultural heritage (with archeology), the promotion of female entrepreneurship (in collaboration with Marta Iranzo, president of EVAP/bwp Valencia).

We also met with a group of female doctoral graduates from doctoral programs in which we have coordination responsibilities and in the past as professors. This is a group of more than twenty people, mostly women who currently occupy strategic positions in the Dominican educational system and thanks to the empowerment that their training as doctors has brought about, they deploy actions with great impact in the country.

Another objective of the visit was the closing ceremony and presentation of awards for the first edition of training in STEAM methodologies for teachers and principals of primary and secondary schools.

Finally, something that is priceless is the satisfaction of seeing how steps have been taken since the beginning of the collaboration 20 years ago and today UASDIANOS and UV members can jointly support actions and research on Climate Change and children in other developing countries in different situations, such as Ethiopia. Let's hope that in a next visit the researchers Sara Martinez-Gregorio and Laura Galiana can captain this initiative on site. The two of them, together with Amparo Oliver, are responsible for the training in Psychometrics and the study of the Effectiveness of Interventions that will be implemented throughout the country at the end of the semester of the 23-24 academic year.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•