This article presents an approach to STEM education for secondary and high school students, proposed by currently ongoing STEM4youth project (SWAFT, H2020, www.stem4youth.eu). The approach is the result of the cooperation and joint research of 10 European organizations, having deep expertise in science education and science promotion. The ultimate project goal is to develop educational content and teaching scenarios which in effect will make science education and scientific career more attractive to young peoples. To meet this goal, the project places STEM education in a broader societal and economic context, claiming that education should primarily respond to the labor market demands and address concrete societal challenges indirectly associated to science. The project seeks to produce a comprehensive, multidisciplinary series of educational contents -courses presenting key STEM disciplines' topics to support young people in their formal and informal education (extra-curriculum activities, science festivals, university organized lectures and open, web-accessible self-study materials). The content is organized around 6 STEM disciplines: Mathematics, Physics, Astronomy, Chemistry, Engineering and Medicine and also includes a Citizen Science Toolkit for Teachers. For each discipline 7-9 challenges (1-2 hours lessons/lectures/demonstrations/hands-on activities) are being developed which were identified as the most important to boost the creativity, competitiveness and innovativeness. The challenges will be largely presented through practical applications and impacts on the everyday life and work. A range of formal and informal methodologies and tools are being employed to present the scientific challenges in an attractive way (learning by experiment, gaming, citizen science at schools). Also, it will show which specific skills and competence STEM education develops and how these skills address the current and future European labour market needs. In lieu of this, the project provides a helicopter view of STEM disciplines and job characteristics associated with these disciplines to help young people undertake informed decisions about their future (subjects of interest, fields of study and finally career paths to pursue). The article presents how the abovementioned general ideas could be practically implemented in STEM education, proposing how to harmonize educational content from different areas, how to structure the courses and finally how to provide practical guidelines for teachers to help them conduct multidisciplinary lessons in a responsive, interactive manner.

The place of Johannes Kepler in Astronomy is specified from both directions in historical time. The first refers explicitly to the world-picture of the polymaths and astronomers before his era, and the second to the novel world-picture of the scholars and philosophers that succeeded him. The Hellenic scientific tradition gave birth and shaped explicitly the world-picture of the generations that preceded Kepler's era, and this can be evidently observed in the construction and functions incorporated in the Antikythera Mechanism. Kepler offers a new Paradigm in the science of Astronomy, and contributes greatly to the introduction of a new Paradigm in the Physical Sciences, as well as to the generation of the new philosophical scheme, the one of Mechanistic Philosophy. His great contributions to Astronomy, Mechanics, the Physical Sciences, and Philosophy, which occurs through the introduction of these new Paradigms, rely heavily on the Hellenic, and in particular Alexandrian, tradition of Science and Philosophy. The Antikythera Mechanism can be regarded as the epitome of the Alexandrian tradition in Astronomy, Mathematics and Technology, since it incorporates all these features within a single gear mechanism. The Alexandrian spirit in Philosophy and the Sciences revives in the Age of Renaissance and in the era of Johannes Kepler, and this intellectual fountain serves as a basis for his own great Endeavor in Astronomy and the science of Mechanics, as well as in Optics and Mathematics. Soon after his death the European civilization shall encounter its gigantic transformation through the Age of Enlightenment, the Age of the Industrial Revolution, the Age of Sailing, and its expansion all over the globe. These eras contain as their germ Kepler's contribution to the European civilization.

The step of Kouros symbolizes a historical period of the Hellenic civilization, designating the decisive step of this civilization towards its geographical, social, cultural and noospheric expansion. This cultural explosion moves towards the New, it is the moment at which the Hellenic civilization realizes its own Plus Ultra. During this cosmogenic explosion certain, idiosyncratic in nature, memeplexes emerge. These shall propagate their solitonic existance through Time and within History. These memeplexes include the birth of Physical Philosophy, of Mathematics and of Astronomy. The generator of these accomplishments is the "hellenopoietic space". The hellenopoietic space is composed by the deep synergy between the geosphere, the biosphere and the noopshere of the Hellenic civilization. The achievements born within the presence of the hellenopoietic space belong nowadays to our Common Global Heritage. The decisive step made by the standing form of Kouros symbolizes the first step of the Hellenic civilization, a step actualized within the fertile uterus of the "hellenopoietic" space.

We investigate the complexity of three successive astronomical paradigms in the science of Physics, namely the Ptolemaic paradigm, the Copernican paradigm and the Keplerian paradigm and mention briefly some characteristic facts about the colossal Newtonian paradigm. This complexity can be understood according to five criteria, as proposed by Thomas Kuhn, the father of the epistemological notion of the paradigm, as well as the founder of an important epistemological school within the realm of the 20th century. We propose that there does not exists an overall formal criterion for deciding among these rival paradigms, that is of the existing astronomical paradigms at the age Johannes Kepler formulated its own breakthrough within the science of Astronomy. The further evolution of the science of Astronomy, as well as the advent of the telescope era for investigating the celestial phenomena surely decided for the Newtonian paradigm, which can be understood as the epitome of all past astronomical and cosmological paradigms, yet the advance of the scientific study of the celestial phenomena did not evolved within a linear fashion, on the other hand, it has undergone many changes, subject to the great historical turns, that is the eras of the mentioned astronomical paradigms, during their evolution and their abandonment from the scientific community of the astronomers, the scholars and the polymaths of their age, respectively. We propose that each of Thomas Kuhn criteria imposes its own "complexity measure" of these paradigms, while the overall complexity criterion has to be regarded as the accumulating, overwhelming, empirical evidence, for finally deciding the new way of evolution and the novel turn within the science of Astronomy, especially in the post-Keplerian and surely in the post-Newtonian era.

No abstract