STUDENT COMPETITIONS: OPPORTUNITIES TO PRACTICE INTERDISCIPLINARY KNOWLEDGE IN PRACTICAL PROBLEM SOLVING

Various recommendations and actions have been taken regarding Estonian educational strategies that emphasise the value of science education.One example is STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics).This approach makes scientific content understandable and science-related professions attractive to students.STEAM as an educational approach connects various disciplines.Home economics, as a subject area, can complement a STEAM education with practical activities.It helps to set gained knowledge into a real-life context and strongly supports fostering students' 21st-century skills.The recently developed Science Kitchen learning environment at Tallinn University provides opportunities to connect theoretical understanding and practical activities in a way that supports the transfer of knowledge and skills into learners' everyday lives.Moreover, the student competition Kringel demonstrates the connections between home economics and a STEAM education by focusing on food-related processes grounded in scientific principles.To deepen the Kringel competition's concept and learn from good practices, an online literature search was performed studying scientific peer-reviewed articles from the last decade (2014)(2015)(2016)(2017)(2018)(2019)(2020)(2021)(2022)(2023)(2024).We targeted articles on academic competitions for students.This systematic analysis enabled us to provide an overview of the aims, content and organisational issues as well as the possible impact of such events from the students' perspective.A contemporary subject competition has a multi-stage structure, containing theoretical and practical tasks that engage students or student teams in providing solutions to real-life problems.Besides strengthening students' subject-related knowledge, these strongly support the development of 21st-century skills.The findings are used to determine the developmental implications of the Kringel competition.