• Question: how do you think you will engage formative years

    Asked by ilovescience to Paul, MarthaNari, Jonny, Hannah, Alison on 18 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: Paul Brack

      Paul Brack answered on 18 Jun 2015:

      I think the best way to engage young children with science is to get them to do fun experiments, like the bicarb/vinegar experiment, or making red cabbage indicator. These are simple to do, but really exciting for the children because to them they almost magically make gas or see change colours in the experiment, and they find that amazing. It’s all about making it fun and interactive.

    • Photo: Martha Havenith

      Martha Havenith answered on 18 Jun 2015:

      I think children are actually scientists by nature in the way they explore the world. (On a side note – there’s a famous psychologist named Piaget who spent his whole life showing that children even act like scientists – for example when they do experiments to understand gravity by throwing toys around the room repeatedly 🙂 ).
      So in a way adults don’t even need to do lots of things in order to inspire children, they just need to not stop children from exploring. I would love to see schools where questions are at least as important as answers, and we talk about things we don’t know (and what to do with them) almost as much as about things we know.

    • Photo: Jonny Brooks-Bartlett

      Jonny Brooks-Bartlett answered on 19 Jun 2015:

      I believe that the current school curriculum is not suitable for engaging young children to do anything academic.

      The best teacher I ever had was one who taught me how fun it was to learn and be inquisitive. He didn’t always (often not) follow the syllabus but I didn’t care because I was engaged. I asked questions about general relativity (Einstein’s theory) in class and we would discuss it. A large proportion of the class would stay after school and discuss physics with him. It was great.

      The main problem (and this is a huge problem with maths which is what I mainly do) is that the curriculum is based on making sure children can go through the mechanics of science and maths i.e. at the end of the course you should be able to do this, that and the other. So teaching is based on making sure children can do it. BUT there is no incentive to do it. Where is the motive Why is it important to be able to do this? That’s what people often say with maths. “When am I ever going to use this?” As soon as someone asks that question, you immediately know they are disengaged.

      We need to start by teaching children ‘Why?’ they should do something. We also need to give children some room to ask questions and explore them. That is what research is all about, yet we don’t do this in school.
      We need to give children open questions. Once they have something to solve and the motivation to do it, then the mechanics follows. They’ll learn how to use probability if it will help them work out their chances of winning in the lottery or something like that.

      The computer based math initiative: https://www.computerbasedmath.org/ Is trying to address this. Although I think it’s more focussed towards getting children to learn skills for numerical based careers, but I think it’s a step in the right direction.

      I think the curriculum (and along with that, the assessment) needs an overhaul, before it allows the content and the teachers the freedom and ability to really inspire the kids.

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