by Emma Jones
The end of November is one of my favourite times in the academic year. Yes, the daylight hours are short, and I frequently get soaked as I cycle to work in the rain, but I have a good reason for finding my job particularly rewarding at this time. Over the last two weeks, I have been visiting local primary schools, observing lessons taught by my Education project students from the School of Biosciences.
What does the project involve?
I have supervised a set of undergraduates on this final year research project for more than ten years. The project runs for about ten weeks in the Autumn semester and usually involves about 20 students. We kick the project off with a set of group seminars where we discuss how children learn and how to plan and deliver effective lessons. The students also decide on one or more research questions that they hope to answer (usually about which teaching styles are more effective or what the value of outreach is). Once they have been paired up and assigned a partner school, the students design and deliver a set of Science lessons. They collect data as they go so that it can all be written up in a research report.
This year, my students have been teaching about food chains, climate change and evolution, enthusing the next generation to enjoy biology. One class played a game not dissimilar to tag rugby where they acted out the food chain of the great barrier reef; this was a fun and active consolidation task to help the children remember the key terms they had learnt. In all of the lessons I observed, the children were excited and engaged in their learning and thrilled with their mini lab coats. Many outreach activities focus on secondary school children but as young children are so quick to find joy in activities, this is the perfect time to excite them about science.
What is the impact?
A number of years ago, I conducted a study to measure the impact of these projects; I collected information from my students, from the school children and from the teachers. I am still hoping that one day my data will turn into a published article so I won't spill all of the beans here but, reassuringly, all participants benefit in some way from this project:
- The school children feel more positive about Science after they have been taught by our students.
- The hosting class teachers value the exciting equipment that we have access to and report that our students act as scientific role models.
- Finally, our students see great value in the transferable skills they develop during the project and also find that it aids them in their career decisions.
For the first time, this year, I managed to place some students at my daughter’s school so it felt even more special. As I was observing two of my students delivering a fantastic lesson on biological adaptation to a Y6 class, I could hear my daughter and her friends practising for their nativity concert in the adjacent school hall. I felt so happy that I was compelled to write a blog post about it!
It is rewarding to see our students conducting themselves so professionally in a ‘real world’ environment. Each year, I get reference requests from students that I have supervised as they apply for teaching courses, teaching assistant positions and other graduate employment. This project helps to set our students on the path to become future teachers and perhaps they have taught some children who will become future scientists.
Dr Emma Jones is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Biosciences