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Harnessing the Racehorse By Ian Russell Published in the ECSITE Newsletter, Summer 1997 ('Food for Thought' pages) 'Jamboree has had its day' An article entitled 'Jamboree has had its day' appeared in the Times supplement for higher education on March 14 this year, the first day of National Science Week in the UK. The debate sparked by that article reveals new accents on a theme familiar to science centre professionals. Here, Ian Russell - exhibit designer, science communicator, and sometime philosopher - carries the debate from Times Supplement to ECSITE Newsletter. 'We admire the enthusiasm everyone puts into Science Week. But all is not well in the public understanding of science and engineering field. It is desperately short of money and too reliant on philanthropy for funding; it lacks co-ordination and agreement on priorities; and it expends energy on high-profile events at the expense of long-term projects.' The article goes on to suggest 'a ten or 20-year campaign to solve the problem of the public understanding of science' and 'formal recognition of the need to develop science communication as a profession'. These were tough words, with some good sense as well. But then the authors proposed, 'a shift in effort from jamborees such as Science Week to investment in programmes such as the Pupil Researcher Initiative.' Something about that disturbed me. The Pupil Researcher Initiative is an excellent curriculum enrichment programme for schools, but not specifically for the general public. A jamboree is unflatteringly defined in my dictionary as a 'frolic' of boy-scouts. Why should we feel uneasy about the comparisons and value judgements implied by that proposal? Formal and informal science communication With regard to the 'public understanding of science' I am primarily a designer of science centres, 'interactives' and hands-on exhibitions of all kinds. In addition, I do something to sharpen up my 'scientist's understanding of the public'. I take an active part in Science Week and similar, smaller events. About forty times each year I stand for an hour in front of an audience with my Exploding Custard performance of simple kitchen table science experiments. Audiences range from small Women's Institute groups to 450 people three times a day during the British Association's recent BAYS Day at Imperial College, London. I enjoy it and the audiences sound as if they do. Just like the arts, the sciences and the technologies need to be communicated and appreciated informally as well as formally. Gary the clown is not formally qualified as a science and technology communicator, any more than I am. I meet Gary the clown regularly at British Association events (or should I say jamborees?). Sitting at his large but respected feet, I have learned about communication skills and techniques that I never dreamed existed. What are the performance indicators? Objectives need to be defined. A good way to evaluate a project is to compare its results with its own original objectives. A more questionable way, sometimes seen, is for the evaluator to decide subjectively what the original objectives ought to have been, and make judgements on that basis. Some projects never define their objectives. Some have unrealistic and unachievable objectives. Others have worthwhile aims for which it is hard to find measurable performance indicators: long-term influence on career-choice, for example. Evaluators tend to concentrate on those kinds of data which are least ambiguous and most readily available. This is why written evaluation studies and spoken value judgements usually put more emphasis on cognitive learning (increased 'knowledge and understanding') than on 'affective' learning (changes in 'attitude' or how a person 'feels' about something). Also, greater attention is paid to cognitive learning that is measurable immediately, in contrast with long-term effects. I once found myself sitting next to a renowned educational researcher at a conference dinner: like you do. We discussed the 'ray table' hands-on exhibit. The one where you playfully manipulate streaks of light on a white surface, using a selection of prisms, cylindrical lenses and mirrors. We talked about research that shows the long-lasting and detailed memories that children have of hands-on experiences in science centres. I suggested that eight year olds who 'played' briefly with this exhibit might extend their 'vocabulary of experiences' sufficiently to accelerate their understanding of a ray diagram drawn as chalk lines on a blackboard many years later. I suggested that this might actually be a highly significant benefit of this exhibit. My companion looked at me in horror. 'We couldn't possibly design an experiment to test that!' she said. 'It would be far too difficult.' So we talked about something else. Direct, measurable cognitive gains Increasing people's knowledge and understanding is important. However there are practical limits to what can be expected from brief participation in a Science Week event or one visit to a science centre, compared with classroom teaching. Take the duration of a typical science centre visit (say, 1.5 hours), reduce it to the time spent actually engaged with the exhibits (to be generous, say, one hour), and divide that by the number of interactive exhibits present (say, 90 exhibits). That averages 40 seconds per exhibit. Cognitive learning does happen under these circumstances, and to some extent it can be monitored. But our projects are being grossly undervalued if people assume that these are the only benefits. To paraphrase a well-known OXFAM slogan, 'If you give someone facts, you have fed their mind for an hour. If you give someone curiosity, they will feed their own mind for a lifetime'. This is rather important. 'Affective learning' is not merely some vague, theoretical excuse for ineffectual 'jamborees' or disorganised-looking science centres. When it happens, it can meet many of our objectives far more cost-effectively than anything else! Obvious effects on classroom motivation Some years ago I was producing a publicity video about a science centre I set up in Liverpool. A primary school (children aged 11 and under) well known to the director of the filming company happened to visit the centre. We seized this as an opportunity to get some footage of classroom science teaching. I was unprepared for what we found there. Whole classrooms were awash with yoghurt pots, plastic bottles, cardboard and wires: seething with intense activity as the children eagerly worked on challenges presented in the our science centre's education pack. All the activities were highly relevant to things the children had just experienced during their visit and their real enthusiasm was obvious. None of this had been staged for our benefit. We chose the school randomly. It made a deep impression on me to imagine what must have been happening simultaneously in countless other classrooms across the city as a direct result of our project. Such follow-up enthusiasm is well known and can affect teachers as well as pupils. It is common knowledge that motivated people are easier to teach and learn faster. Important 'affective' benefits like these should be measurable to some degree, but are they always taken into account? More subtle 'affective' benefits How much can you remember learning at the age of twelve? Not much? How much can you remember about your teachers at that time? A surprising amount of detail! Personalities are prominent among our memories, and play an important part in our learning. Which subjects did you like most? Did you like the teachers? Which subjects did you like least? Did you like those teachers? Is it conceivable that you liked or disliked certain subjects because you liked or disliked the teachers? Therefore, did those teachers in effect teach you to like or dislike those subjects? Whether positive or negative, that was the power of 'affective' learning in your life. How much did it influence your choice of career? Or was it someone else who inspired you, not a teacher? Perhaps a television programme, or some other pivotal experience: a chemistry set, looking through a telescope, or a microscope, or dipping a net into a pond? Few of us were able to visit a science centre or experience a Science Week event at that age. What effect would that have had? So what effects are there on the school-subject and career choices of huge numbers of young people nowadays who are experiencing these things? How much worse would the situation be without our efforts? Is anybody actually measuring this? Career-choice and learning to like or dislike a subject are just part of this. Here is a suggested list of some other kinds of 'affective' learning.
EXERCISE: Think of three more examples of your own, which I have missed. In the right environment these things are highly infectious. You can catch them. But you can never deliberately teach them, institutionalise them, or even legislate for them. Because they are hard to measure, we don't see them among the lists of attainment targets in school curriculum documents. Does that mean that they are not important? The future I said many of these things, and more, in my previous Food for Thought article, back in Spring 1991. I still stand by every word. My impression is that recognition of the 'affective domain' is increasing. This applies to us as well as to the public. Much of what we are doing is driven by the personal commitment of individuals, by enthusiasm, by passion. A precious and wonderful living network of science and technology communicators is developing, in which the contributing personalities are important, in all their diversity. We need to foster yet more maverick creativity, more diversity of effort, and more projects that bear the distinct personal stamp of individual enthusiasts. We need to do this at all costs. At the same time, for the sake of efficiency and cost-effectiveness, we need to co-ordinate our efforts and become better organised. We need a formal infrastructure of guidelines, programmes, regulations, cost-benefit analysis, grants, information-sharing, training, qualifications and professional recognition. The informal and the formal, the personal and the institutional, the science centre and the school, Science Week and educational programmes, complement and balance each other. It would ruin everything we are trying to achieve if we ever came to regard them as opposing philosophies, aligned like two political parties in a simplistic, polarised debate. This may be a crucial time for science and technology communication. How should we be ordering things now, so that our priceless, impetuous, unruly racehorse runs ever more successfully, without becoming neglected and sickened in the stifling dullness of the bureaucratic stables? |
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