A new programme to encourage primary school pupils to become interested in science is sending out ripples of keen interest, writes Dick Ahlstrom
Young children don't need convincing that science is fun, they already know it. A new initiative to help foster the uptake of science subjects at second and third level hopes to exploit this natural curiosity by bringing entertaining science courses to children when they are still in primary school
The Government's task force on the decline in the numbers of students taking science subjects proposed changes to help reverse this alarming trend. One idea was to reach out to pupils at primary level, when they can still be enthused by the subject and before prejudices set in.
This is the very approach being taken by Junior Achievement Ireland, which during the past school year brought a pilot science education programme to schools across the State. Almost 4,000 fifth and sixth class children benefited from the scheme, says Della Clancy, executive director of Junior Achievement.
"Junior Achievement is a voluntary organisation and the two things we do are teach children about the world of work including work in science and engineering, and we also target those children at risk of leaving school early," says Clancy.
Its activities are entirely funded by private-sector companies, she says. "We recruit companies who give us an annual contribution and they are also the ones who teach the programmes."
Each company makes volunteer "teachers" available who go out into the schools to deliver any of 18 different school programmes geared for ages five to 18, she says. These programmes reached about 35,000 students in the last school year.
The new science programme, entitled Our Universe, is the latest offered by Junior Achievement. "We developed it a year ago. This is the end of the first year pilot, and we had great success with this programme," Clancy says.
Teaching volunteers for Our Universe either had science backgrounds or worked for companies producing high-tech products. Junior Achievement circulated schools about the science programme pilot and expected to cater for about 2,000 pupils. They actually got 4,000, Clancy says. "It gave us a boost to realise there was such demand for it."
They needed about 160 lecturers to handle these numbers. Each delivered five one-hour modules on subjects including: chromatography; the human skeleton; a programme on the environment; the heart and circulatory system; and light.
The Junior Achievement lecturers all received training before going into the schools. As usual, Junior Achievement provided all the teaching materials, and then carried out a thorough evaluation to assess whether to retain the Our Universe modules.
They surveyed 500 of the 4,000 10- to 12-year-old pupils who took the course and held meetings with the teachers and Junior Achievement lecturers afterwards. Overall the response was "very positive", she says.
"The anecdotal response was the children actually loved it," she says. "The children really enjoyed it but so did the teachers. The teachers learned a huge amount. There are a lot of teachers out there who know very little about science."
The pupils were given questionnaires, one before and one after the guest lectures as a way to gauge whether they learned from the undertaking. Full results are due out in a few weeks but Clancy had preliminary findings.
After the module, 80 per cent of the children could answer correctly when asked what chromatography involved. When asked questions about the skeleton, correct answers jumped from just 5 per cent to 60 per cent.
Environmental questions started at a high correct level of 70 per cent, but this rose to 80 per cent after the course. And correct answers on the heart went from 70 per cent to 90 per cent, she says.
The one "bad" question for Junior Achievement related to later career choices made by the pupils. The numbers choosing science started at 8 per cent but only rose to 12 per cent after the course.
"What we are hoping this will do is prompt and encourage students to take a science subject in secondary school," Clancy says. "The big thing that came through was it was wonderful to have someone from the world of science and industry to be there teaching it. It really brought it to life for everybody."
The Our Universe programme opens to all schools in the coming school year. Full survey results will be posted on the organisation's website: www.juniorachievement.ie