To achieve a better gender balance in science, technology and engineering careers, the work starts in primary schools. As a senior lecturer in science education, Dr Maeve Liston, director of enterprise and community education at Mary Immaculate College in Limerick, is at the front line.
A significant part of her role is about helping primary school teachers improve their ability to teach science, a subject which was only included in the primary school curriculum in 1999. “A lot of the work with teachers at primary level is around confidence,” says Liston.
Even today, when science is firmly embedded in primary schools, confidence issues remain. Each year Liston welcomes about 450 students into teacher training. Of those, typically 90 per cent will have done biology to Leaving Cert level. But only about 13 of those 450 students will have done chemistry, and nine will have studied physics, so building teacher confidence remains key.
This involves the development of specific teaching strategies. With primary school children, science teaching must be hands-on. “You don’t just show the magnet, for example, you let them explore the world with it,” Liston says.
Developing Stem subjects at this age, for both girls and boys, is all about encouraging questioning. “By secondary school, we move into learning things off. Primary school should be all about developing a questioning mind.”
Liston provides continuing professional development courses in science teaching during the summer and year round through local education centres. The fact that these always book out shows how important Stem is to teachers, she says.
Education initiatives
Part of her outreach work sees her partner with industry on education initiatives, including the setting-up of a Coder Dojo in association with Dell Technologies in Limerick, which allows children and parents to learn to code together.
Coding enables children to see themselves as creators of technology, rather than just consumers of it. Young people are not the much-vaunted term “digital natives” if all they know is how to “swipe and take photos”, says Liston, who says that girls are as likely as boys to recognise the importance of science. However, they are less likely to convert that view into a decision to study science.
Both girls and boys view science as male-dominated, she says, and popular culture doesn’t always help. “The Big Bang Theory does no favours in this respect,” says Liston, who believes the prime time TV comedy promulgates negative ‘geeks and nerds’ science stereotypes.
It may also reinforce gender stereotyping that children are subjected to at an even earlier stage, through story books. Any company looking to undertake schools-based corporate and social responsibility initiatives to encourage Stem would do well to start with the school library, she suggests.
“You’ll still find girls at home sweeping at while boys are super heroes out saving the world. Get rid of those books and introduce ones like Lab Coats and Lace, or Violet the Pilot and Not All Princesses Dress in Pink instead.”
Liston works closely with industry and cautions scientists and engineers coming into talk to children about careers in Stem not to try and be cool, or expect the class to relate to their educational attainments. “It’s the story that counts to children, where you came from and how you got there. It’s not the company you work for or the PhD you have – that doesn’t mean anything to them.”
Liston is also working with Dell Technologies in Limerick on a major initiative that is bringing robotics to more than 50 schools, enabling children to design, code and develop robots. It has won awards as an exemplar of how education and industry can work together.
Called Vex Robotics, the programme helps engage children in science as they move from primary to secondary school. “Kids turn off science at age 11, which is exactly when that transition takes place,” says Liston.
Greater appeal
Much more work could also be done to reframe Stem career choices in a way that would make them of greater appeal to girls, she suggests, recalling a TV interview of five girls who had recently won awards in the BT Young Scientist competition. Four wanted to do medicine and one wanted to do engineering. Given the wide-ranging, and growing, career opportunities that exist in engineering, it’s an example of skewed thinking.
“Women are going into the caring professions still, but engineering is part of the caring professions if you are building a robotic suit to help someone who is paralysed to walk again, or developing drugs to cure an illness,” she says. “A huge marketing and branding piece needs to be done in relation to engineering.”
