Following the publication of the 3-18 Curriculum Impact Report for Sciences in September 2012 Education Scotland hosted a series of conversations to engage stakeholders in discussions around the findings of the report and to collectively identify priorities for action to secure improvements in science education nationally.

The second sciences conversation day took place in Bishopbriggs Academy, East Dunbartonshire and brought together around 25 participants from a wide variety of sectors.

Contexts for discussion included

• recognising the importance of  Sciences, Technologies, Engineering and Maths (STEM) to the Scottish economy,
• appreciating the need to look beyond the economic picture to the importance of scientific literacy for young people in an increasingly fast-paced and technological society
• recognising STEM  as a key area within Curriculum for Excellence (CfE)
• SSEAG Report (Science and Engineering Education Advisory Group) published February 2012 and the Government response, October 2012
• why this could be considered a ‘Time of Opportunity’ for improving science education nationally

Delegates discussed the key priorities for sciences education focussed around four themes:

1.     Equity in education – science for all
2.     The importance of planning across school clusters
3.     Career long professional learning and support for practitioners
4.     Partnerships

This post will address the first point, Equity in Education. The remaining key priorities will be highlighted in forthcoming posts.

Equity in education – science for all

It was recognised that there had been many initiatives and significant funding provided over the last few decades to make education more equitable but little progress had been made.

The discussion generated views that

• A different perspective was required to close the attainment gap particularly for those from the most deprived background.
• Science education is about promoting scientific literacy for all, preparing learners for STEM careers and inspiring all learners – not just those who intend to pursue science at university level.
• The language of learning needs to be explained to parents to help them appreciate the importance of STEM – Bishopbriggs Academy has run open evenings for parents to engage them in the school science programme.
• The broad general education (especially early years and primary) should be a priority since this is where all learners have the biggest exposure to science.
• More than one career pathway is available – not just school, further study then work. Many STEM careers are at Technician 3 Level – degrees are not the only way. Awareness of this must be promoted.
• Science should be seen as a skill for life.
• Initial teacher education (ITE) establishments have introduced concurrent degrees – more primary teachers will have the opportunity to study STEM subjects at undergraduate level but there are timetabling issues to be addressed to enable student teachers to access courses in other faculties.
• Good science coordinators in local authorities play an essential role in brokering effective links between schools and between schools and partners.

If we are to attract greater number of learners into STEM, gender bias within subjects, such as the prevalence of boys in Physics, must be addressed. There must be consideration given to the influence of female teachers, positive role models for learners choosing science (from industry and HE) and misunderstanding the subject and maths connection, which may put some learners off.

Education Scotland is keen to hear your views about the report and its findings. Visit the Talk with us blog http://bit.ly/GCHeZw to share your thoughts.

At our first face-to-face conversation day in December 2012, delegates shared their thoughts about key priorities for Education Scotland in the sciences, to inform our business planning processes for 2013/14. We have shared these below. What we plan to do next is to discuss these in more detail on the blog to gather views more widely. The first three related posts, from 20th December, 11th January and 7th February are on exemplification, sharing practice and providing input to the future of the Education Scotland online services.

Key priorities for Education Scotland’s planning

Developing online learning communities, and learning communities within education authorities; encourage collegiality to allow more professional dialogue; support mentoring or peer support schemes for practitioners;

Continuing to back up reports with forums to engage practitioners, such as the Sciences 3-18 blog and STEM Professional Learning Community

Supporting effective professional learning which meets the needs of practitioners, in particular provision of support for leaders in learning and senior managers; sharing good practice, identifying “champion” schools

Creating a portal of research; support classroom practitioners in carrying out research

Exemplifying learning and teaching of experiences and outcomes, and investigation and inquiry in the sciences; filter and recommend practical resources

Developing among practitioners a shared understanding of relevant skills, including responsibilites of all, and of assessment

Communicating clearly the remit of Education Scotland; keep Development Officers (DOs) for longer periods for more consistency

Reviewing ITE selection processes

Articulating with needs of industry

Working closely with parents

Reviewing accessibility of Education Scotland website

Implementation of Curriculum for Excellence in a holistic way within a national framework, with reminder of the priority – meeting the needs of learners and the child at the centre

At our first face-to-face conversation day in December 2012, delegates heard from young people and practitioners, before joining in discussion in groups to review the key strengths and aspects for development from the Sciences 3-18 Curriculum Area Impact Project report. Groups were asked to consider, what are the key priorities for transforming sciences education over the next 3 to 5 years? Groups discussed key priorities for sciences education, reflecting on the report’s findings and on their own views. We shared these discussions in our 23rd January post.

In the afternoon session, groups selected one of the priorities to explore in more depth, using the Implento tool. Almost all groups chose the same issue – raising confidence of practitioners teaching sciences within the broad general education – and through the afternoon sessions identified actions to help achieve this were discussed.

Below are the discussion notes, in the delegates’ own words:

We decided to work through the following action:

Boosting confidence of practitioners teaching sciences within the broad general education

We identified the following worst fears and outcomes from this action:

status quo; learning and teaching does not improve; teaching to the test is the norm and learners are exposed only to content without higher-order thinking skills; lack of scientific inquiry;

primary sector not including sciences;

science taught is less topical, and lacks creativity; teaching is in discrete subjects and chunks;

children and young people are less interested, and less confident, in STEM subjects; uptake falls;  children and young people have poor scientific literacy, general population is less scientifically literate;

staff feel overwhelmed and disillusioned; loss of practitioners from the profession;

political demand for specialists, diminishing resources;

the skills gap increases; Scotland’s economy suffers, low-tech economy unable to support high-tech business;

decline in life chances, choices and opportunities for young people.

The following actions were suggested to recover from this negative picture:

review, gather evidence, revisit the programme of support; clear and concise documentation for educational matters;

ensure greater accountability;

address leadership weaknesses at all levels—including continuity and school and council level; ITE and GTCS working together to promote strong leadership;

work collaboratively to identify and build body of excellent practice; practitioners involved in building support networks, peer learning and support; practitioners and resources updated; professional learning for and by practitioners becomes outcome and impact-based;

ensure high-quality learning and teaching with on-going professional learning, accompanied by quality dialogue about learning and teaching; use of professional learning communities, for example teacher learning communities; encourage practitioners to undertake classroom based research;

engage with learners and parents to enthuse about science before it becomes a chore; emphasise skills in science to meet industry needs and enthuse learners;

consideration of assessment methods; is the test worthwhile? Is it testing what matters? Learners able to self-select evidence of learning; change community ideas of value of the test by working together;

advantageous tax rates for new, high-tech businesses.

We saw the following positive outcomes as real possibilities:

science for all—not elitist;

Scotland established centre of excellence for science with room for diversity;

better communication and collaboration across all sectors;

increased uptake in STEM by all young people; increase in males in biology and females in physics;

children and young people being given, accepting and eventually demanding responsibility for their own learning; practitioners learning from children and young people with informed debate between learners and staff; children and young people talking about science and more confident;

learners exhibit increased curiosity, creativity, skills development, confidence; increased literacy and scientific literacy;

confident and enthusiastic staff, meeting the needs of individuals, with the confidence to apply science to every-day events;

scientific thinking informs other subjects; clearer natural interdisciplinary learning and understanding; science is relevant, and genuinely inquiry-based;

engaged learners and communities; better parental engagement and understanding of science.

 The following were suggested as ways to build on the positive outcomes:

re-identifying the priority: the learner at the centre and development of the four capacities; implementation in an holistic way maintaining performance and enthusiasm; education authorities working together;

collaborating closely between industry and academia to reinforce shared goal outcomes, ES role in encouraging and supporting this;

promoting the development of school leadership;

developing learning communities in education authorities and online; developing mentoring and peer support within education authorities; continue to support publication of reports by online engagement;

creating a portal of research for practitioners and commissioning independent research;

sharing good practice and parental involvement that is apparent in early years to continue into all sectors of education; sharing excellent practice and identifying “champion” schools;

exemplifying excellence in learning and teaching; filtering and recommending practical classroom resources; exemplification of science investigation and inquiry within broad general education;

developing shared understanding of relevant skills,  skills progression and how to develop these skills; emphasise development of higher-order thinking skills and build these into National 4 and 5;

sharing lessons learned in the sciences across other curriculum areas;

planning for contextualised learning with the big ideas of sciences understood; planning across four aspects of the curriculum, and for 3-18 in a seamless way;

ensuring professional learning has a focus on the national perspective and linking to national agenda, with local quality assurance of provision;

reviewing ITE selection processes.

Education Scotland has licensed the Transition Leadership tools and the Three Horizons toolkit for the specific and sole purpose of improving Scottish Education and the partner services that support it. We are delighted to have partnered the following people and organisations in this venture: Executive Arts Inc.; James R. Ewing, ForthRoad Ltd.; International Futures Forum and Graham Leicester.

Now that we are into the second half of January we are setting in motion our planning for the second of our series of face-to-face conversation days about improving sciences education 3-18 in Scotland.

We were delighted to be joined on our first day in December by young people and parents, practitioners from early years, primary, secondary and special schools, representatives from further and higher education, and a range of partners, with representation from a wide range of geographical areas across Scotland.

Following presentations from young people and practitioners, delegates joined in discussion in groups to review the key strengths and aspects for development from the Sciences 3-18 Curriculum Area Impact Project report. Groups were asked to consider, what are the priorities for transforming sciences education over the next 3 to 5 years? Groups discussed key priorities for sciences education, reflecting on the report’s findings and on their own views.

The priorities identified, in the delegates’ own words, included:

Planning for high-quality learning and teaching

The need for high-quality learning and teaching leading to highly-motivated children and young people. Within this priorities were given as: implementing planning which ensures a coherent curriculum and seamless learning from 3-18, across transitions at all stages, within levels, across sectors and from broad general education (BGE) to senior phase, with communication to ensure effective progression and taking account of prior learning; ensuring all practitioners plan learning across the four aspects of the curriculum, including interdisciplinary learning; ensuring BGE continues until the end of S3 in secondary schools; regular feedback to children and young people, and as part of planning for learning, so that they know how to improve their learning and know what success looks like; building confidence in assessing progress in the sciences in the BGE and towards qualifications; supporting young people in making successful transitions to positive and sustained destinations with the right skills including  literacy, numeracy and scientific skills.

Confidence of practitioners

Boosting the confidence of every / any practitioner teaching the sciences in the broad general education, and in all sectors. Giving colleagues the confidence to share courses and programmes, developing ideas and work.

Professional learning

Highly-skilled professionals and leadership at all levels. Professional development of practitioners in post being updated and monitored through robust systems which encourage and ensure participation. High-quality professional learning linked to personal and departmental improvement plans. Professional learning to support practitioners in developing knowledge and understanding of relevance and purpose of learning in the sciences, linked to transferable skills.

Partnerships

Developing genuine partnerships with parents, industry, colleges

Inclusion

Sciences for all, through a motivating and challenging curriculum. We need to ensure that all learners are aware of strengths and recognise successes to keep them engaged with the sciences throughout and beyond school.

In the afternoon session, groups selected one of the priorities to explore in more depth, using the Implento tool. Almost all groups chose the same issue – raising confidence of practitioners teaching sciences in the broad general education – and through the afternoon sessions identified actions to help achieve this were discussed.

The groups’ conversations, and those from future conversation days, will be instrumental in helping us to shape our priorities for the forthcoming sessions, to help us all work together to achieve transformational change in sciences 3-18 education in Scotland.

In our 10th December discussion day, exemplification of learning and teaching within the broad general education and senior phase was discussed as being helpful to practitioners.

One of Education Scotland’s approaches to this within the sciences is through STEM Central, our web based resource which provides rich, stimulating and challenge contexts for learning, exemplifying how to make connections between sciences, technologies and mathematics in strong Scottish contexts. The contexts published to date include energy-saving house, electric transport, water, renewables, bioengineering, games and sound, with our latest context “Rescue Vehicles” going live very soon.

Within each context is a selection of teaching ideas, activities, videos and interactives, designed to help practitioners plan learning and teaching, identifying and using quality STEM resources from partners and the web. Learning journeys also exemplify how to incorporate responsibilities for all, and develop capabilities, attributes and higher-order thinking skills.

Practitioners working with colleagues have found it helpful to use the learning journeys as the basis for talking together to understand standards. STEM Central has also been used to support primary / secondary cluster work to plan for progression through the broad general education. In this context, as well as using the STEM Central resources directly, staff have found that they can use the STEM Central approaches as the basis for their own planning.

Learning and teaching in the Senior Phase is also exemplified through our published advice and guidance.  Over the last six months this has included advice, guidance and exemplification of themes for learning such as Food Security, Energy Security and Health, as well as exemplification of learning and teaching to support skills development.

Recently published Professional Focus Papers highlight important features of learning which are enhanced or different from previous arrangements at SCQF 4 and 5.

How are you using exemplification as the basis for professional dialogue, planning for learning and teaching or directly in your classroom?

The Sciences report discusses sharing practice.  In our first face-to-face conversation day which took place on Monday 10th December, some participants discussed the value of reflecting on others’ practice, and highlighted the importance of Education Scotland’s role in sharing practice in the sciences and more broadly in terms of planning and leadership for example.

“For many schools and science departments, improving the consistency of high-quality learning and teaching remains a top priority.  Overall, there is still work to do to share good practice effectively to help raise standards.”

“There has been an overall positive shift towards increased collegiate working in recent years across all sectors.  Teachers more often use non-class contact time to discuss and share ideas, experiences and resources with each other.  In the best examples of collegiate working, there is often a strong climate of self-evaluation and a commitment to improving outcomes for learners.  The strong ethos of collegiality observed in several schools helped to generate opportunities for effective professional learning.

Staff were comfortable in sharing their strengths and identifying areas for development.  Teachers are increasingly supporting each other and sharing practice across classes in primary schools.  Secondary staff are increasingly doing this with colleagues within the science department or across departments.  In a number of sciences departments visited for the purpose of completing this report, teachers of different discrete sciences were sharing good practice very well and supporting colleagues in delivering new learning programmes in areas of the curriculum in which they were less confident.  Some staff have formed partnerships with colleagues as members of Teacher Learning Communities (TLCs) which are proving influential in supporting a culture of professional dialogue.  Staff are increasingly sharing and developing good practice by visiting colleagues in other schools and at times visit colleagues in a different sector.  This is not yet a consistent feature of good practice across schools.”

There are a number of routes through which Education Scotland shares practice, whether focused on sciences, or more broadly on Curriculum for Excellence, and learning and teaching.

One is the Journey to Excellence website. This is a professional development resource which describes the Journey to Excellence  and its five associated areas: learning and teaching, vision and leadership, partnerships, people and culture and ethos. Videos of thought-provoking and innovative practice from across Scotland are shared, along with a range of other resources for use in reflection, discussion and planning for transformational change. All films are also available through iTunes U. Other resources include:

learning together packs to support individual and collegiate working

research summaries and extracts

famous Scots describing what excellence means to them

leading educational thinkers talking about key issues.

The site is searchable by key words (e.g. science). Further work associated with the Sciences 3-18 Impact report is currently underway and new videos will be available in early 2013.

Through a number of avenues, for example our e-mail news services “Today’s News”, our twitter feed and Facebook pages, we share news of excellence identified through our inspection programme; for example excellence in implementation of CfE at Calderglen High School in East Kilbride, announced yesterday.

Education Scotland evalutes and shares evolving practice and this is reflected in the series of Curriculum for Excellence briefing papers, of which paper 6 (parts I and II) has been recently published. The series of Curiculum for Excellence briefing papers can be found on our website.

The Opening up the Future blog is also a route through which innovative practice associated with the use of the “promoting innovative practice and transformative change” tools is shared. This approach, which brings a “futures” perspective into the improvement planning cycle, and increases the likely success of innovative change projects, was used as the basis for our recent sciences conversation day.

The Sciences Curriculum Area Impact Project report included 34 examples of good practice, and we’ve been pleased to receive inquiries around these, and to be able to facilitate discussions between practitioners and schools as a result. These examples of good practice will be updated from time-to-time as we gather evidence of emerging innovative and through-provoking practice in sciences across Scotland. The Sciences 3-18 blog provides a route for discussions and sharing practice associated with the sciences. It’s public and anyone can comment; so please feel free to do so!

STEM Central in Motion is an outward facing public Glow blog set-up to provide a mechanism through which children and young people, practitioners, partners and the wider STEM community can share practice associated with learning and teaching in sciences, technologies, engineering and mathematics. The purpose of the blog is to help practitioners identify what works to improve outcomes for children and young people by sharing practice, and hearing from children and young people themselves.

Earlier this year we launched the  STEM professional learning community (Glow log-in required), tying in with the work associated with taking forward Teaching Scotland’s Future.

 This community provides you with the opportunity to connect with other educators with an interest in sciences, technologies, engineering or mathematics. You can tap into online learning opportunities, and keep up to date with STEM related professional learning opportunities available in Scotland, sharing practice with others in the community.

Community tools can help you to measure and track the impact of your professional learning on outcomes for learners. The community brings together relevant information from CPDFind the Education Scotland learning blog, the STEM Central in Motion blog and The Sciences 3-18 Curriculum Area Impact Project blog.

Are there ways of sharing practice which Education Scotland is not doing which would be helpful? Which of the current mechanisms do you find most useful? Do you use practice shared nationally as the basis for discussion in your department or faculty, or as a basis for reflection on your own practice?

Following the publication of the 3-18 Curriculum Impact Report for Sciences in September 2012, Education Scotland hosted a series of conversations to engage stakeholders in discussions around the findings of the report and to collectively identify priorities for action to secure improvements in science education nationally.

The second sciences conversation day took place in Bishopbriggs Academy, East Dunbartonshire, and brought together around 25 participants from a wide variety of sectors.

Delegates discussed the key priorities for sciences education and identified four key areas:

1. Equity in education – science for all
2. The importance of planning across school clusters
3. Career long professional learning and support for practitioners
4. Partnerships

Equity in education – science for all

It was recognised that there had been many initiatives and significant funding provided over the last few decades to make education more equitable but more progress needed to be made.

The participants raised the following points in discussion:

• A different perspective was required to close the attainment gap particularly for those from the most deprived background.
• Science education is about promoting scientific literacy for all, preparing learners for STEM careers and inspiring all learners – not just those who intend to pursue science at university level.
• The language of learning needs to be explained to parents to help them appreciate the importance of STEM – Bishopbriggs Academy has run open evenings for parents to engage them in the school science programme.
• The broad general education (especially early years and primary) should be a priority since this is where all learners have the biggest exposure to science.
• More than one career pathway is available – not just school, further study then work. Many STEM careers are at Technician 3 Level – degrees are not the only way. Awareness of this must be promoted.
• Science should be seen as a skill for life.
• Initial teacher education (ITE) establishments have introduced concurrent degrees – more primary teachers will have the opportunity to study STEM subjects at undergraduate level but there are timetabling issues to be addressed to enable student teachers to access courses in other faculties.
• Good science coordinators in local authorities play an essential role in brokering effective links between schools and between schools and partners.

If we are to attract greater number of learners into STEM, gender bias within subjects, such as the prevalence of boys in Physics, must be addressed. There must be consideration given to the influence of male/female teachers and positive role models for learners choosing science (from industry and HE).

Education Scotland is keen to hear your views about the report and its findings. Click on the title of this blog post to leave a comment.

Watch this space for further information about the other 3 priorities identified.