What I want for my students from the science education I provide

Last Monday my Headteacher asked me to write a little bit about what we are doing in the department. I wrote a long list of the things we have done to engage students in lessons and homework and another long list of all the extra curricular things that we do. At the end I felt compelled to write my aims for the education of the students at my school and I thought that I would share it here. (The only editing I have done is to remove the name of the school. )

The recent science subject ofsted report was called ‘maintaining curiosity’, this absolutely my aim for the science department I lead. I want students to ask questions about science and scientific ideas. I want them to wonder about how the world works. I also want them to have an idea about how science works, how scientists collaborate more and share ideas in an effort to come to the best conclusion possible about the area they are investigating. I teach about the hole in the ozone layer – a fairly recent discovery – and how scientists checked their own work and then other scientists checked their work to be certain and then those discoveries lead to a global change in how we behave. I find it incredible that science can have so much influence, especially when in other areas like global warming humans chose to ignore it, and I hope this comes across to the girls. I want my students to be as aware of the failures and politics around science and not just regard it as a body of facts. But also I want them to see science as a human endeavour that has spanned centuries building on the knowledge and ideas that have gone before and that it is never fixed, and one day they could be one of the people who takes science in a new direction.