COMMENT
Encouraging future scientists
T
he Children Challenging Industry (CCI) programme, pioneered by former SCI president Tom Swan, has been running in the North of England since 1996.
Managed by the Centre for Industry Education Collaboration (CIEC) at the University of York, UK, CCI offers local science and technology firms the chance to be involved in inspiring the next generation of scientists and engineers by giving local children taster workshops at their company, alongside classroom sessions delivered by a primary science advisory teacher. Sartorius and Johnson Matthey, both based
in Royston, UK, recently hosted an ‘Introduction to CCI’ event at Sartorius’ site. Attended by local science and technology companies, the event was designed to inform them about what CCI can do to promote positive perceptions of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) based careers among nine to 11 year-old children. As CIEC director, Joy Parvin, commented:
‘When asked to draw a picture of a scientist and a manufacturing company and describe the jobs that scientists and engineers do, the nine to 11 year-old children we work with draw pictures of men working in factories with chimneys and lots of smoke and describe the jobs as a bit dull and boring. After they have taken part in CCI in the classroom and visited a company, they draw more accurate pictures of what industrial firms look like today, where both women and men are featured in technical jobs.’ CCI focuses on primary school children rather than those at senior school. ‘Research has shown that by the age of 10, children start to self-identify as not STEM type people,’ Parvin said, ‘and only around 20% aspire to this kind of job so if we can show them, at this age, what a STEM career might look like, their self-perceptions can change.’ Children from Trotts Hill Primary School in
Stevenage gave talks at the CCI event about the classroom sessions and their site visit. One boy said: ‘I thought that a manufacturing company would look like Willy Wonka’s factory, but after visiting Sartorius I realise that it is not just about being a mad scientist and slime.’ Another boy explained: ‘I thought science and engineering was just about doing lots of writing but seeing the types of work people do in industry, I have changed my mind about what these jobs might be like.’ Finally, a girl stated: ‘My grandad is always building things and after making part of a pipetting system, I think that I might be good at
doing that too. One day, this is something I’d like to do as a job.’ As Parvin emphasised: ‘From our research
at CIEC, we have seen that after participating in the CCI programme, 70% of children remember their site visit and 46% say they would like to be a scientist or engineer. We also have anecdotal evidence of people involved in CCI studying for PhDs in science and others who now work at the companies they visited.’ So why is there a need for these kinds of
outreach programmes to be run by industrial companies? Su Mennie, primary science advisory teacher at CIEC, said: ‘In recent years there has been a larger focus on learning English and Maths. In some schools, Science is now taught under a topic heading, which can impact on the amount of time it is allocated on the curriculum. This reduced time, in conjunction with a written evidence focus, can make it impossible for teachers to carry out in-depth practical investigations. Taking part in the CCI programme is an opportunity for children to learn in a hands-on way, while their teachers can assess their progress and investigative skills during a CCI workshop.’ From a company’s perspective, the CCI sets up
site visits, does all the necessary criminal checks and helps train the company’s staff. ‘Initially we went to see a CCI site visit being run at Johnson Matthey and we used this as a template for ours. Ten staff volunteers were identified whom CIEC trained in how to communicate technical language with children and CIEC also has a list of topics with workshop ideas that match to the curriculum, which a firm can choose from,’ explained Dominic Bushnell, manufacturing manager at Sartorius: ‘Looking at the topic bank, the cough syrup topic resonated with us as a company because we could use one of our ambr 15 robots to show the children how you can grow microbes. This meant we could map the science in our building to activities they could do in their classroom.’ Sartorius believes that sparking children’s
interest now will open their eyes to the fulfilling careers they could enjoy as industrial engineers and scientists, and may help manufacturing companies in the long term to recruit bright and engaged employees. However, as one of only two companies in the South of England offering this opportunity, we would like to invite other firms to join us in running CCI site visits too.
Nick Cooke managing director, Sartorius
Sparking children’s interest now will open their eyes to the fulfilling careers they could enjoy as industrial engineers and scientists manu- facturing companies in the long term to recruit bright and engaged employees
For more information on the CCI programme, please contact Su Mennie:
Suzanne.mennie@
york.ac.uk or
royston-info@sartorius.com
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