New Perspectives in Science Education

The Irish senior secondary school (Leaving Cert) chemistry curriculum requires students to learn about spectroscopic techniques such as Infra-Red (IR) and Ultra-Violet (UV) spectroscopy. However, most teachers find this section one of the most difficult to teach since schools don’t normally have access to the required equipment due to its prohibitively high cost. As a result, the instrumentation question on the annual Leaving Cert Chemistry exam was reported to be the least attempted question across the entire paper. In addition to this, only about a third of Leaving Cert chemistry students who sit the exam continue on to pursue a chemistry related course at an Irish Higher Education Institution. Unlike biology which enjoys widespread school coverage, not all Irish schools teach chemistry or physics to senior secondary level and the schools who do offer these subjects can regularly change depending on demand. Collectively this situation presents a unique challenge for school-based interventions involving chemistry or physics in Ireland. The Spectroscopy in a Suitcase programme is run through six Higher Education Institutions chosen for their expertise in chemistry and geographic location to maintain a high standard and widespread national coverage respectively. Using portable spectrometers and context based learning (CBL) techniques, workshops are run by a team of trained PhD students usually in school labs during school time as a short-duration intervention activity. The benefits of this “scientist in the classroom” model to postgraduate students, secondary students, teachers and the partner Higher Education Institutions are numerous. Recently, the programme has expanded to provide public engagement events and teacher enrichment workshops in addition to the already successful student workshops which have now been running for over four years in Ireland. Feedback and evaluations received to date have been overwhelmingly positive and the programme has provided workshops in half of all Irish secondary schools nationwide as well as running dozens of public engagement and teacher enrichment events.

Keywords: Informal Science Education, Public Engagement, Higher Education, Chemistry Education, Outreach;

References:
[1] P. E. Childs, M. Sheehan, What’s difficult about chemistry? An Irish perspective, Chem. Educ. Res. Pract., 2009, 10, 204-218
[2] Central Applications Office (CAO) statistics, www.cao.ie
[3] State Examinations Commission (SEC) statistics, www.examinations.ie
[4] S. Laursen, C. Liston, H. Thiry, and J. Graf, What good is a scientist in the classroom? Participant outcomes and program design features for a short duration science outreach intervention in K-12 classrooms, CBE-Life Sciences Education, 2007, 6, 49-64