• Question: If you could change anything about the way STEM subjects are taught, what would you change?

    Asked by rukiahill to Rowena, Nicola, Kieren, Kate on 11 Mar 2014.
    • Photo: Rowena Fletcher-Wood

      Rowena Fletcher-Wood answered on 11 Mar 2014:

      The curriculum. I think training students just to pass exams by keeping very rigidly to the specific information stunts creativity, stops you enjoying the subjects and forces the teachers to push kids through the system on a conveyor belt.

      The kind of curriculum I would like to see would be a list of topics and guideline content. Individuals should be taught according to how much they can take in and assessed on a more flexible basis. This would of course require more time and resources, but would produce better scientists and happier pupils.

    • Photo: Kate Nicholson

      Kate Nicholson answered on 11 Mar 2014:

      Ohhh, I could rant about this for ages!
      1. Get rid of the exams that only test how well you can remember what you’ve been told – they don’t make you a good scientist.
      2. An exploratory based learning, where you have a problem to investigate, alone or in a team, then present what you have found to another group who haven’t done that investigation – there is no better way to learn something than to have to teach it yourself!
      3. Redesign the curriculum – it makes no sense in the form it is in and the new one released this year is moving in the right direction towards skills based, but still has a long way to go.
      4. Make science real. I mean, why would you be interested in carbonates from rocks if you haven’t even looked at a weathered limestone building before? Or live here where the coastal erosion of limestone makes fantastic archways in the cliffs? Things like this allow you to ask about things that you see in the world around you, and I think that is a far more valuable way of learning.
      5. Stop assessing schools and teachers based on test scores – from what I have seen, you may as we’ll pick the numbers out of a hat, you poor things are tested soo much and the poor teachers are graded and told off based in your test scores – how is that helping you learn?

    • Photo: Nicola Rogers

      Nicola Rogers answered on 12 Mar 2014:

      I am not only a Chemist, my partner is also a Chemistry teacher – and there are many things that I think are wrong with the way Chemistry in particular is taught in schools.

      1) many of the text book reaction procedures that are learnt are somewhat outdated and would never happen in a working Chemistry lab – the most obvious example being the use of Bunsen burners, which are absolutely banned in labs full of flammable solvents. Although I see that they are great teaching aids I think it would be beneficial for students to see how the reactions they learn about are actually performed in the research or industrial environment – to make the learning more tangible

      2) I think the exam system is a major problem – there is a skill in doing lots of practice papers and learning ‘how to answer questions to match the mark scheme’ – and although this is a great technique to get good grades, it does not make you a good chemist.

      I would definitely change both the curriculum and the assessment style – there does need to be more practical work where the work is exploratory and lab reports are written and assessed at the end – but in a way that the labs themselves do not feel like exams all the time – rather exploratory learning aids.

      I am also a fan of the inverted classroom idea for STEM subjects; in which the contact time with teachers (ie your lessons) are spent problem solving and essentially doing the tasks you are set for homework normally – but with you teacher to ask for help if you get stuck – and then having to write class notes and read bits of text books (which are often done in lesson time) at home. This would be more appropriate at A Level age, although would also work at GSCE .

Comments