Abstract
Bristol ChemLabS, the UK's Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning in practical chemistry, delivers numerous outreach activity days per year for thousands of primary school pupils annually. These mainly comprise demonstration assemblies and hands on workshops for pupils in the main. The activities support the UK's Key Stage 2 science curriculum, to raise scientific understanding among the teachers and to raise pupils' science skills and aspirations and are used by overseas universities to with the same advantage objective. The Bristol ChemLabS Outreach programme is self-financing. This paper highlights the advantages of the programme to the pupils, their teachers, the postgraduates that help deliver the workshops and to higher education institutes. The paper also provides a blueprint for anyone wishing to do such work.
Highlights
Bristol ChemLabS is the project name for the UK’s Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) in practical chemistry based within the School of Chemistry, University of Bristol
As part of a Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) funded project, launched in 2005, an outreach element was included to expand the existing School of Chemistry outreach programme in a sustainable way [1, 2]. This was facilitated by funding to provide dedicated outreach equipment and to add a School Teacher Fellow (STF) [3, 4] to the academic staff to assist in the expansion of the outreach capacity of the department
The headteacher will test the last balloon which is always hydrogen as demonstration assemblies should finish with a bang and the pupils love seeing the shock on the face of their headteacher! The assembly is presented by the STF, a postdoctoral chemist employed part time to work in primary outreach or one of several trained postgraduate chemistry students
Summary
Bristol ChemLabS is the project name for the UK’s Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) in practical chemistry based within the School of Chemistry, University of Bristol. The assembly is presented by the STF, a postdoctoral chemist employed part time to work in primary outreach or one of several trained postgraduate chemistry students. The impact of the science day, or assembly, on the teachers, many of whom have no or little science training beyond 16 years of age themselves, can be viewed as ‘continuous professional development (CPD) by diffusion’ The latter was investigated by a Bristol ChemLabS postgraduate student as the subject of her dissertation [11]. The Bristol component into this outreach project was mainly delivered with French speaking Bristol postgraduate chemists, to ensure that the safety elements were understood before continuing the workshops in English.’ This allows students to hear and speak English in an authentic context while improving their image of science and researchers’ [17]. These activities and ethos seem to port to different countries and cultures without difficulty
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