Gender and STEM – activities by researchers at the School of Education By Gabriella Rodolico, Srabani Maitra and Barbara Read
Gabriella Rodolico writes:
How can women in STEM inspire the minds of our young adults and challenge them with a hands-on STEM activity at the time of Covid-19 pandemic, when social distance and home schooling make hard any face-to-face activities? Yet we did it! How? Well let me tell you…
It was March 2020 when I said to Lorna Bennet (Mechanical Engineer at Orecatapult Offshore Renewable Energy) “I’d like to put in place an innovative STEM challenge for my PGDE primary student teachers”
What led up to the comment was my decision to look back at one of the meetings I had with the STEM group at the School of Education, University of Glasgow, during the autumn of 2019. At the time, I decided to look back at the Scottish Government website to start to define what STEM Education should really look like. “STEM Education is an integral part of our future economic and social development”, and until that day I thought I had done well as a STEM educator. I was sure that I had very clear ideas about what STEM was in my mind. I couldn’t have been more wrong!
I have always been very passionate about Science and Maths. I also have a very high technology self-efficacy as I am not scared to try innovative technology and press every single button to see what happens …but was this enough? I started to think. Even more, when it comes to Engineering, I found myself scratching my head and thinking “What is Engineering”?
It was a shock for me, but I realised that I couldn’t call myself a STEM educator or endeavour to inspire young minds as a woman in STEM unless I am clear myself about what STEM should mean in the field of Education.
So, I decided this was an urgent matter! The best way to start was to talk to the experts. While it was easy to reach out for colleagues in Science, Maths and Technology my problem were the Engineers. Nevertheless, I was determined, and I immediately applied for the College Strategic Research Fund “to promote professional conversation between STEM specialists”. I thought if I could put them all in one room to discuss the matter it might lead to a good outcome.
“A floating turbine” suggested Lorna Bennet during our zoom meeting in March 2020. Covid-19 pandemic made it impossible to organise any face-to-face meeting, jeopardising my project so I decided to engage in several zoom meetings with Lorna, Michael Kilpatrick structural Engineer at Godson and Prof. Iain Alasdair MacLeod Structural Engineer at the Institution of Engineers in Scotland (IES).
“Engineering is not a subject or a noun” said Iain “I use it as a verb with the meaning ‘to solve complex problems skilfully’” (from the To Engineer - Strategies for solving complex problems). This opened my mind and with Lorna we started to think about a STEM challenge which would engage students and teachers to solve a complex problem by applying and acquiring new skills for learning and for life. Who would be better than PGDE primary student teachers to help us build this challenge?
“Build a floating turbine” became the focus of the PGDE primary “science is fun” online club during the first lock down from April to June 2020, where student teachers and their families could come together to build from their homes, their unique prototype. Feedback highlighted that the project had not only supported PGDE student teachers to share ideas with colleagues in a collaborative manner, but also inspired their children “to investigate more science and ask questions about why things happen”.
This encouraged me to go even further. I realised that we could think bigger and we could set up a STEM challenge aimed to reach out for schools, teachers, parents and pupils all supported by academic and non-academic professionals to achieve a common goal: Learning for Sustainability.
In the summer 2020, I started to work on a new STEM project prototype “Build your own sustainable house” a house made of recyclable materials and powered by a wind turbine. The aim was to raise awareness of Sustainability and STEM through a hands-on remotely delivered STEM challenge. My team and I put together the practical and theory in one blended Problem Based Learning activity which was delivered in schools and continued at home through twilight sessions with University, creating a triangulated approach with pupils at the centre.
Supported by a further funding we attended the Festival of Social Sciences, as one of the contributions from the University of Glasgow. We reached out for 3 mainstream schools and 1 Additional Support Needs school, where we delivered 5 sessions remotely as well as face-to-face.
Session 1: Understanding and Designing for sustainability
Design your own sustainable house: Michael and I, supported by the In-Service teachers Mrs Louise White, Mrs Lorna MacKenzie, Mrs Maureen Scott and by the probationer teachers from PGDE primary class 2019-2020 Mrs Deborah Simpson, Mr Geoffrey Barret working in the host schools, challenged pupils to build their own sustainable house with recyclable material by applying the Engineering designing process to environmental factors.
Session 2: Understanding and Communicating for sustainability
Pupils presented their model in class and received a pack containing all the necessary resources to build their own wind turbine.
Session 3: Understanding and Modelling for sustainability
Lorna and I delivered several at home twilight sessions, one for each school to build their own wind turbine and connect it to their model of sustainable house to power an LED bulb inside the house.
Session 4: PBL and Thinking solutions for sustainability
Iain, asked pupils (in a recorded lesson) to look at their project from the problem solving prospective, challenging their minds on complex issues related to wind energy.
Session 5: Understanding Mathematical models to support sustainability
Dr Daniela Castro Camillo, Lecturer in Statistics in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Glasgow, explained how statistics can be applied to make predictions around wind power and efficiency of wind turbines.
The outcomes showed how hard work always pays back and I will let the pupils and parents tell you about this through their feedback. This project gave me the chance to come across several professionals who have showed me all their enthusiasm and knowledge, but most of all I have been impressed by the resiliency and creativity of our young adults. The project allowed me to improve my knowledge and practice and it achieved outcomes that I was not expecting. There were times during the organisation of the twilights when I had 150 packs to put together in my living room, but I thought “this is really interesting…!”, but it’s worth every single minute of my time.
The University of Glasgow has the motto “World Changers” and I believe that if my team and I have made a difference even in one of the children we have really changed the world.
Feedback on the project: you don’t need to take my word for the success of the project. Here’s some of the feedback we received.
Parent 1: “I know that STEM careers are critical but sometimes less open to girls than boys. Glad to be able to share these tasks with my daughter”.
Parent 2: “What really stood out for me was her overall engagement in the project and what surprised me was just how many different topics were really covered. What a fantastic summer project this would make and how I wish we had this during lock down! While I couldn’t participate in the live sessions due to work commitments, I think there was a lot of value and learning gained by both my daughter and myself and gave us some great quality time together while discussing some real world issues in a child friendly way”.
Pupils were inspired by my team as Women in STEM
“Pupils also raised their awareness that women can be very successful in STEM and the social sciences as both Dr Rodolico and Lorna Bennett from ORE Catapult Company on the zoom presentation are both women so this was both inspiring and gave them access to positive role models”.
In-service teacher
Without doubt, the best evaluation came from the pupil who left school that night with a ‘carry-out’ pack of equipment curious to develop and extend his learning.’
Barbara Read and Srabani Maitra write:
Dr Rodolico's work not only shows how we can develop fantastic hands-on learning opportunities in our current challenging times, but also demonstrates ways in which women STEM practitioners, and other groups under-represented in the STEM workforce, can work to change perceptions as to ‘appropriate’ or expected career pathways for ‘people like me’. We also have further plans to collaborate with STEM educators at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Pune in India, with the goal of establishing a virtual centre of teaching excellence where innovative and exciting STEM challenges can be co-developed, in a decolonising and gender-sensitive educational context. This springs from Dr Rodolico's work above, as well as work Dr Maitra and Dr Read have been conducting as part of a three-year ESRC-funded project entitled Gendered Journeys: the Trajectories of STEM students through higher education and into the Workplace in India and Rwanda and Dr Maitra’s SFC-GCRF funded project entitled TVET Policies for Ensuring Effective Skills Development of Marginalised Youths in India. This project explores the challenges young people, especially women experience in vocational education in accessing smart city related technical courses in India. Together, these projects are a small step towards addressing inequalities and marginalisation of women and other minority groups within STEM fields.