The Interplay Between Science Engagement and Science Education

Abstract

Through my experience as a postgraduate demonstrator, I have seen that teaching and public engagement are very similar practices; both require the sharing of knowledge and experience and the realisation of benefit. These two practices are often treated as distinct, with little wisdom shared between different practitioners, despite the recent move in education towards engagement-based values. To address this, I focused on implementing pedagogical tools in a series of public engagement sessions that took place online due to COVID-19. These comprised of school talks to students considering studying science at university, with the aim of introducing them to lecture-style classes and active research. My perspectives as a postgraduate during the delivery of these sessions allowed me to identify important or obscure parts of these topics that would be relevant to my audience, and how best to introduce them. Additionally, as a postgraduate researcher, I was able to approach my audiences as a peer, rather than a ‘teacher’, and encourage more successful engagement. I used several tools such as the BOPPPS (bridge-in, objectives, pre-test, participatory learning activity, post-test, and summary) model for lesson design and took advantage of the online setting through quizzes. These were effective, resulting in an engaged audience and 94% of the students believing biophysics is an interesting area of research following the session when prior to the session 68% had not heard of it, as measured through quiz responses.