It's a girl thing - not.

Today is international Women's day.

Cue a flurry of articles in newspapers and on twitter about girls and STEM.

Science isn't just for boys - The Independent

Five myths keeping women out of science careers - The Guardian

Want to be a scientist? It's not just for boys - Public health England

And the government has helpfully launched a campaign with the hashtag #notjustforboys

Perhaps it's just me, but this makes me unutterably depressed.  Not just about the lack of gender equality in STEM, but by the deficit model of female participation that all these things promote.

The question seems to be 'Girls aren't doing STEM, what's wrong with girls'.

I think a better question would be 'Girls aren't doing STEM, what's wrong with STEM?'.

And actually, the premise on which both questions are based, is somewhat flawed.

If we look at the number of male and female studying A-levels in 2014 we see that girls do study science and STEM in large numbers - as long as its biology, chemistry, maths or psychology.


And what about undergraduate degrees? There are more women studying medicine and dentisty than men.  Even at university, women are studying STEM.  Unless, of course, its the physics and 'TEM' part of STEM.

DfE, SR 45/2014 Education and Training Statistics for the United Kingdom, 2014, issued 06 November 2014

So the question should not be 'why aren't girls doing STEM?'.  They are.  We should be looking at where some parts of STEM are failing to attract girls.

And a facile hashtag which suggests that there's something wrong with girls, isn't going to help.

Nurture 14/15

In the nick of time, I've reread last years nurture 13/14 post.  Quite a lot has changed in the past year although I still have the same number of close relatives that I did this time last year.  That might not sound much of an achievement, but sadly, it is.

So, on a cheerier note, what are my five four things from the past year that are achievements/things I'm pleased about.

Looking back.

Train travel.

This has reduced considerably since July when I started a new job based much closer to home.  My commute is now 1/2 hour each way, rather than 2 1/2 hour each way.  I don't miss the travelling, but I am coming to realise that I miss my morning thinking time.  I used to spend an hour thinking and reading on the train to York on work days.  This meant that I could guarantee time for reading policy documents, blogs, research papers etc.  My shorter commute means that I don't have that luxury. Although I have tried to block in time to my work day to do reading, so far it has been squeezed out each week.

Working (more than) full time

Since July I have been working full-time.  It was, very definitely, a shock to the system, and I do miss the flexibility that part-time work gave me.

I particularly miss the time I spent on my freelance work.  The long-term nature of these means that some of my previous projects are still ongoing, and I'm spending all my 'free-time' working (including much of this Christmas holiday).

I am now turning freelance work down (which I do struggle with), and some of the other work is coming to an end, so things should get easier.

On the plus side, I will get my name on two books next year!

Meetings

I have stepped into a management role with my new job, and it has been a shock.  Before I started, I must confess that I was looking forward to being 'the boss'.  I rapidly learned that actually my delusions of power were just that.  And that there is a lot more managing upwards needed than I realised. I'm getting there, but there were points in the last 6 months when I wondered if I'd done the right thing.

I also attend a lot of meetings.  Setting up Think Physics means that we've had to start building relationships internally at the university as well as externally with schools and other organisations. And that means meetings.  On average, 3 or 4 a day over the last 6 months.  Thankfully, for someone who is an introvert at heart, I can do functional extrovert reasonably well.

Think Physics

Back in April, Northumbria University advertised a series of posts for a new project called 'Think Physics'. It sounded interesting (albeit a little vague) and so I applied for the role of Director (and secondary specialist).  The project brings together lots of my previous experience - working with teachers, working in schools and physics.  It's a fabulous (if huge) project and has the potential to do really good things with schools in the NE .  Possibly the best bit though, is the team I work with. My boss has assembled a fantastic group of lovely people. We are all very different with a huge range of slightly overlapping areas of expertise - but they're all fab.  To be honest, I'm missing seeing them over the holiday it's that much fun working with them.

The project has had a slow start (e.g. 3 months to get a logo), but we're now getting things running and the diary is filling up.  One of the challenges will be to work out how we can make an  impact in the schools.  We want to do more than just 'wow, physics' activities (though we will do those too).  We are building on the IOP work about girls in physics, as well as the ASPIRES project findings about attitudes to 'doing science' in young people.  We know that it's really important to embed careers ideas into the work we are doing, and show that science (especially physics) is a springboard to interesting things.  And we've got just under 3 years to do it!

 

And a peek into the year ahead...

As with my nurture post last year, looking too closely at the year ahead is scary. My diary is, once again, already filling up.  However, there are a few things I'd like to achieve.

Work-life balance

I need one. Not taking on too much additional freelance work will help. However, controlling the amount of time I spend on electronic devices will also be a plus.  It's too easy to sit down 'just for five minutes' to check twitter/Facebook only to find that 2 hours have gone and it's bedtime.  This means that I get far less reading/crafting done than I would like.  Some discipline will be required in the new year.

I also want to increase the amount of exercise that I do.  Working every evening (when I'm not on a device) means that I'm not do as much as I used to, and my weight and fitness are showing the damage.  

Writing

I want to continue to blog and hopefully do some more formal writing too.  Seeing my name in print is just fabulous, and I'd like to do more of that.

Work-work balance

I need to figure out how to spend time well at work so that there is a good balance between the management aspects of my role and the secondary specialist bit.  At the moment it is heavily biased to the former and I'd like it to be a bit more evenly spread.

Research

I've got plans (as part of work) to carry out research into practical work in science (see previous blog post). Whilst the focus has, of necessity, changed slightly I still want to get this done and into print. 

And that's it.  Now to get on and do it.

Looking out for the wobbly middle!

No, this isn't a reflection on my post-christmas likely state.

Earlier this year I took a new job at Northumbria University working on a project to encourage young people to see science (particularly physics) as a springboard to interesting things.  There has been a lot of work recently (see the ASPIRES project) about why students don't study science.  A lot of the findings appear to support the idea that students like science in primary and early secondary school, but don't see themselves 'doing science'.  They have an (incorrect) idea of what a scientist is, and know that they don't want to do it.

Of course, I know that scientists don't look like this:

 

Image search results for 'scientist'

But children and young people don't.  This is what scientist is according to popular culture, and on the whole this is what they DON'T want to be.

Part of the work of my project is to try to develop more of an understanding of what doing science (and STEM) might look like as a career path.  We are developing case studies and careers materials showcasing people who have studied Physics to A-level and finding out where they are now, and how they got there. [Ad] These will be available on our website thinkphysics.org [End Ad].

However, one of the other things we're trying to do is to target some of our interventions at what I'm calling the 'wobbly middle'.  The middle-set kids who are doing okay in science, probably going to get an A or a B.  They could do sciences at A-level, but they often don't.  We want them to have a successful experience of doing science so that it becomes something that they can see themselves doing.  It's not that we don't want to work with the kids the school identifies as 'Gifted and Talented'* but in many ways, we feel we can have more of an effect with those wobbly middles.  We're helping our partner schools to think about how they can support these students, rather than focusing exclusively on the top or bottom of the cohort*.

It's not that I want every student to study science and go into a STEM career - but I do want them to have the opportunity to do so.

* I'm hopeful that the progress-8 measure will help in some ways.  It will ensure that there is a reason for the school to think about how to work with every child to improve their results, not just around the borders.

Finding research papers

It can be reasonably straightforward to find research papers online.  In this post I’ve outlined where you might find such papers, and how you can get copies of them.

1. Open Access papers and other sources

There is an open access movement slowly spreading through the journal world.  Whilst not all journals are open access, some do provide access to papers without charge to the reader. The downside is that their ‘impact rating’ tends to be lower and so academics may avoid publishing in them.

This website is a directory of open access education journals.  There are probably far more journals there than you will ever want to look at, but you might spot a few that look interesting.

There are other sources of educational research, and this helpful blog post from SUPER contains a number of links to research papers and information.  http://schooluniversitypartnership.wordpress.com/access-to-research/

2. Searching.

Avoid the temptation to use a standard search engine to look for research.  Instead make Google Scholar your friend.

This allows you to search for articles in scientific journals, and cuts out the blogs, news articles and general clutter that a standard search engine would return.

As with all search engines, the more specific you are the more helpful the results are likely to be.  There is also an advanced search query which allows you to be more specific about what you want to include or exclude from your search.

So for example, if I want to find out about the research into gender equality in STEM subjects, then I would get the following results:

On the right of the picture you can see that some of the articles are available as a pdf – and if you click on that link it will take you directly to the paper.

Narrowing your search:

You can use the search fields on the left hand side of the page to narrow your search to a specific time range, or since a particular year and only look at more recent papers.  

You can also remove citations, which removes references to papers of interest in books or other papers.

3. Getting the paper
What if you've found a paper that looks interesting, but which isn't shown as a pdf in your search results?

The first thing to do is to read the abstract on the journal homepage.  This should be a summary of what the researchers did, and what they've found.  There will often be enough detail for you to decide if you actually want to read the paper.  Some journals will also allow you to 'look inside' which provides a longer extract of the article.

 

If the abstract looks interesting, then you will want to get hold of the paper.  However, I suspect that you, like me, might balk at paying £29.95 to read it. Thankfully, you don't need to pay.

Every article will have a link to the authors and their email address. It is a simple matter to choose one of the names - probably the first one* - and contact them by email to politely ask for a copy of their paper.

I have found that, when emailed, researchers are more than happy to send you a pdf copy of their article, and sometimes will send other possibly relevant papers. 

So there you have it.  An easy way of getting hold of research papers, even if you don't have university access.


*The order in which the names are written on a research paper is a complex matter of hierarchy depending on who did what.  Exactly how the order is determined depends on the research field, but in general, the person named first did most of the work, and the person named last is the professor or principal investigator.

Joined up thinking

The government have now published the draft of the performance indicators for primary schools at KS1 and KS2 and are consulting on them.

Looking at them, I'm not entirely sure why it took quite so long to produce them - unless it's because the people responsible spend the whole time going 'Oh my, this is going to be hard to do well'. And then they just published a list of what children should be able to do at the end of each KS, which looks almost, but not quite, exactly like the statements in the National curriculum itself.  Michael Tidd (@MichaelT1979) has already blogged about the fact that the performance indicators appear to be levels in all but name, so I won't grumble about them here. 

However, I've been looking at the science descriptors, and there are a couple of things that struck me.

Key Stage 1.
The working scientifically section says:

"While studying the content of biology, chemistry and physics a pupil at the national standard is able to work scientifically by using first-hand practical experiences and a wide range of sources of information to develop an understanding of a range of scientific ideas."

The topics in KS 1 are as follows:
Year 1: Plants; Animals, including humans; Everyday materials; Seasonal changes.
Year 2: Living things and their habitats; Plants; Animals, including humans; Use of everyday materials.

As you can see, physics is distinctly lacking in the list of topics in the NC itself.  Nor does the word appear in the performance indicators.  Instead we have:

Chemistry - Changes in materials

- describe how the shapes of some solid materials can be changed by applying a force.

Hmmm, not really sure that this is actually chemistry.
In a way, I'm pleased, because I have been telling primary teachers that they can sneak forces (pushes, pulls, twists etc) into KS1 using the 'Use of everyday materials' section. (I particularly like the Big Bad Wolf activity in this Teachers TV video).

But Forces as part of Chemistry? Really?

Key Stage 2.
Again, my issue is with the working scientifically section.
Pupils are able to:
recall and use appropriate terminology when working scientifically (at least: accurate, conclusion, evidence, fair test, prediction, reliable, supports (evidence), variable, unit)

Here I take issue with 'reliable'.

A few years back the ASE, in consultation with the metrology institutes in the UK, published a book called 'The Language of Measurement'.  This came about because different exam boards were using terminology differently (and sometimes inconsistently between A-level and GCSE specifications in the same board).  The Language of Measurement therefore puts forward a standard list of terminology that can be used when discussing 'working scientifically'.  All the exam boards have signed up to this, and all the new GCSE and A-level specifications take the recommendations into account.  You can find a sample of the booklet here, or purchase the full booklet here.

So, why the problem with 'reliable'.  Well, this is what the authors say:

"The word ‘reliability’ has posed particular difficulties because it has an everyday usage and had been used in school science to describe raw data, data patterns and conclusions, as well as information sources. On the strong advice of the UK metrology institutes, we avoid using the everyday word ‘reliability’, because of its ambiguity. For data, the terms ‘repeatable’ and ‘reproducible’ are clear and therefore better. For conclusions from an experiment, evaluative statements can mention ‘confidence’ in the quality of the evidence.

pg 6. Language of Measurement

So, pupils in primary school will be taught about 'reliability'.  And then they'll go to secondary school where they will be taught that use of the concept of reliability will lose them marks in tests and exams and that they should use repeatable (same person, same equipment, same results) and reproducible (different person, different equipment, same finding/outcome).

There's nothing like joined up thinking in government.  And this is indeed, nothing like joined up thinking.

Should you be intending to reply to the consultation, please feel free to point out these two examples of the disconnect between the different aspects of the curriculum reform.

And if you're a primary school teacher, please do feel free to teach your children the idea of repeatable and reproducible.  It kind of makes sense.

What's the point of surds?

I spent some time on Wednesday and Thursday at the North East Skills event with Think Physics.  We were there with 'spinning things' - gyroscopes, tops, plates, yo-yo's and a giant gyro-ride.  The event is aimed at young people between 14-25, though most are between 14-19. During the day schools brought groups of young people, and on Wednesday evening it was open to the general public (i.e. parents who brought their kids along).

Our stand at a quiet time.

Our aim was to show the visitors to the event the physics behind a simple toy, and then link that with the uses of that in their lives.  It seemed to work. There were a number of lovely 'woah' moments when we showed gyroscopes balancing on pen tips, or hanging horizontally from a piece of string.  We linked the toys to the GCSE curriculum (by analogy with Newton's first law*), and to life (artificial horizon on planes, direction systems in satellites etc).  

As well as that, we spent time talking with kids and parents about choices at A-level and beyond.  Because we weren't at the event trying to recruit for any particular organisation, we were able to give fairly independent advice.

At one point on Wednesday evening, when it was a little quieter, two girls (Yr 11) came to our stand, attracted by the plate spinning.  They spent some time working at getting the plates spinning, all the time chatting away like a comedy double act.  My colleague and I talked about school, lessons and what they wanted to do with their lives.  At one point during the discussion, they started ranting about their maths lessons.  They both said they enjoyed their maths, particularly algebra, but 'What's the point of surds?' they asked.  'Do you know what they are?', 'Have you ever needed to use them?'.  'We asked out teacher (who's lovely), but she couldn't tell us what they were for.  What is the point?  Why are we learning about them? When will we ever use them?'

I answered them: 'You might never use them' (Hah, knew it! they both said). 'But,' I continued, 'what you will use, is the skills that you've developed while learning about surds. The fact that you can identify important information to answer questions, that you can handle numbers, that you can work through problems to get to a solution. Those skills you'll use.

'When you go to apply for a job - those are the skills your boss will care about. Not that you can do surds, but that you've got the skills to do so.

'But the thing is. You can only develop those skills by learning stuff. By doing problems with surds.  That's the use of surds. Not that they are useful in themselves, but the skills you get from learning about them - that's why you learn about surds.'

The girls were convinced! 'Why didn't our teacher tell us that? That would have made sense.'

And the moral of the story?

I'm not sure, to be honest.  But perhaps we don't need to always justify our subjects in terms of usefulness in 'real life'.  Maybe relevance isn't always about where a child will make use of a particular topic. Perhaps we sometimes need to spell out the (thinking) skills that are being developed through the subject.

Annie, winding the string onto a gyroscope again.

Comparing A-level Physics 2015 Update

UPDATE Feb 2015:

Ned Prideaux has helpfully updated the spreadsheet using the accredited specs.
He has also included boundary data (from the 2014 series) from Ronan McDonald which may be of interest as well.

The document is online as a google doc and is best downloaded into Excel for viewing.


The exam boards have published their draft specifications for the A-level sciences - albeit with huge caveats about them not yet being accredited by Ofqual.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

@Bio_Joe has helpfully put together a comparison for the A-level biology specs, so I've used his basic structure and done the same for the Physics.

AQA, Edexcel and WJEC Eduqas have produced one specification each - although Edexcel still have the spec repeated so that you can teach by concept or context (though the exam is the same however you teach it).  AQA haven't included a context driven approach in their spec, but will be providing a scheme of work to show how you could do this using the published specification.  OCR has produced two specs, including Advancing Physics, whch are examined using different exams.

Co-teaching.
Most of the boards have arranged topics so that the AS and the first few A-level topics are the same.  Interestingly, WJEC Eduqas hasn't, and the topics are in slightly different orders for each year.  I don't think that will be a bit issue, but it will need a bit of thinking about when planning the teaching.

Multiple choice.
Both AQA and Pearson Edexcel have included some multiple choice questions in the assessment model.

Practical work.
All the boards have, as required, specified practical work that must be carried out for the practical endorsement. There is some overlap in the practicals (for example g by freefall and Young (or Young's) modulus appear in all the specs.  AQA and OCR have stopped at the minimum of 12 practical.  This includes 'Research skills' for OCR and allows students to explore a physics topic they are interested in via books and 'tinternet.Edexcel have included 16 practicals as their minimum. 

WJEC Eduqas have specified far more practicals than the other boards (including for example investigation of radioactive decay via a dice analogy or determination of h using LEDs) which would provide a really nice skeleton of a practical teaching scheme.  To be honest, even if you don't choose this spec, it's worth having a look at the practical work they suggest to help you plan as there are some good straightforward ideas in there.

It's quite a big document so I've resorted to a google spreadsheet.  Please feel free to use, with acknowledgement.