Careers and Enterprise
The Institute’s objectives for this element of the demand strand were to:
- improve student attitudes towards physics in years 9, 10 and 11;
- improve awareness of careers from physics.
The Institute worked with The Career Development Organisation (CRAC), to help develop these activities.
The Ashfield Music Festival
A new enterprise activity for schools, the Ashfield Music Festival, was designed as a mechanism to broaden the perceptions of Year 9-10 students and to highlight the range of careers opened up by A-level physics. Working in teams, students design all aspects of the main stage for a music festival. Each team member picks a role based on the skills they will be using and information is given via videos and speaking to experts. At the end of the day, the teams present their plans to the other groups and a panel representing Ashfield Council decide which proposal wins the contract. Pupils use planning, analytical, negotiation and team working skills, as well as physics and maths in a context that is appealing and challenging.
Unusually, the school running the activity derives a dual benefit as the activity satisfies statutory requirements for enterprise learning. The activity was piloted in the three project regions and Stimulating Physics regional officers were trained to deliver it. Ashfield was subsequently run by education-business partnerships and other bodies, and distributed to numerous schools. Further customisation work is planned so that it can be used in an even wider range of school environments.
Key outcomes
Science Oxford made changes to the format of the day to encourage uptake from schools, and to increase the participation and involvement of girls. In particular, they added an important step: instead of giving the students a list of job titles to pick from, the pupils are now required to pick the skill set. Evidence has shown that this has successfully encouraged girls to take on all of the engineering roles, and not simply roles that would be more traditionally chosen by girls, such as Project Manager or Health and Safety roles.
Science Oxford successfully organised and ran the 3 Ashfield Music Festival workshops in 3 schools in Oxfordshire:
Larkmead School - this was attended by 45 students, 3 teachers, 6 helpers, 1 facilitator;
Carterton Community School - this was attended by 24 students, 2 teachers, 3 helpers, 1 facilitator;
St Birinus School and Wallingford School combined - this was attended by 36 students, 3 teachers, 3 helpers, 1 facilitator.
Sessions to disseminate the learning from this activity were held at the BIG Event (British Interactive Group conference). There were 9 attendees at this session, mainly from Science Centres or other Science Communication organisations.
The Ashfield Enterprise activity has been added to the new Science Oxford schools brochure, and will be running at schools that book it from September 2009 (at a charge to the school).
- Over the duration of the project, CRAC generated a delivery pack for the event and delivered a "train the trainer" event to Stimulating Physics officers.
Summary of feedback:
- Students were very positive about the activity:
- 85% said that they found it enjoyable;
- 63% said it was interesting and well organised;
- 55% thought it was informative;
- 22% were not sure
Girls were successfully encouraged to take on all the roles, and there were equal numbers of girls taking on the Project Manager, Lighting Engineer and Sound Engineer roles (15% each). The most popular role for girls was Health and Safety (26%), followed by Construction Manager (18%).
The teachers were also positive, with 100% rating the events as enjoyable, interesting, interactive, well organised and appropriate for their pupils. The only thing they thought was lacking was that there was no formal link to engineering companies, and some didn’t think it would necessarily help the pupils to make choices in later life. All the teachers felt that the activities raised pupils’ awareness of engineering and its impact on society and increased their ‘enterprise’ skills, such as organising tasks, decision making, leadership, compromising, problem-solving and trying new things.
Next steps
- The Institute is continuing to work with others to promote the activity. In collaboration with CRAC. It is also developing a pared-down version of the activity that can be run in half a day - ‘Ashfield lite’.
- Promoting the relevance, opportunities and usefulness of physics to society is an important element in the ‘Stimulating Physics Network’ Programme, and the Institute is working with CRAC to develop new projects funded by the DCSF.
- Careers is also a key area in the National HE STEM Programme, and the Institute has been given some resource to develop careers-based DVDs (or web-based clips) for integration into the school curriculum. The aim is to show physicists engaging in 'dynamic' industrial or academic work on topics relevant to the school curriculum, and once developed, will be packaged and transferred onto a national scale.
CPD activities for school staff
CRAC designed and piloted a new development day for both science teachers and careers professionals, in the three regions. This enabled them to enhance their knowledge and develop new ways to work together.