Developing, trialling and evaluating a variety of offsite Science Challenges designed to encourage discussion and debate of contemporary and contentious scientific issues.
Liaising with the senior managers of the different schools and scientists based at local universities the project will design and plan three inter-school challenges. Teacher training workshops will be incorporated into the programme to support the teachers involved to develop the pedagogical skills needed to run effective off-site challenges for gifted and talented pupils. The events will be hosted either at the Science Learning Centre SE or at INTECH in Winchester. Each of these challenges will focus upon researching and debating a different current and/or contentious issue within Science. Challenge 1 will focus upon the future of space exploration targeted towards higher achieving KS2 pupils and supporting the professional development of the secondary teachers involved in the other Challenges by involving them in collaborative planning and evaluations of this Challenge. Challenges 2&3 will be focused on the the potentail offered by stem cell technology but will be run separately in different ways for KS3 boys and then KS3 girls.
Each Challenge will involve approximately forty pupils. Typically, this will comprise of teams of eight pupils with two teachers from five different schools who will work with scientists from academic or business backgrounds to explore and debate contemporary and/or contentious scientific issue. It is intended that the KS2 event will be on a larger scale and will be a family event involving pupils and their parent(s) in a Saturday Science Challenge.
