The Teacher Scientist Network

Children often think that classroom science is not ‘real’ science. They also carry a poor image of ‘real’ science and scientists. Ask a group of children to draw or describe a scientist and — apart from portraying the scientist as a middle-aged male, with glasses and wild hair — they nearly always associate him with eccentricity and absent-mindedness, madness even. Worse, the context will often be experiments that have gone catastrophically wrong, explosions, destruction and sometimes weapons. No wonder many children are put off science and so few want to take up sciencerelated careers. But put a real scientist in among the children, a scientist who works with them, talks to them, helps them design their own investigations, and bingo, classroom science becomes real science and scientists are normal people after all. By adapting an idea dreamed up by Bruce Alberts and others in San Francisco, teachers and scientists in Norfolk, UK launched the Teacher Scientist Network (TSN) in 1994. The TSN links teachers from all phases with scientists from the Norwich Research Park in long-term working partnerships (see http://www.tsn.org.uk). Why are teacher–scientist partnerships needed? As well as the problem of the way children perceive science, in England and Wales we also have a problem with delivering our National Curriculum. The National Curriculum says that all children in state schools must learn science from the age of 5 until they are 16. Furthermore, this science must be taught in equal measures of biology, chemistry and physics, with practical investigations across all areas. Many high school teachers find this difficult because they now have to deliver a broad three-discipline science curriculum, having been trained in only one discipline. Primary school teachers, often with no formal science training, are also required to deliver a full science curriculum. But link a teacher with an appropriate scientist and they can combine their skills to deliver good quality science education that is relevant, sound and up to date.