Last night my colleagues and I attended a talk by Professor Ian Chubb, Chief Scientist of Australia. The title of his talk was ‘The Importance of Science Literacy’, but I would rename his talk ‘The State of Attitudes Towards Science in Australia’. He cited several statistics from a survey conducted by Australia National University in 2010 where only 4% of Year 11 and 12 students surveyed agreed that science was ‘almost always’ useful in everyday life. 60% thought it was ‘never’ or ‘sometimes’ useful. Professor Chubb cited many statistics about low enrollments in high schools and universities in science disciplines, particularly in physics and engineering, and generally deplored the lack of interest and participation of today’s youth in science. Professor Chubb cited an interesting statistic that I hadn’t heard, but which doesn’t surprise me, that there is an inverse correlation between student performance on math and science achievement tests and the amount of natural resources a country has (an OECD report that I haven’t uncovered yet). Thus countries with few natural resources, place an emphasis on skills and talent and prioritize math and science education in order to drive their economy. Although, Professor Chubb described several instances of disciplines that are very important to issues such as diminishing space and resources for producing food (agriculture). However, in my opinion there was too large of an emphasis on science disciplines in general and physics and engineering specifically in his talk and recommendations.
One of the reasons students don’t see science as ‘always useful’ is because they don’t make connections between the development of their iPhone to the content in their high school physics course. Truthfully, the connections are hard to see because the iPhone wasn’t developed by a physicist, but by a team of engineers, scientists, designers etc… who worked together. I think we need to stop talking about disciplines (particularly chemistry, biology and physics) and maybe even stop talking about science, and start advocating for learning to ‘innovate’, ‘design’, ‘communicate’ and ‘calculate’.
The upshot of it all is that despite the emphasis on the disciplines, the Chief Scientist is working hard to prioritize resources for teachers in order to improve science education and inspire more young people to take science. I think that putting resources towards teachers is definitely the way to go, but the goal should be to develop learners, not fill high school and university science courses. It is also good to bear in mind that Australia already ‘punches above its weight’ [I’ve heard that phrase a bunch of times since coming here, hadn’t heard it before!] in science, producing 3% of the world’s scientists, with only 0.3% of the world’s population.
Here’s a link to an article written about a recent (May 23rd, 2012), and likely similar speech by Professor Chubb. Also Professor Chubb’s report The Health of Australian Science can be found on his website, along with his recommendations to government.
Sounds like an interesting talk! The Natural resources vs. math and science scores inverse correlation seems kind of suspect to me though. I’d definitely like to see the report before taking it too seriously. The top of the PISA list always includes many resource-wealthy countries, including our own.
Hi Marie Claire,
I know..it is surprising. Still can’t find the reference. I’ve skimmed his report and the references but haven’t seen anything. But just to double check that I heard him right I looked through some of his published speeches and here’s a quote from a recent one:
“The importance of this shift towards a knowledge economy was highlighted in a recent survey that compared high school test results between countries. In countries where a high percentage of their GDP was reliant on natural resources like oil, coal and uranium, results on international tests like NAPLAN were quite low. Where the country had very minimal reliance on natural resources, the results were typically much higher. One of the possible conclusions this study demonstrates is that perhaps in countries where there is no other alternative than to rely on the skill of their workforce, the people are more likely to value knowledge, learning and information.”
I think you make a really good point here about the focus on specific disciplines & filling seats in science classes vs. focusing on learning to innovate/design/etc. The end goal is to have a population that can think critically, do research, innovate, etc., not just to “have scientists”. Demonstrating the links between every day things like iPhones and science, which seems obvious to a scientist, but clearly isn’t to the average youth, makes a lot of sense!