Past Event details

Speakers: Professor Louise Archer, Kings College, London
Dr Clare Gartland, University Campus Suffolk

Policy discourses of widening participation have emphasized the importance of raising aspirations often with a particular focus and concern on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects. This seminar explores complex processes of aspiration formation in STEM subjects, drawing on two research studies.

Professor Louise Archer

'I like science, but I don't want to be a scientist': Understanding 10-14 year olds science and career aspirations

Research shows that age 10-14 is a critical time during which children’s aspirations and ideas about science are formed. This presentation draws on data from the ESRC funded ASPIRES project - an ongoing, five year longitudinal study of children’s science and career aspirations. The ASPIRES project tracks children in England at ages 10, 13 and 14, via a national survey and repeat interviews with children and parents. This paper reports data from the first two phases - in Year 6 (survey with over 9,000 children; interviews with 170 parents and children) and Year 8 (survey with 5,600 pupils and follow up interviews with 85 young people). The paper discusses the complexity of children's aspirations and attitudes to science – demonstrating how liking science does not simply translate into future intentions to study science. The paper outlines what contemporary young people aspire to and how aspirations are formed, with particular reference to the role of family and interactions between family habitus and capital and perceptions of science as 'brainy'. It discusses some of the key factors affecting children’s science aspirations and the reasons why so many children learn from an early age that science is ‘interesting ... but not for me’. Implications for policy and practice are outlined.

Louise is Professor of Sociology of Education in the Department of Education and Professional Studies, King's College London. Her research focuses on educational identities and inequalities, with particular reference to intersections of social class, 'race'/ethnicity and gender. Her previous work has included studies on British Muslim pupils; working-class access to higher education, the minority ethnic middle-classes, urban youth and schooling and British-Chinese pupils' educational 'sucess'. She is currently director of the ASPIRES project (a 5 year longitudinal ESRC study on children's science and career aspirations, www.kcl.ac.uk/aspires) and lead co-ordinator of the Targeted Initiative on Science and Mathematics Education (TISME), a research programme funded by the ESRC in partnership with the Institute of Physics, Gatsby Charitable Foundation and the Association for Science Education (http://www.tisme-scienceandmaths.org/).

Dr Clare Gartland
STEM ambassadors and equality in HE
Under new Labour administrations, employing student ambassadors for Widening Participation (WP) outreach work became popular with higher education institutions (HEIs). Ambassadors were held to be effective in aspiration and attainment-raising work and cited as role models for diverse groups of pupils by policy-makers and practitioners. Whilst there have been massive changes in the HE sector and in the funding of ambassador and WP work more generally, student ambassadors remain embedded across UK universities and form an integral part of their outreach work with schools and colleges.

In this talk, I consider student ambassadors’ WP work at two universities, one old and one new and their WP outreach work in medicine and engineering towards the end of the last new Labour administration. I draw from an ethnographic study of ambassador work and drawing on approaches from across the social sciences trace the discourses surrounding these student ambassadors.  Findings reveal student ambassadors’ primary contribution was not to widen participation but to promote and market their own institutions and courses. However, when ambassadors work as subject experts alongside pupils, pupils can identify closely with them. In this capacity and through marketing particular courses, ambassadors contribute to disrupting and challenging pupils’ gendered, raced and classed trajectories within STEM subject areas. 

Dr Clare Gartland spent over ten years working as a teacher and teacher trainer in inner city areas. She subsequently spent many years evaluating outreach programmes for the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) and other organisations including the Science and Learning Centre and Aimhigher. Having completed her PhD with the Institute of Education she continues to work with the RAEng and has recently taken up a lectureship in Education at University Campus Suffolk.