Latest / Through the IDEA Lens / How Curiosity Grows Inclusive STEM
Transcript
- speaker-0: And I think where we wander in today with with Mahadio in the discussion of is it a learning platform that we need to recognize that everybody is capable at varying levels to be leaning into different aspects of science and technology? speaker-1: Welcome to Through the Idea Labs, the podcast that brings science and inclusion into focus. Join hosts Dr. Mahadeye Sukai and Peter Field as they explore inclusion, accessibility, and belonging in STEM and beyond. Welcome back to the Through the Idea Lens Podcast. Today we start a two-part conversation with Bonnie Schmidt of Let's Talk Science. Let's Talk Science is a national organization committed to improving STEM education for Canadian children from their early years through to secondary school. In this first episode, Mahati and I speak with Bonnie about the value of curiosity in science and ways to keep children engaged in STEM. After all, Stem now touches virtually every aspect of our lives. Let's listen in as Maharia starts off the conversation. speaker-2: So I wanted us to have a conversation today about something that I I think we don't often talk a lot about, which is the experiences of kids with disabilities and how we think about curiosity and curiosity based learning in education, how we think about STEM based learning in education and and how those conversations kind of intersect the conversation of the lived experience of of children generally and and kids with disabilities in particular. So I really wanted us to to to think about curiosity and think about where curiosity comes from and how curiosity gets cultivated in our kids. I I thought there's no person better to have this conversation with than you, Bonnie, because Let's Talk Science as an organization is in the business of cultivating curiosity through science outreach and science engagement in the classroom, through the network of volunteers that you have nationally and and so I thought this would be a great conversation for us to have together and and hopefully the first of many. speaker-0: Love that and I I love the positioning around curiosity and and kids. speaker-2: Bonnie, why don't you tell us a little bit about both yourself and Let's Talk Science? speaker-0: Sure. I could take probably the whole hour talking about Let's Talk Science. but myself, I have a PhD in physiology that I earned probably more decades ago than I would care to remember. I started Let's Talk Science while I was a graduate student at Western back in 1991. So it was about the third year of my PhD at the time. At a time when the economic recession of the day was cutting funding to science research. It was a motivator for me to reach out into the community and just to see whether there was interest from high school teachers in particular to get engaged with the university. If you think back that many years ago, like gosh, it's thirty-five years now. It feels like yesterday, right? Thirty-five years ago. There was really no outreach that was happening anywhere in the country of scale. And most universities did not have an outreach office. So started this thing on a lark. It grew very, very fast. I think it was kind of the right place at the right time. And what do you say? I'm still doing it. And at the very beginning of the the whole journey, it was about how do we help young people. Connect with the world of science. And the biggest shift for me over the years was the reversal of that is how do we use science to connect kids to the world? So when we first started, it was about helping out people actually understand the value of research. As a PhD researcher myself, it seemed that you know the country didn't really understand the value of science and research. And for me, having gone through the PhD, what I really learned at that point in time was the power of questioning, the importance of getting people to think about what science really means. And it wasn't really until I was doing my graduate work that I had that open field of asking questions. And that's the very basis of curiosity. So over the years, we created many, many, many programs to the current day where we have A robust suite of programs for early childhood to grade twelve for students and for teachers. We anchor about 70% of our work in the school system. So publicly funded schools, charter schools, private schools, First Nations schools. There's about 15,500 schools across the country. And last year alone we did support about 40% of them. So accessing our programming all the way through. And it really is all about how do we get Everybody engaged in understanding the world around them. And for me, STEM is a beautiful platform to be able to do that. speaker-1: Bonnie, why do you think STEM is so important in today's world? I know on your website you talk about the importance of that curiosity and that conversation happening, because more than ever we live in a world where STEM is important. speaker-0: Yeah, just if you look around your your life, whether or not you're a trained scientist or an engineer, you're engaging in STEM all the time and it's actually becoming more and more dominant. If you think about the technology that you use as a citizen every day, the increase in misinformation and disinformation how are we actually going to build a safe and sovereign country that is prosperous? How have jobs changed because of the face of technology? Skilled trades jobs do not look like they did 10 or 20 years ago, right? Like it's just it's everywhere. All aspects of our our lives are being changed, informed, influenced by STEM. And I believe really strongly that not only is it a great learning platform to get people really thinking about the world around them and learning things, but it will open up more and more doors for young people the longer they stay in it, whether or not they find themselves at the bench like Mahadio and I both were, or, you know, just doing something completely different. Journalism, marketing, communications, right? Everything benefits from STEM skills. speaker-1: Bonnie, do you think that there's some sort of prevailing opinion out there or view that only certain kids benefit from STEM? Are there any sort of preconceived notions happening there even in the minds of educators, such as, well, this child seems to be really good at s doing science and this child not so much, so we'll we'll start sort of stream streaming them out at that point. Is that sort of been happening out there? speaker-0: Yeah, I I think it's still happening, but I I think it might be changing. Now you know, a lot of what I'll talk about is really based on some personal experience or organizational experience versus, you know, drawing out some research studies and whatnot. But for the longest time we've talked about gendered issues around STEM. Like our girls capable of doing science and we've kind of blown through a lot of those kinds of stereotypes, but there's still the discussion about who belongs in STEM. Or you can reverse it and say, what is the prevailing stereotype about who is successful in STEM? And often is it a man? Is it a Western image man? Is it a European centric man? Right. So we've historically had very antiquated ideas that are stereotypical. And I think where we wander in today with with Mahadio in the discussion of is it a learning platform that we need to recognize that everybody is capable at varying levels to be leaning into different aspects of science and technology. Personally, I'm a biologist. Right. If you put me into a quantum class and I needed to be working through the physics and the math, then I would be struggling a little bit. I would try, I would try, but I would be struggling a little bit. But you put me in a biology classroom or, you know, learning about genomics, there's there's it's natural tendencies and there's interest areas and there's curiosity. So, you know, I think unfortunately I think what you're saying is true. but I'm an advocate, a huge believer that everybody has got the capacity and the right to be exploring these different fields to help build the skills and the mindsets and the attributes that will open up as many doors as possible. speaker-2: So Bunny, let's actually unpack this a little bit, right? Because one of the interesting things I find when we talk about who can do STEM is that we need to drill down on what's it mean to actually do STEM. Right? you know, does it mean looking down the eyepiece of a microscope? Does it mean handling a pipette? Does it mean being able to, you know, code in C double plus or R or Python? And and the answer is it could be all of those things from a technical perspective. But there's something more fundamental than any of those things, which is to be able to think our way through asking a question and figuring out how to answer it. speaker-0: Exactly right. Like science is a process, it's a toolkit, it's a human made activity to try to understand how the world operates. So it is so vast and so big, and we often reduce it to what might be the stereotypical like wet lab experiments that you were talking about, pipetting and being in a laboratory. There's so many people out there too. That don't necessarily make the connection between some of the space sciences and astronomy or qualitative research compared to the quantitative. So we do do try hard at Let's Talk Science to help people understand the vastness of it and the fact that at the fundamental level, like you nailed it, it's all about how do you develop the tools and the the habits of mind to ask really good questions. For which you can then go and try to find answers or find out that there's not a known answer at that point in time and opens up even more questions. speaker-2: It might not even be just about the saturation of our world with technology, because that that's true here, but it may not be true in quite the same way in the Northwest Territories or None of U. And it's certainly not true in the same way in in countries in the global south. And so, you know, I I think about why does ice float? Right? Like right there is a is is a nice fundamental question, really important because if you understand Why ice floats, you can actually also understand why you shouldn't walk on the surface of Lake Ontario when it's January and the lake's just started to freeze. You actually wait maybe a month until February. And that right there completely dates this podcast because, you know, if you're listening to this in thirty years and global warming has meant there's no ice on Lake Ontario, then, you know, you you know this is this this is outdated. I think it goes beyond sort of technology, and I know that's what the T stands for in STEM. But I think it's also very much about those elements of the natural world that we interact with where it's important to understand why they are the way they are, because if we don't, then we run the risk of interacting with them in ways that might actually be self harming. speaker-0: Self-harming for sure, but also just on the positive side, having a better idea of some of the wonders of the world and improved quality of life because you can do that. But you raised a really interesting example. So I'm I'm I'm intrigued by the fact that you you brought up examples from the far north and some of the things that we're doing now with indigenous communities, because there's also various ways of knowing things. And another stereotype around science is that there's a Western approach to doing science that is deeply quantitative. Yeah. Versus how do you have different ways of knowing that can complement each other? And I think this is where the whole idea of curiosity really starts to get exciting because if you're open to listening and understanding how various cultures come to know the world around them and come to develop the kind of questioning skills that serve society so, so, so well. Then it gets so rich, right? Like you can be thinking about how are elders talking about why is the ice floating, or what times of year do you not go out on the ice because it's very dangerous. And then you meld it with some of the the physics and the math or the buoyancy and and crystallization data and all that kind of stuff. And you bring it together and like, my God, it's just a just amazing way to get people to really lean in and understand the world. So it is in my mind, the you know, the definition of STEM needs to be really, really broad. And you've painted a really, really good picture about why everybody deserves to have access to the the tools and the opportunities to learn. speaker-2: And I will fundamentally argue that the best scientist is a two year old. speaker-1: Because of the questions they asked Mad yeah. speaker-2: In part, but also because they are natural experimenters. Right? You know, they wanna know how high they can jump. They wanna know from how high can they jump without breaking anything. Including themselves. And so including themselves. And so everything is an experiment and everything is a let me try something, let me change it, let me try something else, let me change it, let me try something else. And I mean, I have a three and a half year old, right? So so I've I've watched her be a little scientist for pretty much the last three years. And it's quite fascinating because, you know, we we go to school and we're sitting at desks and and we're learning things in structured and formalized ways. And if you raise your hand and you ask why, you're shot down by an educator who either doesn't have the time to answer you or doesn't know the answer, but can't admit that they don't know the answer. Right. Which which again is is where things like LTS and and the outreach programs that that you folks do come in. Right. But it it comes back to sort having that permission to ask the question. speaker-0: Absolutely. I mean I definitely do want to talk about curiosity and enjoyment and and where does that lead. But I will say that over the the lifetime of Let's Talk Science, I have seen dramatic shifts in educators understanding of how inquiry-based learning is a really powerful predictor for student achievement and student engagement. And so although we continue to have a teaching base that is typically not science trained formally at the elementary level, there has been quite a strong evolution towards how do you bring inquiry based programming, hands-on programming, questioning programming in through the elementary grades. And I I I have actually seen a a really amazing improvement in in that. So part of the Let's Talk Science journey has been to to label some of that, to help educators, early childhood educators, for example. We have a great partnership with the Canadian Childcare Federation. These people are typically not formally trained in STEM disciplines, and yet they are working with our youngest kids and they are doing amazing science and inquiry without necessarily recognizing that. That's what science inquiry is. Like let's be at the water table and start asking questions and see what floats. And it doesn't take much more to try to move it into a really like a hard skill development, right? Because I agree with you to the point that toddlers, we love to call them natural born scientists. But at the end of the day, there's a little bit more that can be explicitly built into harboring the kinds of skills and the mindset that really truly does become more aligned with scientific thinking. Right. So how do you take play and learning and play based learning and looking around the world around you and and like your daughters experimenting with a variety of things? And then how do you culture that so that there actually is like a flow of thinking, of critical thinking, developing the skills to take it all to the next level, but still keep that curiosity. And I think that that's a real problem right now. I think we you know, the joy and the creativity and the curiosity that you're seeing when when kids are really young That's what we're losing later, right? We're bringing in the work habits and more and more teachers are doing inquiry and there's some very interesting things going. But as a culture, we don't seem to embrace questioning and curiosity and that whole idea of play based learning, even as adults, do we? Like we have a culture that is like it's just so defined and it's kind of work based and answer based and speaker-1: Very binary. speaker-0: Yeah. It's so binary it seems, doesn't it? gosh, you got me thinking about a topic I don't often think about. So this is fascinating. speaker-2: Let's introduce kids with disabilities into this conversation, right? And not just physical disabilities, but sensory disabilities, cognitive disabilities, neurodiversity. And we start to think about how kids interact with the world in in sort of their own unique ways. Uh-huh. But when we focus sort of on the technical side of STEM and not on the curiosity and inquiry side of STEM, I've met and I'm I'm sure you've heard stories like this too, I've met any number of Young adults and adults who are people with disabilities who said to me, Yeah, I was told I couldn't do chemistry. Yeah. Right? Or, you know, I was I was sent to home economics instead. Right? Or I was sent to shoelace tying class instead. And you know, what do we do when when we take somebody out of an inquiry-based learning environment and we we put them in a life skills learning environment? Are we somehow negatively influencing And I'm I'm being deliberately vaguely diplomatic when I say this, are we somehow negatively influencing that very sort of curiosity based, inquiry based learning approach that everyone needs to interact with the world? speaker-0: For sure. And and we're also setting up wrongful ideas with the the rest of the community that doesn't actually see that child participating in an inquiry based environment. So I think we're setting up two really bad systems by by doing that. The other challenge that we might need to explore as well is when you when you have an inclusive approach and you are at least thinking that Every child can succeed, but you put them into an environment in which it is almost physically impossible to succeed. Right. Like I loved working with you and Idea STEM on creating some of the learning modules that we did a couple of years ago. And it really starts to open your eyes to things like bench height or chair height or accessibility if you have mobility challenges in a school. So it is really detrimental to not even give a child the opportunity to be in an inquiry based environment, but it's also f not good to be putting them in an environment in which it's almost set up that they can't be successful. speaker-2: Well, you know, it it's funny when you talk about that because I was at Master University a couple of days ago. I was giving a presentation on a research project that we'd done on science lab accessibility. And one of the one of the teaching faculty and I had had struck up a conversation about how if you're wearing safety glasses, most safety glasses that you wear in a chemistry lab actually have opaque earpieces. And they're they're pretty big earpieces. So so what you end up doing is you cut out about ten percent of your field of view. Right? So you're already at ninety percent of your field of view when you put safety glasses on in a lab environment. In a lot of labs, if you've got really good filtration, like air filtration ventilation systems going, the the decibel level in a lab with active ventilation is fifty three decibels and you haven't even started talking. Right? You haven't even started putting people in there. That's just the hum of the lab, right? The hum of the lab is fifty-three decibels. So you're you're trying to communicate with people, one or more, and there's already fifty-three decibels of noise in your ear, and you haven't done anything. Right? And you you think about biology labs, Bonnie. You're you're in a biosafety two or a biosafety three lab, you're working in a tissue culture hood, you're wearing gloves, you're handling radiation, you're double gloved. And you've impacted your tactile sensitivity and your dexterity, right? The the prototypical science lab was sort of the lab that was built for the six foot two inch tall white male of European descent and hasn't changed its basic structure in a hundred and fifty years. speaker-0: Right. speaker-2: And in those days they weren't wearing P P E. Right? And speaker-0: Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. So you're painting a picture for the adult learner and you know, thinking about how do you bring accommodations into a university or a college situation with adult bodies is is definitely a an area that needs to be explored and improved. And I think we're seeing we're seeing some gains. But at the at the youth level There's not only the the physical issues of the facilities, but there's also I think just the the lack of understanding of so many of you know the the teachers, the parents, the school administration, of of what's possible or what to be thinking about. And I think that's why the work of Idea STEM is so important, right? When I was growing up in school. All of the the peers that I held I hung out with, all the the girls, they all actually went into STEM. So I had personally never experienced that girls don't do science piece ever. And so when I started working at Let's Talk Science and everybody was asking me, Why aren't you doing girls programming? And I went, 'cause girls are doing science, right? Like it hadn't been my personal experience. And when again when I was growing up, I didn't have, as I think to remember, I don't recall having any or many people with obvious visible disabilities in my school. Now at that point we weren't talking about what might be considered in d invisible or learning challenges or or other things that we're talking so much more about. And I I think that in some cases the intention was not negative whatsoever, even if the outcome for the student that might have had an invisible disability were the proper label. And I will actually use this opportunity to say Mahadio, you know that this can be sensitive conversations and sometimes language and vocabulary and and the way I maybe say examples might not be quite right. So if there's anything that I say that That makes you bristle. Like, call me on it, lean in, help me learn. Help me learn, help me learn. But but you know, like so I think I sit back and I think about educators of a particular generation or people of a particular generation when we weren't necessarily talking about some of these really important issues are just not aware. So it's not a negative intent. And the more that we can help educate my own organization included. Then the faster we change our behavior, we look at universal design for learning, we think, everything is so much better if we are thinking in an inclusive design perspective. And so we just have to do more and more work to make sure that people understand that it's just better for everybody. speaker-1: That's a great place to end this part of the conversation. Join us on Through the Idea Lens next month when we explore the impacts of misinformation on STEM. Mahati and I also share some experiences of belonging or not belonging in our high school STEM classrooms. Join us for that next time on Through the Idea Lens. Thank you for joining us for this episode of Through the Idea Lens. The conversation doesn't end here. Get social with us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook at IdeaSTEM Canada. You can also learn more about our work at www.idea-stem.ca. And you can email us directly at info at idea-stem.ca. Until next time, keep looking through the idea lens.