Do people learn science in nonschool settings?
‘This is a critical question for policymakers, practitioners and researchers — and the answer is yes,” according to a 2009 report requested by the American Academy of Sciences.
‘Learning does occur at science centres,” says Anthony Lelliott of Wits University’s Marang Centre for Maths and Science Education, ‘but it’s difficult to identify.”
Do we need more evidence, after three science centre surveys in post-apartheid South Africa? No, says Derek Fish, founder of the 23-year-old University of Zululand science centre in Richards Bay.
‘Nobody asks a kid watching rugby on television if they’re going to grow up to be a rugby player. Nobody but tonholes the audiences leaving a music concert and asks if they’re motivated to take up the cello or drums,” he says.
‘Science is just as much a part of South African culture as sport and music.”
In South Africa, though, the recession has hit local science centres. Scifest Africa, the science festival in Grahamstown, has to ask for money from the state each year and negotiates contracts every three years with corporate donors, such as Sasol and Old Mutual.
Even so, a visitors’ centre is being built near the Pelindaba nuclear reactor and in 2011 the country will host the World Congress of Science Centres. Earlier this year the British government published an impact report on science centres.
The study, by Frontier Economics , concluded: ‘There is insufficient evidence to explain in a robust and quantified way the impact of science centre activities on the uptake by young people of science at school.”
Ditto for adults.
Fish, who is studying towards a master’s degree, believes the British report is deeply flawed. ‘They’d have trouble finding ‘sufficient evidence’ that teachers increase the number of young people interested in science — it’s more likely to be the other way around,” he says.
Fish says South Africa’s context is different. ‘In Britain science centres support functioning education systems and offer ‘edutainment’ to the family market.
The kids who come to my science centre in KwaZulu-Natal don’t have families; they’ve been ravaged by HIV. When I do matric workshops for 12 000 learners, they are desperate.
So are the teachers who say they use the lessons from one day’s visit for the rest of the year. ‘It’s premature to demand proof that science centres work. In comparison with what?” asks Fish. ‘My view is that science education has worsened — but it would have been worse without science centres.”
Fish says: ‘In Britain you have to work really hard to make a science centre not work. Here we’ve got a handful of demented, passionate people who do it for love, with meagre resources and against all odds.”
Although the UK report stated that science centres are cost effective and perform ‘reasonably well”, the British government has decided not to expand its science centre network. At least one expert disagrees with this decision.
‘Science is one of humanity’s greatest adventures,” says Marek Kukula, public astronomer at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. Kukula will visit the country this month to speak at the Southern African Association of Science and Technology Centres annual meeting.
He says: ‘Evolution and the Big Bang tell an amazing and beautiful story. Science centres have an extremely important role to play in making sure these ideas belong to everyone.”
About 100 delegates will attend the 12th Southern African Association of Science and Technology Centres meeting in Sutherland from November 23 to 26. More information at www.saastec.co.za