the presentation of science in everyday life: the science show
TRANSCRIPT
The presentation of science in everyday life:the science show
Richard Watermeyer
Received: 17 January 2012 / Accepted: 16 January 2013� Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
Abstract This paper constitutes a case-study of the ‘science show’ model of public
engagement employed by a company of science communicators focused on the popular-
ization of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subject disciplines
with learner constituencies. It examines the potential of the science show to foster the
interest and imagination of young learners in STEM; challenge popular pre/misconceptions
of science and scientists; reveal the broadness, plurality and everyday relevance of science;
and induce a more fluent and equitable science nexus between expert and non-expert or
learner groups. Discussion focuses on conversations with members of a UK and university
based science communication outfit who comment on the potential of the science show as a
model of non-formal science education and science engagement and the necessary con-
ditions for its success.
Keywords Science communication � Science shows � STEM � Experiential learning �Science engagement
In recent years, the popularization and promotion of science, technology, engineering and
mathematics (STEM) subject disciplines in UK schools, has been bolstered by a myriad of
informal STEM initiatives aimed at inspiring learners through experiential and ‘hands-on’
forms of learning. In 2004, the then, Department for Education and Skills (DfES), com-
missioned a STEM mapping review which reported over four hundred and seventy such
initiatives administered by government and external agencies. This multitudinous invest-
ment was variously praised for enriching and diversifying school-based experiences of
STEM (DfES 2006; Sainsbury 2007) yet criticised for its disconnect with schools and seen
to be undermined by the disinclination of families to sign-up to informal STEM activities;
the reticence of teachers in adapting to more interactive pedagogies; logistical and
Lead editor: B. C. Luitel
R. Watermeyer (&)ESRC Centre for Economic and Social Aspects of Genomics (Cesagen), Cardiff University, 6 MuseumPlace, Cardiff CF10 3BG, UKe-mail: [email protected]
123
Cult Stud of Sci EducDOI 10.1007/s11422-013-9484-9
administrative constraints such as health and safety protocols or the cost of teacher
replacement/cover; inconsistent levels of prioritisation for STEM between schools; and the
difficulty in making accurate impact-assessments of informal STEM activities (POST-
NOTE 2011). Nevertheless, informal learning interventions in STEM continue to be
championed as vehicles of culture change, proselytizing the virtues of STEM-based sub-
jects and inspiring learners through direct participation.
In 2008 the significance of informal learning strategies for STEM in the UK was
confirmed with the launch, by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS)
and Department for Children, School and Families (DCSF) of STEM Directories, an
information repository or gateway, designed to support teachers by signposting the full,
nationwide gamut of informal STEM activities. Similar government sponsored invest-
ments, underlying the value of informal STEM activities have included, the appointment,
in 2006, of a National STEM Director and ministerial steering group to co-ordinate STEM
policy. Complementing these investments, the continued work of the National STEMCentre and STEMNET, an organisation dedicated to inspiring learners from all back-
grounds and cultural contexts with STEM, through after-school STEM clubs and STEM
ambassadors, in addition to the UK’s many science museums and science centres, evidence
the contribution of informal learning strategies in cultivating and embedding an enthusi-
astic and efficacious community of learners in STEM. The motif of community and
community- building in STEM education is a pervasive feature of its political construction
and the rhetoric deployed by government in the articulation of its STEM ideals. Fulfilling
the ambition of a meritocratic and heterogeneous STEM community wrests with
acknowledging the social and cultural dimensions of learning and mobilizing the condi-
tions required for learning in STEM as an equitable and democratic cultural event.
Lave and Wenger (1991) argue that learning is a process of relations among people
engaged in a socially constructed world. In this conceptualisation, learners’ experiences of
science are not just about learning content but ‘how to participate in scientific or science-
related communities’ (Calabrese Barton and Brickhouse 2006, p. 224) and recognition that
science is just one part of a larger system of activity, value and performance (Brickhouse
2001). Experience of the material and cultural world and the ways with which they are
represented is integral to the formation of scientific understanding and a semantic reper-
toire from which further/future understanding may materialize and evolve. As Harre (1986)
argues, science and the understanding of science are forged through life experiences.
However life world experiences may be enormously variegated if not asymmetric and
influenced by a multitude of societal and economic factors, such as the disequilibrium of
learners’ social and cultural capital (Bourdieu 1986; Lareau and Weininger 2003), dele-
teriously impacting and delimiting an equality of learning opportunity.
For those less predisposed of cultural capital and mobility the STEM experience may be
completely incongruous or extraneous to their cultural habitus and appear the preserve of
elite and minority enclaves. Where disconnect of this sort exists or where science appears
disparate even latent to the common majority, informal STEM initiatives enlist individu-
alised and contextually familiar narratives of everyday life in order to rationalise and
confirm the relevance and legitimacy of the learning contract in STEM and thereby
motivate the non-archetypal science learner.
The successful assimilation and synthesis of new scientific knowledge may depend upon
learners’ ability to effectively mobilise their cultural capital, where necessary, against the
inherited hegemony of STEM contexts, and construct, manipulate and align personalized,
cultural and metaphorical repertoires as articulations of science and contrast or amalgamate
these with everyday observations and occurrences. In other words, through processes of
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play, role-play or recreational experimentation learners may cultivate a series of repre-
sentations used to infer yet also dispute their scientific and social worlds. In a sense, play is
both the atomization of experience and engine mobilizing new representational and rela-
tional paradigms that (re)constitute the learner’s connection to and knowledge of science.
Researchers have also shown that play concurrently facilitates learners’ intellectual, social,
emotional and physical development (Pellegrini and Goldsmith 2003; Robinson, Anderson,
Porter, Hart and Wouden-Miller 2003). Without experience learners may be without the
intellectual reference points and language necessary to navigate and articulate new
experiences and deeper knowledge. Experience is as Dewey (1938) states, reciprocal and
transformative and dependent upon the learner’s contribution to the learning process and
the consequence of this in changing existing repertoires of knowledge, which in turn
impact future knowledge interactions and iterations. The experiential learner’s relationship
with knowledge thus resembles the persistent inception, mediation and permutation of
ideas. Experiential learning may not advance learning in any linear fashion—learning
experiences may be more lateral than incremental, incidental less pre-determined—but
may expand and diversify the ways with which knowledge is received, assimilated and
synthesised.
Adopting the premise of experiential learning (Kolb 1984), this paper explores a model
of science engagement predicated on a playful (Kalliala 2006), critical (Giroux 1997) and
democratic (Dewey 1938) interface with STEM, and borrowing from Goffman (1959), the
‘presentation’ of personal cultures in the mediation of STEM and materialization of the
STEM learner. It focuses on the science show as an exponent of science communication
and visual culture (Hooper-Greenhill 2007) and its potential to (re)discover, (re)constitute
and (re)confirm learners’ interest and enthusiasm for science by recruiting local and
indigenous cultural memes in the mobilization of learners’ scientific understanding and
aspiration. The science show is envisaged as form of connaturalization or cultural
appropriation, whereby learners’ cultural contexts and framings are co-opted and spun into
a meaning-rich, personally-relevant and culturally-informed scientific narrative. The sci-
ence show represents therefore an ‘instructional bridge’ (Lee and Fradd 1998) which
attempts to reconcile the incongruence of the school and learners’ everyday experiences
(Calabrese Barton 2000, 2001; Seiler 2001) and integrate the culture of science with the
culture of learners’ social lives and the materialization of learners’ ‘lifeworlds’ (Lim and
Calabrese Barton 2006) in STEM.
Discussion centres on the accounts of professional science communicators and what
they understand as the determinants of a successful science show, as an informal STEM
initiative, and more generally the role of the science show as a cultural event and form of
social recreation, catalysing an efficacious learning community in STEM. These deposi-
tions signpost the contribution of science communicators and the processes they commit to
in enriching science curricula; captivating and energizing learners and would-be learners in
STEM; and demythologizing, personalizing and integrating science as an everyday
phenomenon.
Overview: introducing the science show
SCC is a university spin-out company, begun within an academic School of physics and
developed into an independent social enterprise, yet retaining a strong university link,
focused on the communication of science, especially physics, to learner groups, most
frequently school-aged students. The company is organised to ‘inspire the next generation
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of scientists and engineers; to engage a wider public with science and engineering as part
of popular culture; [and] build bridges between researchers, professionals and the public’
(SCC mission statement). The SCC approach to science communication is focused on a
performance-based, participatory science narrative—manifest as the SCC science show.
SCC is relatively unique in a UK context as a science communication company that
both originates from and exists within an environment of scientific research. In this regard,
its ability to bridge potential knowledge chasms—research producer and research user
communities, is a defining characteristic that distinguishes it from other communication
specialists. Throughout the interviews SCC science communicators demonstrated a firm
understanding of the scientific research environment and a capacity to respond to the needs,
sensitivities and insecurities of scientists wary of disseminating their work or interacting
beyond their indigenous professional contexts (Holliman, Whitelegg, Scanlon, Smidt and
Thomas 2009).
As a university spin-out company, SCC is largely independent yet closely linked to its
home institution. A tight-knit relationship provides the company credibility and access to a
broad network of scientific specialists, research groups and forums, and topic areas, not
always or easily accessible to independent or freelance science communicators. Concur-
rently, as a local bureau of expert advice SCC, provides a useful resource for academic
groups uninitiated or novice in engagement practice yet for whom engagement is an
expected part of their professional portfolio. This arrangement does however hold impli-
cations for what kinds of shows the company develop and what they can offer to a schools’
audience and contribute to formal science learning.
The science show is designed to reorient conventional associations and assemblages of
science, habitually or predominantly informed by established learning repertoires, ped-
agogies and knowledge systems, by disseminating an emphasis on the experience of
science as socially constructed, informal, undetermined and unencumbered by the
demands and sanctions of science predicated on educational or credentializing outcomes.
The science show accordingly represents a significant interlude or volte face in the
development of learners’ attitudes and perceptions of and behaviours with science by
revealing the potential of science as an experience unlike that traditionally encountered in
the classroom. In this reframing, young learners’ experiences of science diverge from the
potential predictability of science curricula and an interface which prioritizes rote
memorization, knowledge transmission and assimilation. Science is instead presented as
one aspect of everyday life and prone to the same vacillations, inconsistencies and
vagaries—embodied in the relationship between science communicator and his/her
audience. In this way, the science show engenders an inter-personal relationship between
audience and presenter through which a distinctly socio-scientific narrative materializes.
The science show thus correlates to the humanization or personalization of scientific
discourse where science is translated within the repertory of presenters and their range of
emotional and expressive forms of communication linking science to the social and
cognitive frameworks of audience members and extracting playful interactions. As sci-
ence communicator, ‘Claire’ argues, the success of the science show depends on the
ability of presenters to successfully co-ordinate an assortment of elicitation devices which
combine to create a narrative that not only elucidates but dramatizes in exciting and
attention-grabbing ways the empirical, conceptual and methodological repertoires of
science.
Science shows engage minds and emotions through the use of a range of experiences:
visual, kinaesthetic, aural and interpersonal. (‘Claire’)
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In the science show, scientific discourse undergoes a process of transference from the
semantic/semiotic arrangements of scientists to those understood and habitually deployed
by lay-persons. As ‘Peter’ explains, the story of science unfolds in the science show
through the use of typical story-telling conventions such as layering and linkage:
It [the science show] may involve characters & narrative and can be framed in terms
of specific science concepts, such as measurement, energy, fluids or a subject which
brings together numerous science concepts such as sports, aircraft, inventors.
(‘Peter’)
A challenge for presenters, as expert knowledge communicators, communication au-
teurs or brokers, is in predicting, adapting and responding to the needs and moods of
audience groups. Presenters are tasked not only with situating a clear articulation of
science but an articulation that stimulates the interest and prolonged participation
of audience groups. The active participation of the audience in the science show is thereby
indivisible to its success. One of the principal tasks for a presenter is in ensuring audience
members feel able, entitled and happy to participate. Active participation also demands
that audience groups are kept inquisitive, engaged and involved. This is achieved by
focusing on forms of mediation which challenge and in some cases defy expectations as
‘Jane’ and ‘Adam’ argue are synchronized with the mood and personality of different
audiences
A science show is an interactive, exciting and engaging presentation of science in
unusual or unexpected contexts. (‘Jane’)
… a way of presenting scientific ideas and phenomena in an entertaining and
engaging way. Science shows are flexible and evolving performances which adapt
and change to suit audience responses. (‘Adam’)
The science show is not however intended to devalue or deride the formal science
curriculum or exaggerate disconnect or apathy manifest in learners’ interactions with
instructional content. In the course of interviewing, SCC presenters frequently empathised
with the limitations suffered by teachers in formal education systems and how a lack of
capacity, time, learning resources and competition from other subject disciplines within an
already loaded curriculum, negatively influence learners’ perspectives of science. The
science show is instead a mechanism intended to enhance learners’ appreciation of science
and enrich the experience of science in the classroom yet also prompt learners to consider
science in more expansive ways. A priority then is in enthusing learners or as one inter-
viewee claimed ‘a means to educate but more to inspire’ (‘Chris’). It is in some ways
almost a precursor to learning as a defined and intended activity or as ‘Amy’ alludes an
experience focused less on expediting the taught curriculum and instead galvanizing
learners’ collective appreciation of STEM:
The aim of a science show is primarily to enthuse an audience about the scope and
possibilities in science rather than to teach them curriculum. (‘Amy’)
Researching SMS: a contextual framework and rationale
This paper is informed by semi-structured interviews (n = 18) with members and affiliates
of a science communication company. Interviews with members of the company occurred
between 2010 and 2011. These were difficult to arrange given the transient and migratory
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work patterns of company members and they’re being near-permanently ‘on the road’ in
national and international settings and the high turn-over of the company’s staff; some of
whom have since gone on to roles as school science teachers. Participants were without
exception, enthusiastic and willing—keen to share their thoughts and experiences. They
treated the interview process as a valuable opportunity to critically reflect, sometimes
drawing unexpected and enlightening conclusions about their professional practice, sub-
jectivity and development as science communicators and educators of a sort.
Interview questions were designed more as prompts for open and expansive reflection
and purposely avoided lines of inquiry that would lead to pre-ordained, purpose-fit or
predictable responses. Data was subsequently coded and analysed using a grounded theory
approach (Strauss and Corbin 1907). An open-coding of interview transcripts was initially
undertaken in search of comparable themes. This was succeeded by the generation of
theoretical codes informing the conceptualization of the role of the sample as science
communicators and in substantiating a holistic and penetrative account of the science show
as a type of informal STEM activity. Emergent categories clustered around what
respondents identified as the key criteria for running a successful science show and
included: performativity; personability and passion of the presenter as performer, com-
municative auteur and science envoy/role model; place and space—setting and choreo-
graphing the science show; and flexibility/adaptability of the science show methodology.
Interviews provided an invaluable opportunity to determine what motivates science
communicators and what constitutes, from their own professional perspectives, effective
science communication. Identifying sound engagement practice is perhaps particularly
pertinent at a time when scientists are increasingly challenged to become more accountable
and visible, available and engaged with the general public (Watermeyer 2011) and where
science and mathematics education and the fruition of ‘citizen-scientists’ (Brossard,
Lewenstein and Bonney 2005) or a scientifically invested public is seen to be both socially
and economically advantageous (Stirling 2006). Furthermore, in the context of a ‘perfor-
mative’ turn in sociological studies of education (Atkinson 2004), these accounts offer a
significant contribution to deliberations testing the value and significance to STEM edu-
cation of a playful and performance-based interface with science, albeit where assessments
are the diagnosis not of school-teachers focused on the training and/or credentializing of
learners, but those whose raison d’etre is the popularization of STEM.
Insights into the SMS approach
In the SCC science show the traditional science presentation is updated and made over into a
spectacle of participatory theatre. The centrepiece of the SCC repertory, the award-wining
show Visualise, has been developed to purposely blur the distinction between science and art
in order to create an expression of science that is invested with a cultural aesthetic:
Visualise is a full theatre production requiring a very specific venue - blackout con-
ditions, lighting rig, sound system etc. – and four staff – two presenters and two
technical staff. It is a visual physical theatre performance and uses no spoken words.
Science demonstrations are staged within a visual storyline to put them in context and
follow-up activities are suggested to audiences who want to learn more. (‘Adam’)
The intentional erosion of the boundaries between the ‘two cultures’ arguably catalyses
a new scientific aesthetic that propels and diversifies the learner’s scientific imaginary and
instigates a more composite and holistic learning interface:
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Audiences are led into a magical world of science where a story unfolds about the
beauty of science, science as something we can feel as well as understand, science
that we can see and use in the everyday world around us. (‘Carol’)
‘Carol’ describes the science show as a dichotomous process which exoticizes science
yet simultaneously locates science as a facet of the everyday. She depicts the science show
as catalysing a learner’s impression of science which is both ethereal and commonplace,
where science is celebrated both for its aesthetic value and utility. In the case of Visualise,
respondents spoke of maximizing dramatic conventions of suspense, mystery and awe to
captivate and sustain the interest of audience members, whilst resetting the representational
parameters of science delimiting the learner’s imagination. Dramatizing science was
viewed by respondents as a necessary ploy mobilizing audiences’ capacity of visualization
and facilitating audiences’ linking and embedding science within their own indigenous
cultural contexts. The elicitation of science as a mode of entertainment was also seen to be
preconditional to attracting and maintaining learners’ interest and as ‘Simon’ argues is
what distinguishes the science show from more formal learning mechanisms:
The essence of entertainment is critical to move the presentation from just a dem-
onstration lecture to being a show. (‘Simon’)
However the science show is envisaged by communicators as more than just a mode of
entertainment designed to amuse or titillate audiences. Where detractors might accuse the
science show of ‘dumbing-down’ or debasing science to spectacle without substance, its
protagonists argue that the science show represents an invaluable bridging or brokering
mechanism which embeds science in the minds, (inter)actions and future imaginaries of
non-experts. In this way, the science show is seen to transcend a monological, one-
dimensional version of science communication as knowledge transmission and catalyses
the learner as an efficacious and engaged interlocutor in STEM:
They [science shows] do not simply rely on bangs and smells which excite audiences
but rather allow space for interpersonal communication and time to relate points
made to personal experience. (‘Amy’)
As ‘Amy’ suggests the science show excites but more significantly empowers audiences
through the explication of the ubiquity of science in the everyday and their own powers of
agency as experimenters, moderators and authors in a series of increasingly personalized
science experiences:
[Visualise] leaves you thinking, ‘I wonder if I could try that at home’? The fab thing
about Visualise is that you can. (‘Jodie’)
A range of science experiences actuate through:
… the use of music, video, game show formats, costumes… sometimes, and a high
level of public speaking experience in the presenters delivery. The presenters are not
actors but they do need to understand that audience engagement is critical before
information can be given (‘Julia’).
Delivering a narrative of science in ways, which stimulates young learners’ interest and
enthusiasm, requires not only a proclivity for science and aptitude in its mediation but a
continuous investment in building and bettering communicative capacities. Science com-
municators are accordingly challenged to keep continuously abreast of the latest tools of
elicitation and integrate these into the design and performance of their shows. As ‘Neil’
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reveals this demands training and the involvement of performance specialists, helping
performers improve the physical and emotional aspects of their stage-craft:
So we partnered with [the] college of music and drama, and began to work with
them, their directors, their stage builders, their set builders, you know and it opened
up this world of reality that – we’re not theatre people… we worked with physical
theatre experts, we had clowning workshops, we had a director come in and work for
a week on rehearsals with us to try and stage manage the performance a bit better.
(‘Neil’)
Intrinsic to the success of the science show is the competency of the presenter as
performer—actor, orator, comedian, clown, magician, show(wo)man—and his/her ability
to engage with audiences and convey science in ways that capture, sustain and nourish the
imagination and preserve and extend attention spans. Presenters are required to be not only
innovative and engaging but able, as ‘David’ reveals, to navigate, intuit, pre-empt,
extemporize and efficiently respond to the needs, demands and oscillations of the science
show audience:
A good presenter can adapt material on the spot to suit different audience dynamics
and situations. There may be a guideline script but all our presenters are skilled
enough to tailor shows on the hoof as they observe the reactions from the audience
they have in front of them. No other form of science communication can do this.
(‘David’)
Science communicators require qualities of foresight, cognisance, empathy and sensi-
tivity to different audiences and audience needs so as to appropriately pitch and arrange
information in accessible, entertaining and resonating ways. As SCC member, ‘Jodie’
reveals, the success of the science show hinges on a presenter’s,
… ability to read their audience and pitch the show at them appropriately allowing
the audience to engage with the subject. (‘Jodie’)
In responding to the diverse needs and types of audience groups, SCC respondents
argued for multiple iterations of the science show and a process of making bespoke,
helping to reduce the risk of inappropriate pitching and disengaging audiences.
The biggest thing you can do to pitch your show properly is have a different version
for each audience you might present to. This allows you to have different experi-
ments, explanations, language and tone and will leave audiences across different
demographics much more satisfied. (‘Peter’)
Respondents argued that one way of identifying audience ‘wants’ and ‘needs’ is through
direct consultation. The SCC science show is consequently directly informed, influenced
and guided by the opinions of prospective audience members—in a way not too dissimilar
to a test screening—whose early intercession is an intrinsic part of the show’s inception.
Interestingly, the developmental phase of the SCC science show seems to intentionally
circumvent the official curriculum as a starting point or guiding principle. Conversely, SCCpresenters elect an explicitly ‘bottom-up’ approach to inform the conceptual and practical
aspects of science show design:
Understanding what the audience are interested in and starting there, rather than with
the curriculum which teachers are told to teach. We always talk with students about
new show ideas as a first stage of development. (‘Alice’)
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The science show is in this context a product of collaborative enterprise, co-investment
and to an extent co-authorship between science communicators and audience/learner
groups. This developmental phase also represents a preliminary stage of interaction and
dialogue and evidences a shared commitment to affecting a positive and potentially rad-
icalising experience of science. It is also a precursor and/or seedcorn for a proactive
interpersonal relationship to be consolidated and exploited within the live show. The active
participation of audience members in the design and performance of the science show is
accordingly seen as indispensable to their accruing a sense of achievement and by
extension esteem as valued participants and partners, enabling and scaffolding critical and
prolonged dialogue and reflections and a clearer, more robust identity as STEM learners:
… the personalized interactivity it provides gives audiences a sense of accom-
plishment in having participated. (‘Alan’)
A reciprocal and co-supporting interface between science communicator and his/her
audience, premised on a consensual, complementary and unifying voice, is also seen as an
essential dynamic nurturing audience members and their sense of legitimacy as licensed
game-players able to confidently identify, situate and express themselves in relation to the
events which inform the science show narrative. The science show then is a form of
familiarisation which greatly exceeds more rudimentary expositions of scientific fact and
which potentially profoundly alters the relational aesthetic that governs the learner’s
identity as a recipient and producer of scientific knowledge. In other words, the science
show elucidates the capacity of the learner to engage with science and in ways, which as
‘Ben’ identifies are non-threatening:
Science shows provide a personal connection between presenter and audience. They
allow audiences first-hand experience of phenomena and the opportunity to explore
their own ideas in a safe environment. (‘Ben’)
The science show as a live event also reinforces a sense of propinquity strengthening the
interface between the science show presenter and his/her audience and making for a more
immersive, personalized experience. The account provided by ‘Laura’ articulates the
methodological preference of the science show and the election of the communication of
science in person rather than in periphery or by proxy:
The presenter is key. There are hundreds of multi-media ways to access demos online
and animations explaining science but nothing beats the thrill of seeing something
live. (‘Laura’)
The personability and proximity of the science communicator/audience interface is
however potentially compromised in the SCC context where its model of science com-
munication is premised on attracting large audience numbers. There is it seems an inherent
tension between the value-added dimension of SCC in taking science to large numbers of
the uninitiated and its potential as a culture change mechanism where culture change is
predicated as an impact of inter-personal relationships and/or working partnerships. The
science show as process of personalization, self-discovery and becoming in science—
premised on audience members being made to feel special, entitled and unique—is
potentially undermined and jeopardised by the swell of mass ranks. The massification of
the science show audience might also cause its unwanted comparison to the prototypical
school science lesson, where a similar wealth of numbers and scarcity of shared resource
delimits the extent to which learners feel a sense of belonging, ownership and self-security
within the learning process.
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In response, SCC communicators argued that an important dimension of their self-
presentation was in disassociating themselves from classroom teachers. Communicators
such as ‘Angus’ intimated that their function as role models necessitated a ‘very different’
communicative and/or pedagogical strategy:
… [The science show] provides the presenter as a positive role model in science who
may communicate in a very different way to the teacher. (‘Angus’)
The implication here is that the science show more ably lends itself as a platform for
positive role models and aspiration building in STEM, than the classroom, with the former
providing an informal interactional space whose educational properties are latent, cam-
ouflaged or subverted by participants’ experience of the science show as recreational and
fun.
Respondents claimed that the adaptability of the science show methodology and its
focus on dialogue allows them to efficiently update and improve the delivery of science
narratives. Where science centre installations become quickly outmoded (Watermeyer
2012b), the science show more adeptly keeps pace with scientific innovation and remains ala mode, relevant and appealing to audience groups:
… if something happens to change the research, you can tweak it, and that costs you
almost nothing… we’ve got this flexible delivery system that exhibits don’t have.
(‘Adam’)
… the beauty of science shows is that they can be designed to fit anywhere. (‘Jane’)
However, whilst the science show can be adapted for most places/spaces, SCC science
shows are most frequently staged on school premises and tend to be packaged accordingly.
The (re)design of shows for other venues is labour intensive and requires an extensive
commitment of time to the design and choreography of the show’s various elements.
Nevertheless, the science show was presented as sufficiently flexible to allow for real-time
adjustments:
Adaptability makes a show much more three dimensional. The ability to add or
remove things for specific audiences, go off on a relevant tangent if someone asks a
good question of change how you would explain something on the fly if it’s clearly
not connecting with your audience is one of the big advantages of a live show.
(‘Ailsa’)
The versatility of the science show method allows SCC to not only efficiently respond to
the consumer demands of its audience but the scientific community it serves as a translator
and public intermediary. An ability to quickly respond to scientific developments means
that the science show is less retrospective and instead contemporaneous even prospec-
tive—daring to consider scientific imaginaries. Concurrently, as specialists in scientific
awareness, science communicators are poised to respond to the various crises in perceptionthat enervate interest in science and science learning. The bridging role of science com-
municators is not however only in rebranding or reconceptualising science to learner or
public groups but in rebranding learners/the public to scientists. Translation is concerned
with making the breadth of science visible to public groups and instilling a sense of the
diversity of learner/public groups to scientists themselves. Translation work occurs
bilaterally.
Integral to developing the science show schemata is recognition of the importance of
place and space as tacit components with enormous influence in determining types of
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audience and styles of elicitation. Larger spaces allow science communicators to address
larger audiences whilst forgoing a degree of intimacy and a capacity to engage with
audience members on a more personal or direct level:
We reach big numbers and that’s mainly because of the format we’ve chosen, which
is performance based, so you can actually do a big audience. The downside is
obviously you don’t have the hands on experience, one to one, with a person on a
workshop level like other people do. (‘Hugh’)
‘Adam’ refers to the invisibility effect of larger auditoriums where audience members
are made anonymous, distanced, blocked and/or disenfranchised from the events of the
science show:
Larger theatres can seem a bit impersonal, particularly to those at the back. Theatres
with a raised proscenium stage also tend to block sightlines to the demonstrations.
(‘Adam’)
Non-traditional learning places such as music festivals and shopping centres provide an
opportunity to take science out of its conventional context, but have their own specific
challenges and limitations as explained by ‘Alice’:
At a festival people are sometimes not prepared to give you the time for a full show
so you adapt to suit. A shopping centre usually has passing traffic so you can’t
develop a narrative through a show – we usually do busking type stuff on those
occasions which allow people to drop in for 5 min then leave without feeling
awkward. (‘Alice’)
Whilst the majority of SCC’s science shows occur within schools, one of its specific
goals is redrawing place and space so as to recontextualize popular perceptions and
understandings of science:
It [a science show] will often put science into an unexpected context, allowing the
audience to look at science in a different way. (‘Jane’)
SCC staff argued that ‘bridging’ exercises were most successful in non-educational and
informal settings, where science learning occurred outwith the constraints of formal
educational conventions and was presented not as learning but an episode of popular
culture.
[One focus] is in embedding physics within popular culture. So not about recruiting
people into physics, but about getting people aware of what it is and how it affects
their lives. So that strand was more about going to music festivals and shoppingcentres, rather than schools, getting to people wherever they were… we wanted to
try and be this sort of bridge. (‘Julia’)
In presenting physics in unconventional (learning) spaces—music festivals and shop-
ping centres—SCC strives to challenge and upend popular assumptions that delimit the
perceptual horizons of STEM. Furthermore, SCC exports science into learners’ cultural
habitus rather than importing learners into science contexts. The SCC science show does
not attempt to reconstruct the laboratory. The laboratory is in this context irrelevant cer-
tainly so much as it is exterior to popular culture. In another sense the laboratory is
reconfigured in the context of the science show to include the act of social living, which
science informs. As ‘Daniel’ comments, the science show reorients its audience from
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narrow frames of association and reference to reveal the vastness of science and a labo-
ratory without borders:
… it was really trying to hook students with how relevant physics is to everything,
like their mobile phone, their microwave oven, getting a sun tan. You know, things
that seem completely unrelated which are actually tied together very nicely with
physics, which made a nice narrative for the show, (‘Daniel’)
The multiple and competing roles of the science communicator are reflected in the
science show format which itself appears multi-layered and composed of antagonistic or
diametric parts. The SCC science show builds the imagery of science via a process of
continuous playful inversion and metaphorical polarisation. It invokes the wonder and
magic of science to demystify. It talks about the bigness of science to think of science
simply. It appeals to scientific exoticism to account for the everyday. And critically, it
attempts to conceal the learning process so as to maximise learning outcomes. Ultimately,
by inverting and reversing popular pre/mis-conceptions of science and processing scientific
discourse through commonplace cultural interplay, non-expert repertoires of science are
enriched, diversified, pluralised and made available to a more heterogeneous and populous
assortment of learners. The science show may however suffer where its pedagogical focus
is obfuscated and subjugated by the obligation of the science presenter to entertain and
evangelise his/her audience. As a form of spectacle, carnival and marvel-making the
science show also risks disseminating an overly simplistic, science experience lacking
nuance and depth, and which over-commits to spectacle-staging less attending to the
cultivation of young critical minds.
Conversely, the theatre and carnival of the science show may be said to provide an
opportunity to ‘mess about in science’ (Hawkins 1965); dispel the rumour of science as
dull, difficult and off-limits; and propel the creative agency of the learner in STEM
contexts. Reframing and repatriating the learner interface in science, beginning with the
impressionable and sponge-like minds of young, school-aged learners, may quite possibly
serve to deflate attrition rates in STEM; safeguard the harvest of next generation scientists
and/or ‘citizen-scientists’; accentuate a national scientific literacy; and bolster the channels
of co-operative exchange that lead to a more democratic and deliberative public/expert
interface in STEM. Furthermore as Meisner and Osborne (2009, p. 98) claim, without this
type of science experience, ‘access to the models and ideas that science offers may well
become harder if not altogether inaccessible’. The science show is fundamentally not
however, a means of making learning easier but more expansive and involved.
Final thoughts on the SMS approach
The science show is presented by SCC as a type of informal STEM activity, which not only
popularizes STEM as subject disciplines but simultaneously propagates efficacious STEM
learner identities. Where after-school science clubs tend to more frequently attract learners
with an existing interest and aptitude for science and habitually with a more abundant
educational capital (Watermeyer 2012a; Watermeyer and Stevenson 2010), the science
show is referenced as one means of promoting science to a more heterogeneous learner
base, where aspects of class, gender and ethnicity that might deter learners’ active par-
ticipation are circumvented. This is achieved by the science show’s flexible narrative and
choreography and a capacity to speak to a diverse audience across multiple cultural
contexts and physical localities.
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Through an insistence on the collective and playful participation of diverse learner
groups the science show is presented by SCC as a catalyst of micro ‘communities-of-
practice’ (Wenger 1998); learner conviviality and solidarity and a secure and scaffolded
space for more confident, experimental and creative learning. Outwith the ties of formal
education systems the science show is a series of interactions not immediately identifiable
or familiar to the learner as learning nor plainly focused on the production of learning
outcomes. Conversely, the science show is a learning process where learning is tacit; where
(positive) learning outcomes are incidental or serendipitous and fundamentally where the
learner is not interrogated for the extent of his/her learning. Instead the science show
engineers collective social interactions intended to mobilize the learners’ gaze; radicalise
and expurgate learners’ pre/mis-conceptions of science; and lay the basis for more per-
spicacious and critically reflexive learning built on first-hand experience, yet fundamen-
tally an experience of science which is completely unlike established learning repertoires.
As a process of visualization, the science show proposes to enable learners’ to experience
science on their own terms, building confidence, a sense of entitlement and legitimacy as
members, no matter how fleeting, of the STEM/learning community and thus credits them
with their own ‘licence to operate’.
The manifestation of the efficacious STEM learner is metaphorically analogous to the
emergence or transference of the audience as actors interpreting, performing, revising and
reimagining the science show script. In other words, the science learner in the science show
context is not the end-receiver but mediator of knowledge. Of course, as constituents of a
live event, the science show audience is situated at the fulcrum of the creative process.
Furthermore, as an extemporaneous activity, the science show is made to appear con-
temporary, cutting edge, youthful, vibrant, unpredictable, risky and necessarily exciting.
Science theatre is used to accentuate the playful and enjoyable dimensions of science
learning by exposing it as both a marvel and facet of everyday life. By transporting science
to informal or non-conventional educational settings or by unveiling and inventing new
worlds for science, the science show represents an attempt to explode narrow yet popular
(mis)conceptions of science as delineated by the temporal and epistemological parameters
of laboratory, pedagogy and curriculum. It is one option in the rehabilitation of STEM in
learners’ imaginations and offers a learning interface of consequence for educationalists of
all tiers and types in addition to scientific experts committed to a more proactive and
reciprocal relationship with non-expert groups.
The experiential basis of the science show reflects its potential as an incubator for the
cultivation of core skills and imaginative capacities stabilising and strengthening learner
identity in STEM. As a site of playful and participatory learning the science show may be
enlisted to facilitate innovative thinking, experimentation, risk-taking and reflective
thinking, all requisite qualities of the learning citizen. However in a quest to take science to
the masses, the affective qualities of the science show may be compromised or lost.
The accounts of SCC present the science show as one solution in rectifying and
reversing learners’ estrangement from STEM; which begins by investing in learners’
cultural repertoires and using these to radicalise perceptions of STEM and empower
expressions of the self in STEM contexts. The science show model of science commu-
nication suggests that learners are served best not when led to science but rather when
science is unveiled, oxymoronically, as a ubiquitous yet exciting facet of their everyday
lives. The challenge for the science show presenter is then to foster or awaken a scientific
proclivity among learners and inculcate a passion for science through the co-option,
inversion and choreographing of familiar space and place and cultural repertoires, in so
doing securing the conditions for participative role-play and creative, imaginative and
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social labour. The science show is thus an iteration of the social and performative world
and reflection of the contingency of social life and life-act itself which precipitates the
materialization of the learner in STEM and STEM as an expression of everyday life.
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Author Biography
Dr Richard Watermeyer is a Research Fellow at the ESRC Centre for Economic and Social Aspects ofGenomics (Cesagen) at Cardiff University. His work is at the intersection of Science Technology Studies(STS) and the Sociology of Education with specific interests in innovative pedagogies, object-based andexperiential forms of learning; creative processes in the visualization of scientific complexity; thegovernance of science; spaces/methods of upstream dialogue and co-constructions of expert knowledge.
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