TY Talk: Switching on to science

Michael O'Leary, Second Level Support Service

While 60,000 students currently take science as a Junior Cert subject, less than 20,000 go on to study physics and chemistry for the Leaving. The methods used to teach science at Junior Cert may be putting students off. Instead of using the discovery method, much of the curriculum is learned from books. It ceases to be a living subject, and many students are simply not switched on. They are left with the impression that physics and chemistry are dry subjects with little relevance to their own career and life aspirations.

Transition Year, with its flexible timetabling and holistic approach to learning, provides the perfect opportunity to bring students back to science. There are already a number of Transition Year science programmes available to schools. These include modules authored by the Chemical Institute of Ireland, the Irish Science Teachers Association, the Department of the Environment and Cork Institute of Technology. All these programmes have a focus on interactive learning and allow students to discover for themselves how scientific principles relate to the world around them.

The Second Level Support Service is currently working with SET (the Science, Engineering and Technology Committee) to develop an ab initio programme for Transition Year. The programme will provide help for students who did not take science at Junior Cert but who want to get familiar with the basic concepts of science, before possibly taking physics or chemistry in the Leaving.

Students who completed the Junior Cert science curriculum but who did not have a positive experience may also benefit from the ab initio programme, which, it is envisaged, will translate basic scientific concepts into a living format using an investigative approach.

Students with no background in science may be sceptical about a one-year course that purports to prepare them for science at Leaving Cert level - though, in reality, very little of the Junior Cert science course is needed for the Leaving. The proposed ab initio programme will concentrate on the key skills of the scientist, basic scientific concepts, laboratory techniques and safety - and, most importantly, it will be designed to awaken investigative curiosity.

One of our main priorities in this effort is to get more female students interested in physics and chemistry. The number of female students who took engineering at university level last year was negligible. We have got to encourage young women to look seriously at science as a career and, for that to happen, they need to get a real understanding of the career paths a science graduate can take.

Transition Year, it can be argued, is not early enough to switch students on to science, but it's a good start.