Janey, Education Officer at Education Scotland, tells us about how STEM Ambassadors can enhance the learning experience of young people across Scotland:
Helping your students link their learning to the real world; making the connection between skills developed in the classroom and those used in the workplace and inspiring students to continue on their STEM journey - bringing in a STEM Ambassador can help you make that leap from delivering a great STEM learning experience to a brilliant, memorable and impactful STEM Learning experience.
As a former Science teacher; STEM Ambassadors played an integral role in our BGE and senior phase curriculum. An example of this was in our N5 Biology course. The relationship with the STEM Ambassador started with working together to understand the curriculum and the needs of the students within our classes and moved into the development of our learning journey around Food Production bringing a local flavour, real life examples and opportunities for students to understand more the skills involved and the local training and employment within this sector.
More recently as a STEM Education Officer we worked with numerous STEM Ambassadors within the Life Sciences Sector as part of a professional learning opportunity for practitioners from primary and secondary sectors. At the Life Sciences Writing Day practitioners engaged with leading industry partners from global and new start-up companies within this sector; visited TC Biopharm whose current work includes clinical trials for a cancer cure and had the opportunity to collaborate with colleagues and industry partners to produce resources for your own classroom that were shared nationally on STEMnation.scot
In both of these cases we worked with STEM Ambassadors to create innovative approaches to the curriculum that inspire young people; enthuse them about the potential in the sector, contextualise and connect their learning to the world of work.
