In the past 25 years school-university partnerships have undergone a transition from ad hoc to strategic partnerships. Over the previous two-and-a-half-years we have worked in partnership with teachers and pupils from the Denbigh Teaching School Alliance in Milton Keynes, UK. Our aims have been to encourage the Open University and local schools in Milton Keynes to value, recognise and support school-university engagement with research, and to create a culture of reflective practice. Through our work we have noted a lack of suitable planning tools that work for researchers, teachers and pupils
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Richard HollimanGareth Davies
resourceresearchProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
This commentary shares a personal ‘learning curve’ of a science communication researcher about the impact of (playful) tools and processes for inclusive deliberation on emerging techno-scientific topics in the contemporary era of two-way science and technology communication practices; needed and desired in responsible research and innovation (RRI) contexts. From macro-level impacts that these processes are supposed to have on research and innovation practices and society, as encouraged by the RRI community, the author discovers more about ‘micro-level’ impacts; through conversations with peers
Modern technology and innovation research needs to analyse and collect users’ requirements from the outset of the project’s design, according to the Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) approach. Bringing in new services without involving end-users in the whole research process does not make for optimal results in terms of scientific, technological and economic impact. This commentary reports on research experience of stakeholder involvement and co-production in Italy, implemented in Earth Observation downstream services at regional level. It reports the participative approach and method
Between 2010 and July 2015, a group of researchers at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge and the National Maritime Museum were engaged in an Arts & Humanities Research Council-funded project “The Board of Longitude 1714–1828: Science, innovation and empire in the Georgian world”. The project team included a dedicated Public Engagement Officer whose role was to engage audiences with the outputs of the research project. The National Maritime Museum celebrated the 300th anniversary of the 1714 Longitude Act with a major exhibition, Ships, Clocks & Stars
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Katherine McAlpine
resourceresearchProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The drive for impact from research projects presents a dilemma for science communication researchers and practitioners — should public engagement be regarded only as a mechanism for providing evidence of the impact of research or as itself a form of impact? This editorial describes the curation of five commentaries resulting from the recent international conference
‘Science in Public: Research, Practice, Impact’. The commentaries reveal the issues science communicators may face in implementing public engagement with science that has an impact; from planning and co-producing projects with
NSF’s CRPA program, now archived, provided grants to researchers that enabled them to partner with organizations to conduct media-based and other outreach to increase public engagement in and understanding of science. This project, undertaken by Vox Television with Michele Korf and Associates (MKA), assessed the results of these grants to identify successful practices and lessons learned, and aggregate findings to productively inform and support current and future efforts of this kind. The key objectives of the work have been to identify approaches that broaden reach, increase the
With support from the National Science Foundation’s Science Learning+ initiative, Twin Cities Public Television (TPT), in St. Paul, MN, in collaboration with a team of researchers in the US and the UK organized a workshop with the title Affinity Spaces for Informal Science Learning: Developing a Research Agenda. Our goal was to develop and refine a set of concepts and issues that will guide future investigations into how participation in online affinity spaces can promote and enable informal science learning. The workshop took place on July 6th and 7th, 2015, ahead of the Games+Learning
After being cosseted by the media for what they incorrectly considered to be a scientific feat, the author found himself widely boycotted by the more “responsible” media. The reason for this was his critical view of the evolution of science, which he felt had become a tool at the service of innovation, and, therefore, of industrial interests. The traditional image of science, which serves to help us to understand the world, still persists despite being perverted by commercial interests, because it is defended by naive people as well as by lobbies, themselves responsible for this debasement
The organization and functioning of research have radically changed over the last 10 or 20 years, as a result of a determined political action. The activism of some scientists, during this period, has failed to significantly alter this trend. So far. Today, New Public Management is triumphant. It has been implemented by a category of former scientists who have become administrators, evaluators, organizers. As a result, the prime role of scientific publications is no longer to exchange scientific information but to allow a measure of scientific production, and to rank the principal
Knowledge is not static or unique. It can be exchanged between activists, academia and policy circles: from science to activism and from activism to science. Existing scientific knowledge is being used by activists to expose wrongdoings or improve practices and knowledge in environmental and health conflicts. Activists can either adopt scientific knowledge and data in their own argumentations or produce new scientific knowledge either by becoming scientists themselves or in co-operation with experts. Local and scientific knowledge is being combined to challenge government policies and the
This commentary explores a traditionally supposed boundary between science and politics, with particular attention to activist scientists who engage in public communication. Work in fields like science and technology studies shows that framing this boundary in terms of epistemological rules fails. Boundaries dictating proper scientific activities are at best pragmatic, context-dependent, and fluid. Certainly, certain kinds of politics can undermine the integrity of scientific knowledge, but it is imperative to recognize that all science is political. As we see with activist climate scientists
The validity of citizen science conducted by community activists is often questioned because of the overt values that activists bring to their investigations. But value judgments are a necessary part of even the best academic science, and scientists whose findings suggest the need for policy action can learn from the example of citizen scientists. Communicating clearly about value judgments in science would give the public a better basis for distinguishing between responsible and irresponsible research on controversial issues.