Creative Science workshops
10 December 2003
The Wellcome Trust and the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) have launched a new scheme to support the development and piloting of new and exciting continuing professional development (CPD) courses for science teachers and other science support staff in schools. 'Creative Science' aims to enable science teachers to keep abreast of new areas of research and learn new teaching techniques.
As well as creative and innovative courses from existing CPD providers, the Wellcome Trust and DfES are hoping to encourage creative partnerships between science training organisations and those skilled and experienced in providing training in different academic disciplines, such as the arts and humanities, science in society, citizenship and new media.
'Creative Science' will fund the development and piloting of up to 25 courses across all ages (5 to 19 years) and scientific disciplines. Courses might focus on the incorporation of cutting-edge science and teaching methods into the curriculum, or enabling teachers to develop their investigative and discursive skills, for example. Successful courses are likely to be offered to science teachers and technicians through the Wellcome Trust/DfES national network of science learning centres.
To kick off the initiative, two information and networking days were held in March. The aim of the days was to inspire teachers' training providers to be creative and innovative in their thinking, to look at what different disciplines can contribute to science educators' training - and to facilitate new and productive partnerships, which could lead to innovative applications to 'Creative Science'.
