Alison Buckler, The Open University

This post is shared from the OU's Education Futures blog.

Earlier this year I blogged about a new research project I’m working on which is trying to understand student teachers’ perceptions of themselves as agents of social justice in low income countries. The research stems from the increasingly worrying body of evidence which suggests that millions of children across the world are spending several years in school, yet learning nothing.

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Dr Leanne Gunn, The Open University
Dr Leanne Gunn, The Open University

Following the success of last year’s competition, July 2014 once again saw bottle rockets launching from the school field of Denbigh Teaching School in Milton Keynes.

Four teams of six year 9 students, each representing a different Milton Keynes school competed on the day to build two successful rockets 2 litre plastic bottles and simple craft materials.

I was working on the competition as one of the organisers, working with a team that included: Richard Holliman, Ben Dryer, Vic Pearson, and Diane Ford from the Open University, Mark Russell and Val Hawthorne from Denbigh Teaching School, and Jessica Carr who was working as an intern.

Here's how the day went...

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Photograph of Gareth Davies
Gareth Davies

Thanks to financial support from the NCCPE's Public Engagement Ambassador (PEA) programme and the Santander Universities scheme, I was able to attend the 13th Public Communication of Science and Technology (PCST) conference, held earlier this year in Brazil.

The NCCPE has published my post about the conference here on their website.

Ann Grand

I've been involved with Cafe Scientifique for over ten years now and supported volunteer organisers to set up cafes all over the world. Closer to home, we've used the cafe scientifique model to develop a series of research cafes in schools in Milton Keynes as part of our Engaging Research project.
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