Helping Teachers to Discover Materials
In the first few weeks of 2025 we have helped raise awareness of Materials Science and Engineering amongst teachers buy attending the Association for Science Educators conference in Nottingham and delivering a CPD session at the Salters Festival of Chemistry.
The ASE 2025 Conference was held over three days at the University of Nottingham (9th – 11th January) and we spoke to more than 200 primary and secondary school teachers, technicians and other involved with science education. We took along our busking box and gave out posters, to be hung in classrooms, and small photochromic materials kits and discussed how help teacher enthuse their students about Materials Science and Engineering. There was also hug interest in our Let’s Move to the Moon boxes and some great feedback from teacher to help us develop free, online CPD sessions for teachers.
On 22nd January we visited the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton to deliver a teacher CPD session as part of the Salter’s Festival of Chemistry. We engaged with a fantastic group of secondary school teachers (whilst their students were doing practical in the labs) by introducing MSE, flagging up relevant content in the secondary school curriculum before running through some hands on activities for them to use in the classroom such breaking paperclips (to demonstrate work hardening and fatigue failure), different ways of breaking wafer biscuits and hands on demonstrations of smart materials.