Raising enthusiasm for learning

Marcus du Sautoy is the second holder of the Charles Simonyi Chair in the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford. Established in 1995, the Chair aims to communicate science to the public. Known for his dynamic lectures, Professor du Sautoy is the author of The Music of the Primes, the story of a mathematical mystery, and presented The Story of Maths on BBC Four.
 
Marcus’s Marvellous Mathemagicians - or M³ - was set up in 2009 to help show secondary school pupils what fun maths can be. The students run workshops designed by Professor du Sautoy are based on some of his most popular lectures. 

In March each year, as part of National Science Week, the University runs a Science Roadshow taking workshops and lectures, free of charge to schools in Oxfordshire. Scientists are given the opportunity to enthuse students about the excitement of scientific discovery and to explain how their research relates to everyday life.

Those who have taken part include entomologist Dr George McGavin, as seen on BBC’s Land of the Lost Jaguar and Land of the Lost Volcano.  He guided school children through the role insects play in the world’s ecosystem, and the importance of the conservation of tropical rain-forests for the planet's survival.

Oxford’s Department of Physics works hard to promote its subject in schools. Accelerate!, for example, is a popular and hair-raising particle physics science show currently travelling the country – recently playing to 900 pupils over three days in Leeds and York.

The ‘Teaching and Learning Physics in Schools’ option for Physics undergraduates places students in local secondary schools as an assessed course module. Run in partnership with the Department of Educational Studies, the module aims to encourage high-quality Physics students to consider a career teaching the subject.

‘The Galaxy Zoo’ project, launched in 2007 as a collaboration between Oxford and other universities, gives the public the opportunity to help academics classify the millions of galaxies captured by telescopes. Before users are let loose on real scientific data, they are given a short online training session which teaches them the difference between spiral, elliptical and irregular galaxies.  Users of Galaxy Zoo have made exciting astronomical discoveries, including a teacher whose discovery was named after him. Galaxy Zoo received more than 50 million classifications in the first year, from almost 150,000 people. 

Getting out into schools and museums and having school students visit the Department of Chemistry is all in a day’s work for members of the Chemistry department’s teaching team and researchers.

School science teachers also get a chance to refresh their hands-on experiments when they spend time in the chemistry teaching labs as part of the University-sponsored Teachers’ Week in the summer holidays.

With the study of Classics declining in British schools, reaching young people who could go on to love the subject is more important than ever. The Classics faculty’s Discover Classics outreach programme runs fun, informative events and activities and promotes imaginative ways to think beyond the confines of curricular Classics. Both primary and secondary schools are visited, and Discover Classics also co-ordinates tuition for mature students and distance-learners, and organises local and national events for the promotion of Classics, History and Modern Foreign Languages. All its outreach events and services are offered free of charge to state schools.

This project is aimed at school year 11 pupils who could benefit from support with modern languages from Oxford students. With a particular focus on the GCSE syllabus there is an emphasis on raising attainment with regards to speaking skills. 

Student recruits for projects such as a modern foreign languages mentors are recruited through Volunteering Fox, an on-line site for voluntary projects run by the University of Oxford. Please see www.volunteeringfox.co.uk for more information. 

OUP has developed an innovative new school improvement programme called Project X, which aims to raise the achievement of boys in literacy, and improve their behaviour and engagement in school life.  In January 2000, OUP launched its Get Boys Reading campaign, which includes subsidised training events for teachers on strategies that work with boys.  OUP is a partner of the National Literacy Trust and their Reading Champions programme which has similar aims.  Reading Champions uses leading male sports stars as role models for reading, so encourage boys who feel reading is not for them.  It also helps schools encourage men into schools as volunteer reading assistants.

Promoting public engagement in science, the centre’s activities include DNA workshops in schools, which allow the students to extract their own DNA; a summer holiday competition designed to get students thinking about the future evolution and development of humans; and an online project, ‘How unique are you?’, which explains the genetics of inherited traits and which has attracted more than 4000 visitors in the first four months.