Mike Watts is Professor of Education in the Department of Education at Brunel University London. He conducts ‘naturalistic’ people-orientated research principally in science and STEM education, public understanding of science, and in scholarship in higher education. He has conducted major studies in both formal and informal educational settings in the UK and abroad, and has published widely through numerous books, journal articles and conference papers. He leads in the Department on Knowledge Transfer and Knowledge Exchange, enjoys exploring new technologies for learning, and writing about creative (sometimes transgressive!) pedagogical approaches to learning and teaching. He teaches at all levels within the Department of Education and currently supervises 8 PhD students.
Resumo da apresentação
Título: Stories of success: advancing people’s (and pupils’) STEM literacy.
This talk uses phenomenographic narrative to present the lived experiences of people: their ‘STEM life stories’. I chart the experiences of adults in the general public as they meet issues of science and technology in their everyday lives and coin the term autobioracy to capture these oral accounts. I use data from four cases, Abi, Barbara, Colin and David to illustrate their re-engagement with elements of STEM – having long since disengaged with early formal school-based science and technology. I explore the ways in which they construct assemblages in their descriptions and explanations of the science and technology they encounter – and then how this all relates to the formal education of younger generations.