This program engages local elementary students in exploring science through the development of a “showcase” project for the Southwest Ohio Science and Engineering Expo Science Fair, one of the nation’s largest student science fairs. These students are mentored by UC undergraduate and graduate students, who in turn learn how to lead effective public engagement with science activities. The group focuses on philosophy for children (p4c) style discussions, which center the students’ interests through a Community of Inquiry. The core skills cultivated through this program are:
- The ability to ask and explore questions that interest them.
- Actively listening to others in order to better understand other people’s perspectives and reasons.
- Giving voice to their own perspective and reasons clearly to others.
- Seeing how listening to other people’s perspectives can help us to better understand what different answers to our questions might look like.
In this SCI Fairs project, the Community of Inquiry approach is applied to Science Communities and Inquiry. The students explore how scientists develop knowledge through scientific methodology, the role communities and individuals play in building that knowledge, as well as the role of values in science. The group also investigates the many kinds of sciences: from physics and biology, to health sciences and social sciences like psychology and archeology, as well as engineering. UC undergraduate and graduate mentors work with students toward a “showcase” project on a science. For these showcase projects, students are asked to choose a science question, topic, or testable hypothesis that is of interest to them. Students who choose to undertake a testable hypothesis project have the opportunity to enter their work into the official Southwest Ohio Science and Engineering Science Fair.
This program is made possible by a Whiting Public Engagement Fellowship, awarded to PEWS Curriculum and Pedagogy Director Melissa Jacquart in Spring 2022, which celebrates and supports faculty in the humanities who embrace public engagement as part of the scholarly vocation. The Whiting Public Engagement Program (WPEP) is a distinctive national grant founded to champion the public humanities in all forms, and to highlight the roles scholars play in collaborative work to deploy the humanities for the public good.
The Science Fair project is also supported by the Office of Research Faculty Scholars Award, awarded to Dr. Jacquart in 2022.
Partnering with the Greater Cincinnati STEM Collaborative
Melissa Jacquart‘s Bringing Philosophy to Science Fairs project partners with the Greater Cincinnati STEM Collaborative to create lesson plans designed to introduce students to the philosophical and other humanistic aspects of science. These lessons identify themes, such as space exploration or climate change, and then deploy philosophical methods of inquiry to deeply investigate those themes. For example, students may consider how scientists’ intellectual context and world views impact the scientific method and process of discovery, or the role trust plays in the public’s understanding of scientific findings. Over the course of fifteen weeks, students develop individual projects related to the shared theme and informed by philosophical discussion.
Want to learn more or get involved? Please complete this form for updates, or email engagingscience@uc.edu!
