Smashing stereotypes: giving every child a fair start in science

This week is British Science Week, a ten-day celebration of science, technology, engineering and maths which takes place between 7-16 March 2025. One of the week’s key themes is ‘smashing stereotypes’, which encourages us to consider two questions:

• Why doesn’t every child get a fair chance of success in learning science?

• What actions can we take in the early years to make a difference?

A 2017 report prepared for the EEF and the Royal Society argues that we need to intensify early intervention efforts to ensure that every child can succeed in science.

The British Science Week campaign asks us ‘what do you imagine when you’re asked what a scientist looks like? Are you picturing lab coats, goggles, and conical flasks? How about the person? Are they a White man with grey hair, who resembles Albert Einstein?’

It is particularly timely to ask these questions this week, when we learned that boys are out-performing girls in science in English schools, according to data from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). Similarly, the 2017 report for the EEF and the Royal Society notes that there is a learning gap in science between disadvantaged children and their peers at every stage in the English school system.

Smashing those stereotypes is about challenging many prevalent attitudes, and ensuring that every child can access the learning in science lessons so they see themselves as a scientist from a young age.

Young children in the early years love to explore and investigate: fostering confident and inquisitive attitudes from a young age is important. As the EEF’s guide to Improving Primary Science says, many educators ‘will understand the joy of sparking pupils’ curiosity and motivating them to explore a subject more deeply’. Both attainment and attitudinal outcomes are important.

However, that confidence may not develop if educators in the early years merely take a ‘hands-off’ approach to children’s exploration and learning. As the New Zealand government’s review on Science in the Early Years comments:

‘When teachers introduce scientific concepts, using the correct terminology for those concepts, they promote children’s scientific thinking and knowledge. This helps children share their thinking and explore ideas. It helps move their thinking from “everyday” concepts to “scientific” concepts. Using scientific terms is likely to help children understand that they are “doing science”.’

That suggests that we need to ensure three things, from the early years:

1. Encourage every child to join in with explorations and investigations
   
2. Support children’s investigations through teaching and modelling vocabulary: for example, using terms like ‘melting’ as children watch ice cubes turn to water
   
3. Explicitly teach and model science-specific vocabulary, like ‘investigation’ or ‘experiment’

Moving beyond the ‘everyday’ also means helping children to become aware of their scientific misconceptions. For example, it is common for children to imagine that heavier objects will fall faster to the ground than light objects. In their excellent study, Venkadasalam and Ganea (2018) show how this common misconception can be challenged with high-quality picture books (fiction and informational). Children who enjoyed the books also learnt that when we investigate the question scientifically, we conclude that weight does not affect the speed of an object’s fall.

Tackling inequality means starting early and intervening to make sure that no groups of children are left behind. During British Science Week, we can usefully pause and reflect on our efforts to ensure that every child, from a young age, feels confident not only about exploring their world, but about ‘being a scientist’.