IntroductionTeachers are encouraged to prepare children forcareers they may undertake in the future that donot yet exist (e.g. Rocard et al, 2007). Creatingresilient learners who are problem­solvers, able togather and assess data, can work in teams and ontheir own, will facilitate just some of the traits thatsupport children in any future career, whether ornot it now exists (e.g. Archer et al, 2010). Providinga wide range of experiences, including outdoorlearning, can also aid students in theiradvancement and preparation for the future.

It would be great to use current science research as exemplars and stimuli for teachers when doingscience at primary school level. This would alsohelp to prepare children for the future and enrichtheir science experience. But how can we achievethis? We could look at the news and follow up onrelevant science articles, but this limits what wemight look at. How can we obtain access to thescience research in more detail if we need or wantto? We could use the Internet or social media totrack down articles, but where would we start?Would we be able to understand the science if wecould, and how could we be sure that sources arereliable? Do we have the time or confidence to linkthis science to an investigation or discussion at aprimary school level?

In an emerging project, PSTT (Primary ScienceTeaching Trust) Fellows (teachers who have wonthe UK Primary Science Teacher of the Year Award)(Shallcross et al, 2015) who have obtained a PhD ina science discipline and are now primary schoolteachers have been working with the PSTT CEO,who is a university­based scientist, to gathertogether recent research papers containingscience, which can be used as exemplars in primaryschool science. In this article, we briefly look atsome of these articles and discuss their impact onthe emergent science understanding of children inthe class. We define ‘cutting­edge science research’here as research papers that have been publishedwithin the last two years in peer­reviewed journals.

MethodologyAccess to current research is changing, as manyjournals are now open access, meaning that anyonecan go to the journal website and read the papers.However, this is a time­consuming process and thereis no guarantee that it will yield a paper that matcheswith the primary science curriculum in any country,let alone in the UK. Therefore, we have established ateam of primary school teachers who have beenresearch scientists and, working with them, PSTT isnow building up a bank of research papers that havebeen summarised into an accessible article, togetherwith ideas for investigations that can be carried outin the classroom and which support students inunderstanding the research paper. At present, thesearticles appear in the PSTT Why and How newsletter,but PSTT aims to publish an article on its website atleast once every month from September 2019.

Exemplar articlesGreenland sharks (Shallcross, 2017)In this paper, students are told how, in 2016,Professor Julius Nielsen (Nielsen et al, 2016) andcolleagues published a paper in which they

Cutting-edge science research and its impact on primary schoolchildren’s scientific inquiry

Practitioner–Researcher Article JES17 Summer 2019 page 40

l Alison J. Trew l Lucy Bird l Craig Early l Rebecca Ellisl Tim G. Harrison l Julia Nash l Katherine Pemberton l Paul Tyler l Dudley E. Shallcross

AbstractCutting­edge science research can provideincredible stimulus to primary school children’semergent ideas in science. Devising scienceinvestigations that are allied to this cutting­edgescience research helps to contextualise research. In this paper, we describe the methodology used towrite articles for a primary school audience andsome preliminary observations of class activitiesand responses.

estimated that Greenland sharks could live fornearly 400 years. They worked out a way to use thelength of the shark to estimate its age and themethodology is discussed in the accessible article(Shallcross, 2017). What was the impact on thechildren in covering this paper? In a Year 5 class(age 10), the children were told about the sharksand how the scientists worked out their age andwere challenged to see whether they couldconstruct a graph of age versus height from themembers of the class. They were then asked if theycould use a graph developed from the study toallow them to work out someone’s age if they knewthe person’s height.

Figure 1 shows the graph that Class A in Year 5constructed. Firstly, working in threes, the childrenmeasured each other’s heights and checked theircalculated age. Secondly, they added their data toa spreadsheet and plotted the graph. At this stage,some points looked very different from the rest.This was because, for one student, the height hadbeen measured in inches not centimetres and, foranother, the age of the child was 365 days too few.Once rectified, the graph was drawn and used towork out the age of other children and staff. Theage estimates for children in other classes werereasonable, but the estimates for the teachers wereflattering (i.e. all were too young). The childrenwondered about the intercept and what that

meant? How could you be about 66 cm tall whenyou were born? The children researched the lengthof newborn babies and found out that this is onaverage about 50 cm. So, not unreasonable, butprobably a bit large – maybe the children in thisclass were much taller than average? Theyconsidered whether they were longer than averageas babies and why the adult’s height was not agood predictor of their age. Again, this promptedsome interesting discussions, where the childrennoted that people stop growing when they becomeadults, and some suggested that this is why we callpeople ‘adults’. They then compared this findingwith the Greenland shark, which continues to growthroughout its life. Numerous questions wereposed and discussed by the children, such as whydoes the shark live for so long? Is there somethingspecial about the waters around Greenland? Doother sharks live that long? Other interestingdiscussions were prompted by the large number ofresearchers who contributed to the research andthe fact that they were from many differentcountries. The children wondered why they were allneeded and how they managed to work together.

Making drinking water from salty water using a molecular sieve (Shallcross, 2018a)In 2017, Professor Rahul Nair and his team fromManchester University published a paper showingthat it was possible to use graphene nanotubes

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Figure 1: Plot of the relationship between age and height in Class A.

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(see Shallcross, 2018a for an explanation) toseparate salt from seawater. There is still a longway for the research to go to develop a commercialdevice that can be used by people, but the principleis exciting and, if it can work, it will make drinkingwater available to many people around the world.

This research was introduced to children in a Year 2 (age 7) class. They discussed what a sieve was and how it might be used to purify water. The children then got into teams and made theirown sieves from a wide range of materials and used them to separate a wide range of mixtures.Figure 2 shows some examples of the sieves thatthe children in Year 2 devised.

The children had access to whatever they couldfind in the class to make their sieves. They foundobjects that were already sieve­like, they testedmaterials to see whether they could weave theminto a sieve (as they had noted that fabric mightmake the best sieve: fabric has holes and is woven),they constructed tube­like sieves out of Lego andtested whether objects would pass cleanly throughor get stuck. One child observed that, if a tube was‘wiggly’, objects would be more likely to get stuckand therefore would make a better sieve. Thechildren tried to make the holes as small as possiblebut still let water through. Once they had madetheir sieves, they tested them with dirty water.

As you might guess, some sieves worked better than others and more questions were then posed.The children carried out their own investigationsand came up with a variety of conclusions. Theylinked these conclusions back to their initialpredictions themselves, avidly trying to explain thescience. The teacher had a ‘wow’ moment here, asthis normally requires a teacher to explain to 6 and7 year­olds what is happening.

Planetary hide and seek: is there a ninth planet inthe Kuiper Belt? (Shallcross, 2018b)The Kuiper Belt is a ring of rocks of varying sizes atthe edge of our solar system, beyond the planetNeptune. Scientists have wondered whether thereis a planet hiding in the Kuiper Belt – why do youthink that it is hiding? The Kuiper Belt is a long wayaway and telescopes cannot see all the rocks in thiszone. Professor Renu Malhotra and Kathryn Volkhave studied the Kuiper Belt, using a telescope, andnoticed that some objects seemed to be moving in

a strange way. The best explanation they couldprovide for their movement would be that there isa large planet nearby that is tugging on them asthey go past through the action of gravity. Throughcareful analysis, they estimated that a planetapproximately the size of Mars may be present.

In a Year 2 class, the children were told about theresearch and challenged to come up withsuggestions of how to detect the ninth planet (see Figure 3). They worked in groups of three andwere given just 20 minutes to discuss, and create apresentation. The teacher remarked that this wasone of the most exciting experiences in his/herteaching career. The wide variety of ideaspresented showed incredible understanding of andinsight into science among children in general,something that may not be revealed very easily.The children wanted to add four lenses to atelescope. A magnifying lens makes things biggerand so the more there are the more magnified the

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Figure 2: Children in Year 2 constructing different sieves.

object would be. The children also said that theywanted to send the telescope on a satellite closerto the Kuiper Belt and look at it from differentdirections. They thought about getting rid of theasteroids in the belt but then decided there werefar too many. They then used every bit of knowledgeabout space exploration, the planets and asked alot of ‘What if we did this?’­type questions.

This research was carried out by two femalescientists and this prompted some positivediscussions too. One girl said ‘I know girls can bescientists but boys are still better at finding thingsout than girls’. So, we still have work to do, even atthis young age, to break down ingrained ideas.

SummaryIn this preliminary study, we have shown how it ispossible to use cutting­edge science research in aprimary school setting. Early work suggests thatthese articles provide science experiences thathave purpose and are memorable. The teachersand children enjoyed using them and they providedyoung children with a connection to scienceresearch that is taking place now. We are nowproducing a supporting teacher guide for eacharticle. Teachers who have used these articles havestated that:

‘I used the shark paper this morning and it wasbrilliant. Having read the articles, when they carriedout their investigations, the children showed morecommitment than I’ve seen in previous enquiriesbecause they felt like they were carrying out “real”research. Additionally, pupils who did not normallyjoin in science discussions ventured suggestions.’

‘Showing the children a real article and talking aboutall the people that worked on the paper made sciencereal to them.’

‘Children remembered more about the science andthere were more wow moments for me as a teacherthan I have experienced before.’

For UK teachers, the new Ofsted frameworkencourages ‘reading across the curriculum’; thesepapers fit in really well with that and were wellreceived by the school’s senior management.

We would welcome your comments on this paperand the science articles being produced. If you are aprimary school teacher and use these articles, wewould welcome feedback, and if you have subject

areas about which you would like to have a cutting­edge science research article, please e­mail PSTTat info@pstt.org.uk. We are currently writing theteacher guides to accompany these articles andfeedback on these would be very welcome.

ReferencesAbraham, J., Kalangi, V.S., Williams,C., Kalon, G.,

Su, Y., Cherian, C., Dix, J., Prestat, E., Haigh, S.,Grigorieva, I., Carbone, P., Geim, A. & RaveendranNair, R. (2017) ‘Tuneable sieving of ions usinggraphene oxide membranes’, NatureNanotechnology, 12, 546–551

Archer, L., Dewitt, J., Osborne, J., Dillon, J., Willis,B. & Wong, B. (2010) ‘”Doing” science versus“being” a scientist: examining 10/11 year­oldschoolchildren’s constructions of science throughthe lens of identity’, Science Education, 94, 617–639

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Figure 3: Year 2 children working out ways todetect the ninth planet and presenting their ideasto the class.

Nielsen, J., Hedeholm, R.B., Heinemeier, J.,Bushnell, P.G., Christiansen, J.S.,Olsen, J., BronkRamsey, C., Brill, R.W., Simon, M., Steffensen,K.F. & Steffensen, J.F. (2016) ‘Eye lensradiocarbon reveals centuries of longevity in theGreenland shark (Somniosus microcephalus)’,Science, 353, 702–704

Rocard, M., Csermely, P., Jorde, D., Lenzen, D. &Wallberg­Henriksson, H. (2007) Science EducationNOW: A renewed Pedagogy for the Future ofEurope, Brussels: European Commission (2007).Retrieved from: https://ec.europa.eu/research/science­society/document_library/pdf_06/report­rocard­on­science­education_en.pdfAccessed 2.06.2019

Shallcross, D.E., Schofield, K.G. & Franklin, S.D.(2015) ‘The Primary Science Teaching Trust’, J.Emergent Science, (9), 8–9

Shallcross, D.E. (2017) ‘392 year­old sharkdiscovered’, Why and How newsletter, (1), 12–13https://pstt.org.uk/application/files/6215/3086/4662/PSTT_Newsletter_Autumn_2017.pdflast accessed June 2019.

Shallcross, D.E. (2018a) ‘How to clean water using amolecular sieve’, Why and How newsletter, (4),15–16 https://pstt.org.uk/application/files/2115/4080/9009/Autumn_2018_Trust_Newsletter_v7.pdf Accessed June 2019

Shallcross, D.E. (2018b) ‘Planetary hide and seek’,Why and How newsletter, (3), 16–17https://pstt.org.uk/application/files/9215/2717/2041/Newsletter_PSTT_Summer_2018.pdfAccessed June 2019

Volk, K. & Malhotra, R. (2017) ‘The curiously warpedmean plane of the Kuiper Belt’, The AstronomicalJournal, 154, 16

Alison Trew, Craig Early, Rebecca Ellis, JuliaNash, Katharine Pemberton and Paul Tyler areprimary school teachers and Fellows of the PrimaryScience Teaching Trust College.

Alison Trew is also an area mentor for PSTT.

Lucy Bird is a final year undergraduate inChemistry at the University of Bristol.

Tim Harrison is the School Teacher Fellow in theSchool of Chemistry at the University of Bristol.

Professor Dudley E. Shallcross is a Professor ofAtmospheric Chemistry at the University of Bristoland CEO of the Primary Science Teaching Trust. E­mail: dudley.shallcross@pstt.org.uk

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PRIMARY SCIENCETEACHING TRUST

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