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Education and Careers

Posted in Science Politics with tags , , , , , on March 16, 2010 by telescoper

The piece I posted a few days ago about the effect of recent cuts in Astronomy funding by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) has generated quite a lot of comment so I thought I’d try to open up the debate by adding a few comments of my own. I’ve made some of them before and I know many of my colleagues disagree entirely with them, but I think they might prove useful in stimulating some further dialogue.

Of course the backdrop to this discussion is the decision by STFC to impose heavy cuts on the funding it sets aside for the “exploitation” of astronomical facilities. This funding, primarily in the form of research grants awarded to University groups, is used among other things to support early career researchers as postdoctoral research assistants on short-term contracts. Although its own advisory panels were unanimous in placing such funding the highest priority in the recent consultation exercise, STFC Executive  nevertheless decided to impose additional cuts this year. This decision, made very late in the cycle of grant awards, has led to many groups having their budgets slashed from 1st April 2010. Many young researchers facing a very uncertain future, with many of them facing redundancy in a few months.

The fallout from STFC’s financial collapse  has brought to a head a crisis that has been brewing for several years, but in my view it is symptomatic of wider problems within UK science as a whole. There are many problems, but I think the biggest problem with astronomy in particular is that we drastically overproduce PhDs. Even in times of plenty there were too many people competing for too few postdoctoral positions. Now that STFC has decided it wants to cut the number of working astronomers by more than 25% this looming problem has become a full-scale disaster. Many of the most talented scientists in the UK are certain to leave for greener pastures and few will ever return.

The argument I’ve heard over and over again is that training so many people to the level of a PhD in astronomy is good because the skills acquired will benefit the wider economy as those that fail to find a job as a postdoctoral researcher move into other areas, such as finance or industry.

I am not convinced by this argument. I think what we’re doing is producing large number of highly intelligent yet extremely disgruntled scientists who feel – quite rightly – that they’ve been duped into taking on a PhD when they are unlikely to be able to make use of it in their future careers unless they go abroad.

What we’re also doing is deluding ourselves about the quality of a PhD. The UK system produces too many PhDs who are not sufficiently experienced or skilled to take the next step onto a postdoctoral position. Of course there are exceptions, but generally speaking we produce too many PhDs too few of whom have any realistic chance of making a career in science research. The reason for this is that despite the introduction of 4-year degrees in subjects like physics, the UK undergraduate degree is not fit for the purpose of training a scientific researcher.

You may find that harsh, and maybe it is, but I think it’s true.

What I think the UK economy does require is more science graduates (including more physicists) rather than more science post-graduates. I believe we need a radical overhaul in the entire system of science education from undergraduate  through to postdoctoral level.

I have said it before and I’ll no doubt say again that I think we need something similar to what the Bologna process is designed to achieve. This essentially means a 3-year Bachelors degree, followed (for some) by a two-year Masters, then for a subset of them a 3 year PhD.

I think the structure of funding for university courses needs to change in order that we produce more graduates with BSc degrees. Passage from that qualification to a MSc should be highly selective, so fewer such degrees would be awarded. The final selection to a PhD should be more selective still. I’m sure the influx of MSc graduates this system would generate into the wider economy would produce a greater benefit to society as large than the current system, and at a lesser cost.

I’d suggest that in the particular case of astronomy we should be producing about half the PhDs nationally that we do at present.

What about the next step, the postdoctoral research assistantship or fellowship? I hope that STFC can be persuaded to reverse its recent savage cuts in the budget that supports such positions but the government and STFC Executive are showing no inclination to change their position. The current situation for PDRAs is grim. The number of positions available is small and funding for these is insecure.

My first suggestion will probably lead in time to a reduction in the number of  people competing for postdoctoral positions but will not in itself make a career in science seem more attractive.

I think the government also needs to guarantee the stability of  research grant funding over a longer timescale than the current 3-year cycle. Rolling grants used to do this, to some extent anyway, but these have for all practical purposes been abandoned by STFC. I think we need ring-fenced protection for grant funding to be installed at a high level of the Research Council structure to prevent individual research councils playing God with the careers of junior scientists.

I don’t in fact have a problem with the principle that scientists should serve apprenticeships in the form of fixed-term contracts as postdoctoral researchers. What is wrong is that the instability of current funding makes survival in the current system a lottery.

And finally, though it doesn’t really fit with my other comments, I have some advice for young scientists. Your best chance of securing a permanent job in the long run is by being good, not by being shy. Put yourself about. Get involved in teaching – you’ll almost certainly need to do it in a future career, so embrace it. Do outreach work. Work hard at your research. Believe in yourself.

If you don’t, nobody else will.

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Education. Education. Education.

Posted in Science Politics with tags , , on March 2, 2010 by telescoper

I can’t believe it. It’s an outrage. My world has fallen apart. Everything I used to believe in now stands in ruins.The unthinkable has happened. The Conservative Party has had a good idea.

Actually several. 

This is from the Guardian’s coverage of the story:

A Conservative government would immediately overhaul the national curriculum in English, maths and science – and hand control of A-level exam content to universities and academic experts to end “political control” , the shadow education secretary, Michael Gove, said today.

Every child would get the chance to study all three science subjects – physics, chemistry and biology – separately at GCSE and there would be a return to disciplines such as geometry and algebra in tests for 11-year-olds.

The Tories would abolish the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency (QCDA), the quango in charge of curriculum design, and benchmark the exams sat by children in England against those taken by young people across the world.

Outlining his plan in a speech to the annual conference of the Advisory Committee for Mathematics Education (Acme), Gove suggested that calculus be restored to A-level physics, and statistical concepts such as randomness and prediction – which have been key to understanding the financial crisis – be part of the GCSE curriculum for the brightest students.

“We will make a radical change to the way in which A-levels are designed,” Gove said. “We must ensure that A-levels are protected from devaluation at the hands of politicians. The institutions with the greatest interest in maintaining standards at A-level are those which receive A-level students – our universities.

“The individuals with the keenest interest in ensuring A-levels require the depth of knowledge necessary to flourish at university are our teaching academics. So we will take control of the A-level syllabus and question-setting process out of the hands of bureaucrats and instead empower universities, exam boards, learned societies and bodies like Acme.”

The national curriculum would be reformed to specify core knowledge “based on global evidence for what children can and should learn at different ages”, with changes to be introduced from September 2011.

Science would be divided into the disciplines of physics, chemistry and biology, rather than the hybrid headings currently used, which include “chemical and material behaviour” and “the environment, earth and universe”.

“When we reconstruct the national curriculum, we will ensure that it is built around a basic entitlement to study each of these scientific disciplines in a proper, rigorous fashion,” Gove said.

“We will ensure that each of the three basic sciences takes its place within the curriculum, in significantly greater depth and greater detail than now. Studying what has now become known as triple science should not be an elite activity but a basic curriculum entitlement.”

There isn’t much  in this that I would disagree with. The only thing that makes me nervous is that  abolishing the QCDA and handing over curriculum control to Universities may simply be a cost-cutting measure. I can see a strong possibility that we might have to take on this duty for free at a time when we’re threatened with big cuts in our research and teaching funds.

I’d also say that I think we’d be better off scrapping A-levels entirely – they’re damaged beyond repair, in my view. “Benchmarking” could be achieved quite easily by making British students take the International Baccalaureate.

These things aside, I would strongly endorse the statement that a proper science education should be an entitlement not a privilege. People might sneer at the reintroduction of geometry into the syllabus but I think it’s an excellent idea. Too much education these days consists of the rote-learning of snack thoughts in bit-sized factoid pieces. Too little involves nurturing brains to exploit their full potential to do things other than act as memory devices.  Education is there to help people learn to apply rigorous logical thinking as well as exercising its creative problem-solving powers. Doing classical Euclidean geometry is a wonderful way to develop the idea of a mathematical proof and, in my view, cutting it out of the school syllabus was a very retrograde step and one that should be reversed as soon as possible.

We’ve been going backwards in science education for far too long. Educationalists have convinced our schools that today’s students are not sufficiently intelligent to do science or mathematics and must instead be content to reproduce it. That’s an insult to the intelligence of the younger generation and it means Universities have to do a great deal of remedial teaching before they can get on and do things properly.

I’m no Conservative, but there’s no doubt in my mind that New Labour lost the plot a long time ago so I think the Tory plans are to be applauded.

Not that I’m going to vote for them.

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Scientists in Residence

Posted in Biographical, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on February 23, 2010 by telescoper

I’ve managed to get through the hectic  first couple of days of what promises to be a very hectic week without feeling too much of the strain, which is quite a pleasant surprise given my advancing senility.

This week a whole bunch of Cardiff astronomers are taking part in a Scientists in Residence scheme at Monkton Combe School which nestles in among the lovely hills in the picturesque countryside near Bath. The idea was to try to give the pupils some sort of idea what it’s like being a scientist – specifically an astronomer – by having an intensive series of teaching sessions run by scientists who visit the school for several days running.  A whole range of different types have taken part, from graduate students and postdoctoral researchers all the way down to Professors. Some, in fact, have been staying overnight there too.; it’s a boarding school, in fact.

As with most things these days, I’ve been a bit of a freeloader in this thing – the course materials were prepared by others, principally Chris North, so all I had to do was turn up and lend a hand on the day. Members of the department with duties at Cardiff have only been able to go for part of the time and even that has meant, for me at least, a bit of dashing backwards and forwards on the train. On Monday I had a full complement of meetings, lectures and exercise classes in Cardiff before heading off to Bath to give an evening lecture on The Big Bang to what turned out to be quite a large and attentive audience of sixth-form students. When I finished I had to get the train back to Cardiff – about 70 minute journey – in order to be able to give Columbo his evening insulin fix in good time.

This morning I was up at six to get the train again to Bath – after doing the necessary with Columbo again – in order to take part in a classroom session where we took the students through activities centred around the idea of using the orbital motions of astronomical objects to work out masses. I found this very interesting. On the one hand the students were keen and very easy to interact with, but on the other this experience reinforced the impression that today’s A-level physics students are given a syllabus that is diluted beyond all recognition compared with what older generations of physicists learned. Even in a private school, with excellent laboratoty facilities and highly motivated teachers, it is difficult for todays 16-18 year olds to learn anything meaningful about what physics is really like.

Not having kids of my own, I’ve only observed the changes in educational standards over the last decade indirectly, so this couple of days was a bit of a reality check for me. Unless someone can be persuaded to force schools to teach science properly again, university lecturers will have to carry on doing what is essentially remedial teaching.

Anyway, I’ve found the last couple of days very interesting and I hope the others taking part in the week will enjoy it as much as I did.

You might reasonably ask why a bunch of University academics – mainly funded by the taxpayer – should be running backwards and forwards organizing activities for a posh private school? The mercenary answer is, of course, that some of the kids we’ve been talking to might actually turn into Cardiff undergraduates one day and even if only one does so, the income that generates for the School of Physics & Astronomy more than pays for the number of person-hours we have put in. But even if that doesn’t happen it’s still worth it. Our plan is to offer this type of activity to all kinds of schools in  local areas, not only for our own recruitment, but also for the general purpose of “outreach”, communicating an interest in science in the society beyond academia. This week is the first time we’ve done it. Undoubtedly some things will work and others won’t. This week we will iron out some of the problems before we take it on the road to more challenging audiences.

It will need to be a good show if it is to go down well in the Valley Comprehensives, and what better way to improve it than to practice on the rich kids?

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Factoid-based Learning

Posted in Books, Talks and Reviews, The Universe and Stuff with tags , on March 16, 2009 by telescoper

There’s a post over on cosmic variance that asks the question What is Scientific Literacy? Some of the comments reminded me of a book review I did for Nature a while ago, so I thought I’d put it on here.

My point is that teaching science isn’t about teaching facts, it’s about trying to develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
At least that’s what it should be, if only the dumbers-down would stop meddling.

BOOK REVIEWED Heavenly Errors: Misconceptions about the Real Nature of the Universe

by Neil F. Comins

Columbia University Press: 2001. 288 pp. $27.95, £18.95

Astronomy is a curious subject to teach. Even the most unpromising fledgling scientist has probably, at some stage, looked at the night sky and wondered about the meaning of it all. Students usually therefore enter the classroom with some preconceived notions about astronomical matters. These notions are often naïve, sometimes inaccurate, and occasionally downright bogus. The teaching of astronomy does not, therefore, begin with a blank piece of paper, as it does with other topics in physical science, but with the correction of misconceptions that may be deeply held.

In Heavenly Errors, Neil F. Comins illustrates the ambivalent consequences of astronomy’s peculiar allure with a series of commonly held misconceptions, misunderstandings and errors of logic. It is a promising idea for a book, particularly when the author has enlisted the willing help of thousands of undergraduate students to compile a list of frequently held wrong ideas about the Solar System and beyond. It is interesting to read of the origins of these misconceptions: Hollywood movies, astrology, the Internet and bad reporting of science all share some of the blame. But it’s even more interesting to look at the different kinds of misconception and what they tell us about the chasm that often lies between scientific thinking and the ‘common-sense’ reasoning they represent.

Ask why the weather is colder in the winter and you may well get the reply that, because its orbit is elliptical, the Earth is further from the Sun during winter than it is during summer and therefore receives less of the Sun’s power at that time of year. This explanation fails to explain why the Southern Hemisphere experiences summer at the same time as the Northern Hemisphere experiences winter, that is, at the same stage of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun. Talking through the logic of this example with students not only corrects the misconception, but also illustrates the scientific method by examining other necessary consequences of a given explanation before settling on the correct one. In this case, it is to do with the varying length of day and angle of the Sun in the sky.

Many of the examples presented by Comins are simple errors of fact. For example, “Polaris is the brightest star in the night sky”, comes in at number 8 in the top 50 Cosmic Clangers (it is Sirius). Many others do not justify being called misconceptions at all. Time travel, which Comins takes to be self-evidently impossible, is not, as he claims, excluded by the general theory of relativity. On the other hand, he states that black holes are definitely not black because they give off Hawking radiation — this despite the fact that Hawking radiation has not yet been observed in an astronomical object.

And what is a misconception anyway? Contrary to popular belief, planetary orbits are not circular, and yet circles provide a useful approximate description for many purposes. We are told that they are actually elliptical, but this is itself an approximation that ignores perturbations from other bodies and relativistic effects. Most scientific explanations are misconceptions if you view them like this.

Much of the early part of Heavenly Errors is excellent, particularly its explanations of the basic astronomical properties of the Sun, planets and comets. But further on, the book goes badly off the rails. Through its conflation of fact and theory, and its blurring of the distinction between truth and approximation, it turns into a misguided crusade that encourages the rote learning of factoids as a means to “acquire a sound scientific foundation for understanding nature”. I think this does more harm than good. T. H. Huxley, who knew a thing or two about science, put it best: “irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.”

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