Mathematics is often seen as a subject that doesn’t appeal to everyone and coupled with a common belief that “I’m not a maths person”, students and teachers’ confidence levels and ability to engage with learning and teaching maths can be greatly impacted. 

Scitech’s Lighthouse Maths is a year-long professional learning program that aims to improve teacher confidence and skill by using a problem solving and reasoning approach to teaching mathematics. Across the 2022-23 year, the program included 315 Lighthouse Maths teacher sessions with 1085 and 4331 teacher and student engagements respectively.

The year-long Lighthouse Maths program focusses on developing teachers’ daily classroom practice, by encouraging students to collaborate on problems to develop an understanding of how they reached a solution rather than simply learn a method. This allows students to better understand how maths can be applied in multiple scenarios, including in everyday life, which can help them better relate and engage with the subject.

The Powerful Problem-Solving teaching approach has also had a significant impact on student learning results. By measuring student performance using ACER Pat-Maths tests and comparing the results with average students’ results, Powerful Problem-Solving students are progressing about seven months ahead of what is normally expected for a year’s growth.

Chevron has partnered with Scitech since 2021 to deliver the Lighthouse Maths program, as well as the Powerful Problem-Solving Master Series and Mystery of the Mathematical Menace.

The Powerful Problem-Solving Master Series extends teachers learning experience and aims to increase their confidence to upskill their colleagues in their own school communities. It offers four extra units on advanced classroom techniques to teachers who have already completed the Lighthouse Maths program. There were 54 teacher engagements across 13 sessions in the past year with teachers attending from 10 different schools.

The Mystery of the Mathematical Menace is an interactive and free event run as part of the Lighthouse Maths program that invites parents, carers and students together to gather clues to solve the mystery and catch the culprit. Participants enjoy a fun experience using problem-solving, collaboration and creativity, with the mathematical puzzles allowing students to use skills developed through Lighthouse Maths classroom teaching.

In 2022-23, 14 events were run in schools with the popularity of the family activity supporting an increase in parents’ and carers’ maths awareness and learning, and seeing students improve their knowledge, skills and understanding of how maths can be applied to everyday activities.

Impact

At the completion of the 2022 program, the impact was evident with teachers’ confidence in assessing reasoning increasing by 28%, teacher confidence in teaching Powerful Problem-Solving mathematics increasing by 33% and student engagement in maths lessons up by 26%.

To better support teachers in developing confidence in the use of digital technologies in the classroom, the Integrated Digital Technologies program merges best teaching practices and practical knowledge by incorporating technology to everyday learning across all subjects. Additional community events run as part of the program were designed to involve parents by making digital technologies feel safe and fun, with student STEM challenge days providing more engagement opportunities.

Supported by Woodside Energy, the program was run in Term 4, 2022, and achieved 156 teacher and 648 student engagements from eight schools. Teachers attended a launch workshop and participated in in-school consultations, along with receiving class sets of micro:bits, and student workbooks. Also delivered were the Catch a Hacker community events hosted by six schools, and additional STEM Challenge Day events, hosted by four schools.

Impact

Scitech’s Integrated Digital Technologies is revolutionary in changing teachers’ confidence with the use of digital tools in the classroom, enabling them to feel more comfortable using the technology across different subjects and in different ways. This in turn can enhance student learning and sometimes better cater for students’ individual learning needs.

Offered to one primary school each calendar year in the Pilbara region, the Future Computing program supports students’ and teachers’ engagement in Digital Technologies, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and physical computing.

Through partnering with Mitsui, a school is provided with fully funded Raspberry Pi (PiTop[4]) computers and robotics accessories. Participating teachers received support through school visits and regular online consultations and classroom collaborations with Scitech’s professional learning team for an entire school year.

In 2022 Tambrey Primary School in Karratha completed the program. St Paul’s Primary School Karratha is the focus school for 2023, where Year 4 students have been exploring concepts including binary coding, Python coding basics and using the Raspberry Pi computers to write code. Likewise, Year 5 students have also been introduced to Python coding with a focus on branching and exploring computer components.

Reach

The Future Computing program has been able to improve the accessibility of technology for students impacted by educational barriers, due to their regional location. The program enables teachers to combine existing teaching strategies with technology to empower students and provide more varied learning opportunities.

Scitech partners with 7NEWS Regional WA to support country primary school students to discover meteorology in the Schools’ Weather Wall program, through the collection of local weather data, and participation in the television weather segment.

There were 1829 primary school engagements through the Schools’ Weather Wall, across 59 participating schools this year. Schools were sent free weather measuring kits from Scitech to allow them to collect data such as temperature, rainfall, wind direction and cloud information across the whole school term. Once collected, the data is then sent to the television station so it can be included as part of the broadcast.

This initiative has had an enormous impact over the years it has been running. It provides a valuable entry point for children to take a vested interest in the weather and atmosphere and serves as an introduction to STEM. Understanding the weather can develop students’ curiosity and science inquiry skills with a topic that is relatable for primary school students. An impactful aspect of this program is the public recognition students receive when they are featured in the live news weather segment.

STEM Club is a multi-week, after school program which allows participants to explore challenging STEM concepts and develop 21st century skills in an informal, safe and fun environment. The in-depth, project-based and student led nature of STEM Club enables deep exploration, and complex learning outcomes. Provision of complimentary, healthy snacks with STEM Club helps create a collaborative and safe social environment for participants, as well as ensuring students (and teachers) have the energy and brainpower needed to grapple with complex STEM challenges.

Delivered in partnership with Woodside Energy, STEM club is delivered free of charge, with schools selected based on ICSEA (socio-economic background of students), NAPLAN results, and the school’s strategic alignment with the program. This program was delivered to 16 schools in 2022-2023, engaging 2,214 students and teachers.

STEM Club creates an environment where students can work collaboratively and be comfortable making mistakes as they plan, test and refine their projects, with one participant stating that “Making new things, making a bond with people and learning more stuff about STEM” was the highlight of the program. STEM club makes challenging STEM concepts accessible to students who may not excel or enjoy themselves in a science classroom setting.

All STEM club modules have undergone significant changes over the last year. The robotics modules boast next generation mBots with increased functionality, durability, and an easier user interface, allowing students to create and troubleshoot increasingly more complex programs. Updated Hummingbird animatronics kits likewise streamline the process for students to engage with this challenging and multi-layered project.

Parental involvement in STEM-related activities are key building blocks in a child’s science capital, which is a good indicator of their intention to continue studying STEM subjects in higher education. STEM Club supports and promotes parental involvement, by inviting parents and other family members to the final session of the program. Students can show off and celebrate their achievements, while also consolidating their learnings by having them explain and demonstrate the intricacies of their project to family members.

Impact

Students rated their STEM Club experience very highly with most enjoying the building or coding aspects of their projects, learning new things and practicing problem-solving with friends. Interestingly, while science and engineering were consistently mentioned when students were asked about STEM careers, they also talked about new job categories and jobs that help people in the real world, suggested that students learned about new career pathways through participating in STEM Club.

Scitech’s DIY Science Kits are a hireable resource for teachers in registered Western Australian schools and contain everything they need to conduct up to eight weeks’ worth of hands-on science activities and investigations in the classroom.

The DIY Kits are designed around the Western Australian Science Curriculum as developed by the School Curriculum Standards Authority (SCSA), with a DIY Science Kit for each of the science strands – Biological, Chemical, Physical and Earth & Space Sciences. This also includes Aboriginal Education Program versions of the kits for teachers predominantly in remote and regional locations. The kits contain the consumable and non-consumable resources needed to deliver the activities, along with downloadable digital resources. This format ultimately reduces time pressures on teachers having to create lesson content themselves.

In addition to the DIY Science Kits, there is also a DIY Telescope Kit, and a Robotics and Coding Kit.

There was an increase in the number of kits hired to both metropolitan and regionals schools in 2022-23, with 40 DIY Kits hired to metropolitan schools and 68 hired to regional and remote schools – of which 34 were Aboriginal Education Program DIY Kits. The continued interest in hiring the DIY Kits demonstrates the benefits this resource provides to teachers in the classroom. Teachers can make their science lessons and the explanation of scientific concepts more practical, with students able to enjoy the learning process in different areas of science through experiments and real-life investigations.

Reach

DIY Kits make learning fun and interesting. The versatility of the Scitech DIY Kits allows teachers to boost their confidence and skill in teaching science and assists in encouraging and connecting more students with STEM disciplines through enhanced and engaging lessons.

A strong digital presence increases our reach and impact by creating quality and engaging content that can appeal to a wider range of audiences and increase our visibility in the digital landscape.

Launched in 2017, Particle is Scitech’s digital media platform designed to deliver science content to the 15+ market. With an aim of celebrating science and making it relevant and approachable to WA youth, written articles are the mainstay of the publication while expanding into other content such as podcasts, newsletters, pop-up quiz nights, and social media.

This year placed a focus on publishing articles that not only satisfied the general curiosity of our audience, but ensured they aligned more closely to relevant news developments around the globe.

This change in editorial direction helped audiences get an understanding of larger national and international issues through the lens of Western Australian research. For example, the article titled Helping green hydrogen out of the lab was commissioned because of the national interest federal politicians were building around hydrogen as an energy source. Another example is, fighting bacterial infections faster, an article commissioned to highlight how WA researchers were helping to address the increasingly important issue of superbugs becoming more and more common across the globe.

Consistent figures for website page views again this year suggest that Particle is successfully identifying the issues that our target audience is curious about and communicating with them using relevant language and topics.

Reach

153,000 individual page views on Particle website.

Scitech produced its first YouTube series Toy Tear Down. Hosted by one of our enthusiastic Science communicators, Toy Tear Down dissects popular toys to reveal the science behind how they work, while linking them to real-world applications. The new video series is an innovative approach to digital content engaging primary school-aged audiences, along with their parents and carers through YouTube.

Having a dedicated YouTube channel for this series gives Scitech another opportunity to connect and share with the community which is proving popular after seeing significant growth in audience numbers and engagement.

Events are an important part of what Scitech does as we can engage not only young kids but adults as well. Scitech is in a unique position to be able to offer its own events, as well as in partnership with other organisations presenting multiple opportunities for Scitech to engage the community with STEM.

Returning to a full calendar of events this year has seen the return of some popular offerings along with the introduction of new ones. There was a concentration of shows that cater for adults which enabled Scitech to attract new audiences and re-connect with visitors who may have not been to Scitech since they were younger.

Scitech has been participating in Fringe World Festival for the last eight years and this year experienced another success with the six Dome Date night events mostly sold out. After a three-year hiatus due to COVID-19, After Dark made a comeback and was well received with a sellout crowd. The older adult demographic for this event required a more complex science offering.

Scitech partners with organisations who have a shared purpose and complementary capabilities. Launched in March, WA STEM Connect was an opportunity to bring STEM organisations together to consider the STEM ecosystem as a whole.

Astrofest
In collaboration with a festival committee, Scitech delivers Astrofest each November. This astronomy-themed festival brings together the science community, educators and the general public to celebrate and explore the night sky and universe.

RoboCup Jnr WA
Scitech, in partnership with Rio Tinto and the RoboCup Junior WA committee, has been hosting the project-based robotics competition RoboCup Junior WA since 2013. This event targets Primary and Secondary students and provides a realistic link between classroom learning and real-world application of robotics and coding.

Impact
This event is particularly important for students to have a practical environment for applying 21st century skills such as communication, problem-solving and collaboration which form the basis for students to develop their thinking, social interactions and ways of working.

Statewide delivers engaging and fun science shows and activations throughout the year at general public events, introducing and furthering STEM interest to new audiences. Scitech’s activations are tailored to each event, and include a selection of interactive STEM exhibits, facilitator led activities, maths puzzles and lawn games, as well as interactive science demonstrations and stage shows. These experiences provide children and adults a chance to play, learn and connect with each other through STEM.

At the 2022 Perth Royal Show, Scitech engaged more than 16,000 people across the 8-day event, while Scitech’s activation at the heavily rain affected WA Day Festival engaged 4,600 people, despite the second day of the festival being cancelled. New branding material was introduced at the WA Day Festival this year, ensuring a uniform aesthetic to the activation, and elevating the visual appeal and participant experience.

Other public activations include a pop-up family science zone at the Perth Concert Hall for the West Australian Symphony Orchestra (WASO)’s performance of Nature’s Symphony, the City of Belmont KidzFest and the City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder Kids Fest.

Reach
General public outreach events enable Scitech to have valuable extra opportunities to reach sections of the community on a large scale, including those who often have not been introduced or interested in STEM prior to interacting with Scitech.

General Public outreach activities engaged 51,075 people. 

Held every two years, Seven West Media’s Resources Technology Showcase (RTS) is an expo and conference held across three days that features innovations and technological breakthroughs in the mining, resources, defence and space industries. It presents an opportunity for Scitech to directly engage with school groups and the general public with a focus on STEM careers and how technology and innovation are influencing our future. 

Scitech’s dedicated interactive booth was a popular stop for visitors, including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese stopping to watch a liquid nitrogen smoke fog bomb as part of a science demonstration. We also welcomed then WA Premier Mark McGowan.

On-going developments in the resources industry mean we will continue to see increased demand for students’ STEM qualifications and skills, skills which are essential for developing the next generation of innovators. Scitech prioritises events like this so that we can maximise the impact at those critical points of career-making decisions.

Reach

RTS is an opportunity for Scitech to make the connection between developing the right skill set and knowledge in science, technology, engineering and mathematics with the real-world application of these skills.

RTS Attendance: 14,563

Scitech partners with the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child (ARC CoE), which is research how children learn, develop, and connect in a rapidly changing digital world.

As part of the Digital Child project, we worked with digital education experts to create the Move It! Exhibit which has been on the floor at the Scitech Discovery Centre since 2022. This exhibit is a full-body experience which challenges users to program a mouse so it can reach the cheese, helping to develop creativity, computational thinking and basic coding skills. Support from the research teams and experts means that we can continue to make improvements to the exhibit by incorporating their insights and observations.

The research found that the Move It! exhibit did encourage computational thinking at different stages of cognitive development. This was evident particularly with children aged seven and up who appeared to employ more purposeful and measured thinking associated with cause and effect, breaking the task into parts, following software instructions and planned activation.

This project has provided the foundations on how Scitech can adapt research evaluation into the design of innovative exhibits and programs, in particular using “The A to E of Creativity framework for Young Children’s Creativity” by Professor Karen Murcia and colleagues.

In Term 3 and 4 2022, Scitech participated in the ARC CoE research project fostering children’s creativity with STEM activities in online learning environments. The aim of this project was to observe the ways children demonstrate creativity while engaging in Scitech’s STEM activities in online learning environments. 

Scitech co-designed a series of hands-on workshops with a regional school and the research team to be delivered remotely. The workshops were aligned with the school curriculum and culminated in the students’ using noisemakers created during one workshop as part of an interactive puppet show. The show and workshops were digitally delivered in real-time from Perth to their school located more than 700km away. The creation of these experiences allowed the researcher to compare the creativity displayed during the online sessions to the creativity displayed when the Scitech Statewide team delivered in-person programs.

As puppet shows are experiences that we currently only offer to visitors to the Scitech Discovery Centre, it also presented an opportunity for us to trial digital delivery as a way of providing these experiences to schools and communities who can’t visit in-person.

A Creative Study

With the ARC CoE, the first phase of a study to explore young children’s expressions of creativity while using digital technologies begun in early 2023.

The Creative Cove Study recruited a cohort of 6 children aged 5 – 6 years from the Scitech membership database. In hourly sessions, the children were introduced to a new digital technology device and given an open-ended challenge chosen by the early childhood researchers for their educational qualities. These observations occurred each week for a period of ten weeks in the Scitech Lab, with parents and caregivers also encouraged to stay and observe how their children approached the tasks.

Early childhood educators and researchers from the Curtin School of Education facilitated the learning experience, modelling behaviour for parents to showcase best practice. All sessions were video and audio-recorded, and research debriefs were conducted each week to reflect on methodology, key insights and opportunities for continuous improvement.

The findings from this first stage are currently being analysed by the ARC CoE Digital Child researchers, with aims for publications in scholarly literature and best-practice resources for early childhood educators.

The collaboration with ARC CoE embodies innovation, creativity, and a steadfast commitment to empowering the next generation with skills in a digital age and provides a strong foundation for Scitech to continue to explore opportunities to engage with our audiences.

Scitech currently uses a range of evaluation tools to measure the short and medium-term outcomes of our programs and experiences. These predicted outcomes are determined based on where the various programs and experience fit into Scitech’s Theory of Change. Whilst Scitech has been able to demonstrate the short-term outcomes of activities and programs and some medium-term outcomes, demonstrating longer-term outcomes has been a challenge.

To gain a better understanding of the longer-term impact of STEM learning in the WA community, Scitech has begun a research collaboration with the University of Western Australia, working with Dr Heather Bray, Senior Lecturer and Coordinator of the Master of Science Communication.

Since Scitech is a science engagement organisation, conducting this study with science communication researchers aligns more closely with our operations and will likely reveal findings that will be relevant to a wider field of science communication.

Using science capital as a theoretical framework, the research will focus on the broad question of: How does Scitech contribute to engagement with STEM in the medium to long term? Science capital was chosen since it is a framework that Scitech already uses to measure short-term impact and was developed as a way of predicting science identity (which is strongly aligned with attitudes towards science, likelihood of science study and understanding the relevance of science in society).

The research will take place in several stages over the next few years. Launching with the Pilot study in the 23-24 financial year, it is hoped that future research projects will be adapted based on the learnings and results from the Pilot study.

A cross-functional working group was formed to tackle how to improve the Scitech experience for those with mobility issues, sensory impairment and visitors who are neurodiverse. It is important to Scitech to ensure that visitors regardless of their disability, background or needs have access to learning opportunities and feel welcomed in Scitech’s spaces.

STEM pathways and education are constantly challenged by underrepresentation, lack of diversity, unhelpful stereotypes and inequality. This financial year saw improvements to the Chevron Science Theatre wheelchair access, as well as diversity and inclusion training for all staff. Delivery teams also commenced the planning for regular future events tailored to neurodiverse visitors, tactile events for visitors with sight impairment, and events tailored to the deaf.

Reducing financial barriers was also a priority so visitors without the financial means to attend Scitech are given opportunities to engage in STEM learning. A number of initiatives are in place with this in mind such as the School Access Program, which provides disadvantaged schools with free entry and sponsorship of transport. This financial year we had nine primary schools come to Scitech via this program, a total of 552 students and 135 teachers and caregivers.

Scitech also works with charities to provide free entry to families who cannot afford the cost of admission. This financial year Scitech partnered with the Smith Family Foundation and Transperth to offer families free entry to the Scitech Discovery Centre as well as free travel on the day. Two thousand families were invited across two days in December.

Scitech embarked on creating its first Reconciliation Action Plan in early 2023. A working group of staff from across the organisation was formed, along with guidance from an external Aboriginal advisor to ensure Scitech’s reconciliation journey would meet the development, responsibilities, implementation and reporting phases required.

The aim of our first Reflect RAP is to embrace and acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the first STEM practitioners and value their innovation, knowledge, culture and history. We want to build the foundations for a future that gives Scitech practical plans for action that will:

• Increase cultural knowledge for Scitech staff
• Foster relationships, collaboration and opportunities for and with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples
• Value and respect the history, culture and contributions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as our first STEM practitioners
• Use our sphere of influence to promote reconciliation and inclusion.

What has been clear throughout the process so far, is wanting to produce a RAP that was well-informed, and a committed and genuine attempt for Scitech to enact meaningful change.

Since its formation in March of this year, a cross-functional Sustainability Group has been working hard to assess our current sustainability position and identify key areas for improvement. This initiative has been enthusiastically embraced.

Waste management has been identified as one priority and a full audit allows us to create a long-term, ecologically sound solution to the waste that Scitech generates.

An example includes partnering with an external provider to repurpose old Scitech uniforms into hats and tote bags.