“Monks Talking To Dead People” – Researchers In Schools Campaign Sees PhDs Made Simple
Ads for teacher recruitment initiative aimed at academics boils PhDs down to the plain-spoken basics…
- by Teachwire
Researchers in Schools has launched a new advertising campaign that poses an interesting question – if you were to rephrase the title of a complex PhD thesis in terms a child could readily understand, how would you go about it?
You can see a few examples used in the campaign so far in the slideshow above, and find plenty more on Twitter by searching the hashtags #thesis4kids and #shareyourphd.
The Researchers in Schools scheme seeks to recruit classroom teachers from the ranks of PhD holders, so that they might bring their subject expertise and research skills into state schools and encourage pupils to consider pursuing university studies. As suggested by the campaign, one the scheme’s key aims to show pupils that their capable of grasping the principles of potentially complex topics – hence the campaign’s tagline, “If you can explain it to a school kid, you’re an expert”.
According to the scheme’s national programme director, Jed Cinnamon, ‘We hope the new adverts will stop potential participants in their tracks, and make them think about how their research could be used to inspire the next generation, and how teaching can offer an extremely rewarding and fulfilling career.”
Dr Clara Sousa-Silva, a Researchers in Schools Physics teacher at Highams Park School in London, meanwhile comments, “Sometimes PhD titles can seem like a foreign language. My PhD, ‘Modelling Phosphine Spectra for the atmospheric characterization of cool stars and exoplanets’ might seem quite impenetrable from the outside, but ‘Rainbows tell us if we can live on other planets’ is much more accessible, while definitely more exciting!
‘I see my role as a teacher as helping to translate the scientific world, so that students can feel part of it, inspiring them to pursue their own scientific endeavours.”
For more information, visit www.researchersinschools.org or follow @rischools
