British Science Week
Taking place on the second Friday in March.
A 10-day celebration of science, technology, engineering and maths.
About the event
A ten-day celebration of science, technology, engineering and maths with events, experiments and activities across the UK. A great opportunity for people of all ages, areas and organisations to take part in science, engineering and technology activities. Every year Science Week has a new theme, this year’s is ‘Growth’!
How to approach it
There are many ways to teach science with a global perspective. It's great to draw attention to the truly diverse field of science practitioners both past and present. Make sure to highlight the work of women, ethnic minority and LGBTQ+ scientists. You can also look at how science can contribute to solving the global issues of our time. This may include global challenges such as climate change, pandemics, inequality, water scarcity or healthcare for the global south. One essential thing to highlight is how science and social issues are interconnected. For too long, science, technology and engineering have been viewed as objective, values-free enterprises but this cannot be further from the truth. Students should be encouraged to see that the technology we use, the investigations we make and the our design choices all require us to ask what kind of society we want to live in.
This year's theme is 'Growth'. Here, you can talk about the growth of plants, economic growth or growth of the body. One important thing to include with this topic is an understanding of sustainable growth or even 'degrowth'. With rampant overconsumption and waste, old ideas about exponential growth, production and technological advancement are now being questioned. Students should be encouraged to think about science's contribution to these issues and how smaller scale technologies may be used to build a less wasteful, less destructive world.
Conversation starter
Science is a powerful process that allows us to make sense of the world around us. We can build incredible, lifegiving things with science, but we can also use it for bad things like weapons. If you could invent something to make the world a better place what would it be?
