Scitech's recent Toddler Week showed the demand
for opportunities where parents can engage in
science with their children.
Image by Scitech

A program currently being run by the Australian National University, called Science for Mums, aims to teach mothers the fundamentals of science so that they can help their kids with homework and enthuse a new generation about the glories of the periodic table and the delights of DNA.

Under the program, a group of about 20 mums have a three-hour informal lesson each Friday at the Canberra-based science museum Questacon in a "fun and relaxed" class.

Many of them are science novices, according to the brainchild of the program, the ANU's director for the Centre for Public Awareness of Science, Dr Susan Stocklmayer.

“Many of the participants have no experience at all and they were apprehensive," she said.

"A few said that in the family Dad was the ‘science person’. So we’re not assuming any prior knowledge, but they’re asking some excellent questions in the sessions."

Dr Stocklmayer said the program was targeted at the mothers of children in Years 7-9, giving them the confidence to explain the science their children were learning at school and to do simple experiments at home.

“On the first week the group modelled DNA with the aid of lollies and extracted DNA from strawberries," she said.

"In future weeks they’ll be making soap and experimenting with physics forces.”

And now a similar program targeting even younger children is destined to do the same for Western Australian parents.

Scitech's director of Science Partnerships Paul Nicholls said that parents, alongside teachers, were the two most important influences on whether children developed a lifelong love of science.

"Parents shape the behaviours of their children from a very early age and encouragement of a child's natural curiosity to understand the world around them is vitally important,'' he said.

With this in mind, Mr Nicholls said Scitech was embarking on a new Early Childhood program starting in 2009 that was aimed at involving parents and their children in science at child care centres and pre-primary classes.

The program is being developed with advice from Curtin University of Technology's Faculty of Education, involving experts in early childhood learning.

"Under this program, parents will be encouraged to participate in the learning process and share in the science exploration experiences of their children,'' he said.

"Parents will be provided training and a printed resource that are aimed at helping them engage with their children not only during the program but after they are back in the comfort of their own homes."

Mr Nicholls said it was vital that science educators started drawing parents into the learning experience, as many of the myths around science - that it was a difficult subject to understand, or one that was too hard to do at home  - sprang from a lack of confidence in parents who had little exposure to science themselves as children.

Showing parents how science forms part of everyday life would help them share this knowledge with their children in day-to-day settings, he said.

"The demand for this type of opportunity was evident when 8500 parents and toddlers visited Scitech during Toddler Week in February," he said.

"For children, science cannot be seen as one-off lessons about scientific phenomenon.

"Science is a way of thinking that involves observation, investigation, experimentation and hypothesizing.

"Development of these skills at an early age will help to secure their future."

Curtin also has plans to involve parents more in understanding what students at the high school level are learning in physics and chemistry lessons.

Kat Sandford, outreach co-ordinator for the Faculty of Science and Engineering, said Curtin was considering a pilot program next year to be run in Perth high schools giving parents information nights covering some of the content of science courses for Years 9 and 10.

She said these years were important because success and interest in science in lower high school would encourage more students to choose science at upper high school and university, where there has been a worrying decline in enrolments over recent years.