From 2004-06 I taught at Peabody Veterans Memorial High School in Peabody, MA, a school that participates in the annual Massachusetts State Science Fair. I was the coordinator for the school’s fair in March 2006. I also participated as a judge in one of the regional fairs last year. The following are my thoughts about science fairs from the perspectives of teacher, coordinator, and judge.
Teacher’s Perspective
The forms, paperwork, and regulations surrounding the state fair make it difficult to get approval (especially for projects involving human subjects, such as psychology-related projects). There is precious little information available to guide teachers and school coordinators through the process. (In desperation, I telephoned the teacher who receives the applications and coordinates the review process. She was incredibly helpful, and was probably the reason we were able to jump through the administrative hoops and enable our students to participate.)
Most high school students’ only experience with doing experiments have been ones where the teacher hands them a pre-tested, nearly foolproof protocol. They follow the directions blindly, and often have no idea what they did. (You may recall my rant on that subject a few weeks ago.) When students are asked to come up with a topic, most of them don’t know enough about chemistry to have any idea what might make a good project, or once they have a project, how to go about designing and performing the experiments.
There are a lot of books available on coming up with “good science fair projects.” Most of these (even the ones targeted to high school students) are middle-school level at best. My advice to my students was that those books might be good for an initial idea, but to turn it into a good project they needed to ask themselves, “What would happen to this idea/project if I changed one of the variables?”
Most high school kids are also not taught how to keep a laboratory notebook, how to write a project proposal, or how to present an experiment at a science fair or convention. Also, most high school students have no idea how to come up with a good project. It takes about 4-6 weeks of class time (spread over the course of the school year) to teach the kids enough to be able to excel in all of these areas. With US teachers coming under increasing pressure from our states’ departments of education (and the current emphasis on standardized testing), there is a huge reluctance on the part of the teachers to put in the class time that is needed for the students to be able to create successful projects.
The only students who have any chance of succeeding and advancing to the regional or state fairs are students whose parents are scientists who can teach them the skills that they need but aren’t getting at school.
Coordinator’s Perspective
Putting on a school science fair involves coordinating the other teachers, kids and their parents, paperwork, judges, and facilities, and managing the event itself.
Coordinating with the teachers involves making sure the teachers know what the requirements and deadlines are, that the teachers have copies of all of the necessary paperwork and a good understanding of which forms are required for which kinds of projects, and that the teachers actually distribute and collect the paperwork in a timely fashion. Remember that these teachers are jealous of the time science fair takes up, and can sometimes take out their feelings on the coordinator.
Coordinating the kids and their parents involves writing and distributing the various communications to parents as needed. (Parents’ signatures are required on the state enrollment forms.)
Coordinating the paperwork involves distributing and collecting the forms, submitting them to the teacher who coordinates the entrants statewide, discussing the responses with the kids whose projects were not approved on the first try, and helping those kids revise their projects and/or supply the additional documentation needed to obtain approval.
Coordinating the judges involves obtaining and maintaining lists of people in education and industry who would be willing/interested to judge, getting invitations out, processing responses, assigning judges to projects based on the judges’ self-declared areas of expertise, providing instructions to judges to ensure uniform scoring, and making the judges feel sufficiently appreciated that they feel good about the experience and will be willing to come back the following year. (We had the culinary arts department provide refreshments for the judges during the fair, and a catered dinner afterwards for any of them who were able to stay.)
Coordinating the facilities involves arranging for a location for the fair itself (usually the gymnasium or cafeteria), with power available for the projects that need it, and a location for the awards ceremony (usually the auditorium).
Managing the event involves having people to meet & greet the students and help them set up their projects and displays, having people to meet & greet the judges and give them their briefing, and meet & greet the parents to thank them for their support. It also involves contacting businesses and city/town offices to solicit donations for prizes and other financial support (you don’t think schools are going to put money in the budget to cover the fair, do you?), and arranging to have the mayor, vice-presidents of major scientific research companies, and other dignitaries and businesses that donated money attend the fair, and thank them publicly for their support.
Having planned a high school science fair with 65 entrants, and recalling the planning that went into my wedding & reception (we had over 180 guests), I’d say that the level of time, effort and planning for the two events was similar.
Judge’s Perspective
Most science fairs have a hard time finding enough qualified judges. The coordinators have precious little time and few resources to give the judges an adequate briefing on how to separate the criteria that matter. (Some of the criteria I think matter include: Was the project well-thought-out and well-designed? Did the experiments test the hypothesis sufficiently? Were the experiments done carefully enough to get good data? Were there sufficient positive & negative controls? Do the conclusions follow direcly from the experiments?)
As a result, most of the projects that impress judges and get good scores are glitzy projects on hot topics, like greenhouse gases, ozone depletion, etc.
My Conclusions
While I think science fairs are a noble idea, I think there needs to be sufficient buy-in from all of the the science teachers involved, the schools, and the parents. Also, the curriculum needs to include the skills the kids need, including experimental design and presentation, writing research proposals and formal lab reports (with an abstract), and keeping a laboratory notebook. There also has to be enough time in the curriculum to give the kids enough support in coming up with a fun and manageable project, in completing and submitting the paperwork, and in designing and completing the project in a timely fashion.
Originally posted to the ChemEd-L discussion list.
