Rebecca Butterworth
High School Principal (UWCSEA Dover)
The UWC Mission is to make “education a force to unite people, nations and cultures for peace and a sustainable future.” What a better space in which to enact this mission than within the field of science and technology?
The late Sir Ken Robinson talked about the need to change our educational paradigms and move away from a factory model of education. He articulated the need to rethink education and bring creativity to problem-solving across fields of learning. Inherent in this call to action was a belief in the importance of student voice and agency in learning. If we want to prepare our students for the economies, work and technologies of the future then we need multiple forms of thought leadership, and to step away from the idea that as adults we are the experts imparting knowledge to students. Students are not a cup to be filled but individuals with their own unique ways of learning, personal experiences and potential to interact with traditional forms of knowledge and bring new perspectives that can challenge old paradigms. This site is hopefully a space in which this challenge can take place!
In STEM education we need to bring creative thinking to our work so we can identify out of the box solutions for the problems facing our world. We can see from the work of Gretha Thunberg, and students across the UWC movement, that they want a voice in solving global problems. Science and technology have an immense contribution to make to these solutions. I hope this site can become a space of active dialogue where ideas are questioned and evidence is pursued in the name of challenging assumptions in the field of science and technology. Ideally, hope is also a by-product of this work as young people realise they have great capacity to collaborate on creating a better world right now.
This site is also a virtual space where our students can show that values, ethics and a human-centred approach to developments in STEM is possible. Here you will see students developing their critical literacies and contributing to a more nuanced understanding of truth in science and technology.
I hope many young people across the movement and beyond embrace Vrinda’s invitation to be part of this dialogue. You can create change and set a new direction for developments in STEM!