Dr Rowena Fletcher-Wood’s Pandemic Research
In 2020, our Academic Manager for the Science, Dr. Rowena Fletcher-Wood, conducted research on the impacts of COVID-19 on UK environmental science engagement projects. Keep reading to learn more about her research process and discoveries!
In 2020, within just 4 weeks, I was made redundant from my part-time job, had my first baby, and entered the first COVID-19 lockdown. It was a whirlwind.
I suddenly found myself a full-time freelance science communicator – but I was unable to go into schools and run science workshops like I used to do because of lockdown. Normally I would do fun science activities, shows, and talks covering content outside the curriculum to encourage interest in science, widen knowledge, and make science for everyone. But, clearly, I was going to have to adapt to working at my desk. But what would that look like? How were others in similar positions doing, I wondered?
So I started to look.
I was still volunteering for the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) – and during this time, I saw something that interested me. Laura Hobbs from the University of West of England (UWE) was researching how UK school children engage with environmental science outreach. This was exactly what I would have been doing, lockdown aside, and how to do it now was exactly what I wanted to know. But nobody knew – only lots of people were trying. Wouldn’t it be good to ask them…
I reached out to Laura, asking if she could write an article for the RSC’s Bulletin, which she did (https://www.envchemgroup.com/elements-of-construction.html). The project she reported was funded by the Small Outreach Grants fund, a fund I have used before. The only problem was that it only funded resources – until, I noticed, now. Because of the lockdown, the RSC changed how their outreach grants worked: instead of only covering resources, they would also cover salaries. This crucial step to support furloughed, freelance, and unemployed science communicators during lockdown, remains part of their grants even now.
I spoke to Laura, and, along with Carly Stevens, applied and were awarded a grant that essentially paid us to write and analyse a survey.
What was the survey? The survey was sent to universities, science centres, and other people who did science engagement projects, asking them how lockdown change their projects. Did they stop doing it altogether, or move it online – or outdoors? Was it unaffected (if they were working with key groups), or did the people who came to it change? Did they move to after school instead of during school hours? Did it become more passive and less tactile (e.g. giving talks/shows instead of doing hands on stuff)?
The results were fascinating.
First, the huge hurdle: so many people were furloughed or unable to work, that we had far far fewer people respond than in the original research.
We extended and extended the deadline, but the responses trickled in. Larger or wider-reaching projects were more likely to retain staff and so to report on the impacts of lockdown, making the sample biased. We also found that whilst movement to online meant some audiences were reachable who hadn’t been before, and projects had a bigger geographic reach, not everybody could be reached equally, hands-on stuff died down, and practitioners often didn’t know who they were reaching, nor how many.
The bit I was really interested in – how to adapt activities to make them work, showed a mixture of positive and negative findings. It worked for some people and some projects, but everybody encountered challenges. Environmental topics also changed – we all became fascinated with air pollution, and marine science was also prevalent.
So what did I learn?
- First, resilience! Plan for unexpected interruptions, and be creative with how you manage them.
- Second, pick your topics carefully, know what people are interested in now, as well as what works with your expertise and location.
- Be purposeful with your audience. Putting stuff up online for anyone feels like a lot of work with unknown impacts. Evaluation may be boring to do, but it’s crucial for understanding if you’re wasting your time or doing good work – why we do research like this project in the first place.
What next?
Since this research, I have been able to apply learnings to my new projects, making them more robust. From online magic shows to hands-on science you can do in your kitchen, to projects that tie into the school curriculum (and so relieve teachers of some of their work). The stuff I make is more robust and, talking to other science communicators at a recent conference, so is theirs. We regularly share ideas (and play with each others’ kit), and the current industry focus is on diversity and resilience.
You can read the paper here:
Assessing Environmental Science engagement with UK school children
