Entries by Carol

NEW Research Project launched

At the ASE conference last week, we launched our new research project called Supporting career-related learning in classrooms using STEM Person of the Week.   We are now looking for teachers and schools to take part in the research project and try out the NUSTEM STEM Person of the Week (SPOTW) resources. Teachers can work […]

NUSTEM Annual Report 2022 – 2023

With every new year, there is a time for looking back and planning ahead. The academic new year is the same.  Every year, the NUSTEM team spend time looking back at the work we have done over the past year, and plan our upcoming activities. Our annual report for 2022-23 outlines just some of the […]

Creativity Clubs – learning by doing

Last year, NUSTEM and Success 4 All, ran a year long project of after-school STEM clubs at a local community centre.  We called the project Creativity Clubs because we wanted to help young children between the ages of 4 and 8 to see the creativity that is inherent in science and technology. The clubs were […]

Annual report published

NUSTEM’s vision is: A vibrant and sustainable STEM sector which meets the needs of learners and employers, reflecting the diversity of wider society.   Every year at NUSTEM we spend time looking back at what we’ve accomplished in the previous academic year, in light of our vision statement. As part of that reflection, we write […]

Lessons from the National Pupil Database

Many years ago, when NUSTEM was still Think Physics, we developed an evaluation plan to look at the impact of the first three years. It was a lovely plan, which would use information from the National Pupil Database (NPD) and follow groups of young people as they took their A-levels and then their degrees. Sadly, […]

STEM person of the week volunteers wanted

We know that children (and adults) often have a stereotypical view of scientists and people who work in STEM. Here at NUSTEM, we’ve created a simple resource which allows teachers to address these stereotypes with their students. STEM Person of the Week is a five week teacher-led activity. Each week the teacher ‘introduces’ a new […]

Improving diversity in STEM sectors Infographic

Diverse teams produce more creative and innovative solutions to problems.  Companies with diverse boards are more profitable. Products created by organisations which have limited diversity will be less useful.  For example, Apple didn’t include a period tracker in its Health app for iPhone until 2015. Many STEM sectors in the UK do not represent the […]

How do people who work in STEM describe themselves?

Does your work involve science, technology, engineering or maths?   If so, NUSTEM would like YOUR help!   NUSTEM has developed a list of 16 attributes that are often shown by people who work in STEM. You could also call them employability skills. This list was developed in collaboration with teachers, STEM colleagues and other […]

Children’s early career choices

I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Hamish Johnston from the Physics World podcast about how we can encourage children to consider careers in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM). During the interview, Hamish asked me whether there was research evidence to show that children were making career choices as young as eight. Those […]