Congratulations to the Wonder team that was recently awarded first prize in the UTS Research Translation Competition. Their project, the Wonderful, Fluorescent, Massive World of Tiny Invisible Things: Creating Transformative Science Stories for Children, brings together award winning animators, filmmakers and scientists to address the issue of diversity in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM). This is an edited version of the winning pitch.
Inspiring STEM careers through animation
Animator Amelia Farrell design for Dr Yan Liao as an Archaea. In EXTREME.
Over the last 20 years, the Australian Government and education departments across the country have invested millions of dollars into initiatives and schemes to encourage more women into STEM careers, but with little impact.
Australian women continue to represent just 15% of the STEM-qualified workforce. A lack of positive role models continues to stand in the way of better participation.
Internationally, it's been found that a major factor contributing to low numbers of women in STEM is a lack of female scientists in popular entertainment. You can't be what you can see!
We know from educators that in grades 5 and 6, the teaching of science is undervalued, inconsistent and haphazardly applied. Research also shows that it is this group, school children aged 10 to 12, where we see the greatest drop off in interest in STEM subjects, especially girls.
The research behind the Wonder project is tackling this problem head on by radically re-imagining how science is taught.
Highlighting the wonder in STEM
Our approach to teaching science is unique. Not only is it story-led, but it features the voices of female and diverse scientists focusing on real world scientific problems that are directly aligned to the stage three STEM curriculum and identified by working closely with primary school teachers and educators.
Our research approach will make teaching science easy for primary school teachers, as well as making learning fun and impactful for students. Our aim is to do for science what the research driven content of Sesame Street has done for reading and counting. We can't imagine a world without Sesame Street!
Our co-designed learning framework has already been user tested in 2024. The project was selected by VIVID to be showcased in a Superheroes for Science event presented to 150 primary school-aged children. Parents and children alike found our animations inspiring.
Why animation?
Studies have shown that narrative or storytelling is more effective than information on the approaches to communicating science, and that character, animation, performance and world building is particularly appealing to children.
Crucially, it's been shown that animated content has a positive impact on children's cognitive development, their biases and behaviour.
Despite this, in 2020, the Australian Government eradicated quotas for children's content on Australian information TV. This has had an immediate and lasting impact the development of research-driven educational content for children – it is now virtually non-existent.
To put it bluntly, there's no one out there producing the next Sesame Street, let alone the next Bluey because there's nobody funding it.
We therefore desperately need institutions like UTS to step up and help fund the translation of our research so we can engage the next generation of Australian scientists who might otherwise be lost to us forever.
Engaging with partners
We've already attracted strong interest from stakeholders like microscopy companies like ZEISS Australia and Foldscope, as well as the Australian Museum in relation to future partnerships. What we need now is funds to create our wonderful animations and get them into schools across New South Wales and Australia.
But animation is expensive and time consuming to produce. We need to hire specialist animation industry experts to help finalise these high impact assets. That’s why a $75,000 grant from the Research Translation Competition would allow us to deliver engaging content that covers the entire two years of the Stage 3 STEM Curriculum.
With your help, we will be able to bring our research driven, user-tested and groundbreaking approach to teaching science, not just to New South Wales primary schools, but to schools across the nation.
And in doing so, we will fulfil our goal of inspiring young children to engage in the wonders of science and ultimately, to make a significant and long-term impact on the strength and diversity of the STEM workforce in this country.
The Wonder team is Prof Rachel Landers, A/Prof Louise Cole, Dr Amy Bottomley, Kristi Street, Matthew Dabner, Matthew Gidney.
Benefits of participation
A/Prof Louise Cole said that working in a cross-disciplinary environment has been exciting, thought-provoking and challenging for team members.
“We have all had to step out of our comfort zones of at various stages during this creative process to learn and grow together as a team,” she said, adding that participating in the competition helped the team polish its value proposition and define the real impact of the Wonder project.
"The activities during the workshops, especially the pitch preparation, also allowed is to really come together and gel as a team.”
In terms of how the team will realise the project's vision of inspiring more 10–12-year-olds into STEM careers, a major challenge will be the uptake of these learning assets by key educators and primary school teachers in the classroom.
“Our focus is therefore on creating story-led science animations that make teaching science easy for teachers and learning science fun for Stage 3 children such that it inspires their long-standing interest in STEM subjects,” Louise said.