Getting hands on with science creating ‘good scientific citizens'

NZ Herald

16-07-2025

Cunningham said getting more young wāhine involved in stem requires them to have people they can model themselves after.
'If they see somebody in there that's succeeding then they tend to go 'oh yeah I can do this too.' In my earlier years teaching science it was all textbook stuff and I just looked at the kids and they just weren't engaged or anything.'
As part of the fair, the school's Year 9 and 10 classes work as part of a collective on a pilot programme called Manaaki Mauri, which involves the ecological restoration of the Sanatorium Reserve, a nationally significant geothermal landscape on the edge of central Rotorua.
'So the long-term goal is to get it back to what it was before the human impacts and so most of our projects revolve around that,' Cunningham said.
Students have the chance to look at plastic pollution and its effect on native species in the reserve, including the endangered tarāpuka or black-billed gull and a colony of long-tailed bats, she said.
Students from Rotorua Girls' High School with their projects at Te Tūkohu Ngāwhā Mātauranga Māori Science and Design Fair in 2024. Photo / Supplied, Te Arawa Lakes Trust
Giving students the chance to engage in hands-on science out in the field helps to create 'good scientific citizens', she said.
'I've watched these kids go from 'I can just litter anywhere, it doesn't affect me' to actually thinking more about our effects that we have on our taiao [environment].
'With that connection comes immediate engagement because it's real, it's not going away, it's not fairytale atoms and chemicals... it's actually robust and real for them.'
Cunningham said she had absolutely seen more of an interest in science from her students since they began to enter the fair.
Te Tūkohu Ngāwhā has given the teachers an avenue to teach science through Papatūānuku and through mātauranga Māori, she said.
'Rather than teach to the curriculum, actually make it real and engaging for our young people, especially our young women, because they are going to be the ones that in the future need to look after our whenua and taiao.'
Te Tūkohu Ngāwhā event coordinator Keeley Grantham. Photo / Supplied, Te Arawa Lakes Trust
Te Tūkohu Ngāwhā event coordinator Keeley Grantham said engaging with students directly was often the best way to get them involved.
'I think the best way to get any young rangatahi, but especially young wāhine, involved is actually just having a kōrero to them from our perspective as wāhine in science.
'To showcase that it's not just this scary environment of labcoats and Bunsen burners and that science is much broader than that, you can be out in the field, you can research a whole heap of different things and having that face to face engagement and showcasing them things in the field is what I find has the biggest impact.'
Grantham said that since the fair began five years ago, there has been a gradual increase in the number of young wāhine entering, but having Rotorua Girls' involved specifically has really given it a boost.
'This event is growing every year, I mean we've got nearly 250 kids coming along to the event next week to actually participate and share their ideas, so that's 250 minds combining to look at issues in our taiao.'
Grantham acknowledged the effort from the tamariki who have entered projects in the fair this year, as well as kaiako (teachers) and whānau who support them.
-RNZ