Links to Everyday Life: Small Tweaks to Teaching Science That Can Make a Big Difference

This article discusses teachers' experiences of making simple changes to lessons with the aim of enhancing students' ability to make connections between their everyday knowledge and science and enrich their perception of what counts as science, increasing their science capital. The classroom work followed findings by the ASPIRES team at King's College London and later University College London, which found that, although young people from diverse backgrounds are interested in science, those with fewer chances to connect with science in their everyday lives are less likely to continue their interest or aspire to science jobs. The article suggests that it is realistic to implement small but important changes in the classroom and goes on to consider ways to assess whether such changes have an impact on students' perception of science.