Science education postgraduate personal statement example

Personal statement example

For the last three years I have spent my working days preparing practicals for around a dozen science teachers, and I have learned as much about learning from that bench as I did from my degree. I notice which demonstrations produce genuine discussion and which produce only a pleasing bang. I notice that the Year 9 class who handled the equipment themselves during a rates of reaction lesson could still describe what happened weeks later, while those who watched from their seats mostly remembered the smell. These observations are informal, and I am aware of that, but they are what pushed me towards studying science education properly rather than continuing to guess.

My first degree was in chemistry. My final-year project compared colorimetric test strips with EDTA titration for measuring water hardness in samples from local supply points, and the interesting part was not the numbers but the reasoning: why a cheaper, less precise method might still be the right one depending on the question being asked. I then worked for eight years as a laboratory analyst for a water testing company, running routine microbiological and chemical analyses and, latterly, inducting new starters. Training adults taught me that explaining a procedure is not the same as explaining why it works, and that people follow protocols more carefully once they understand the failure they are guarding against. I suspect something similar is true of school practical work, which is often carried out competently and understood thinly.

Moving into a school technician role was a deliberate step towards teaching, and it has given me a realistic view of the classroom rather than a romantic one. I see the constraints: timetabling, apparatus that must serve six classes in a day, the gap between the practical a teacher would like and the one that is safely feasible with thirty students. I have contributed small things, such as reworking our chromatography kit so that groups get usable results in a single lesson, and I have helped staff trial a microscale approach to some chemistry practicals, which reduced both cost and waiting time. I have also become interested in how technicians and teachers could plan practical work together more often.

Alongside this I help run a Saturday science club at our community centre for children aged eight to twelve. Sessions are short, the group changes week to week, and there is no assessment, so the only thing holding attention is the quality of the question at the start. Planning an activity on floating and sinking for that group made me think hard about misconceptions, because several children were confident that heavy things sink and were not easily dislodged by a lump of plasticine shaped into a boat. I would like to understand the research on conceptual change and on the purposes of practical work far better than I currently do, including the argument that hands-on activity does not automatically produce conceptual understanding.

My reading so far has been unsystematic: some material on assessment for learning, some on scientific literacy and the aims of the science curriculum, and a good deal of subject association guidance on practical safety and technique. Postgraduate study would give that structure, and the chance to look closely at evidence rather than at my own impressions. I am particularly keen to develop research skills so that I can evaluate changes in my own setting properly, and I hope in time to work on practical science provision at departmental or local level.

Returning to study at 34, alongside part-time work, will take organisation, but I have managed shift patterns, evening qualifications in laboratory practice and a household for years. I am ready for the demands and genuinely looking forward to being a student again.