Recent Meetings

ASE working for you

The ASE strapline is "Promoting Excellence in Science Teaching and Learning" but the old one was "Teachers and Technicians Helping Teachers Teach Science" and both are excellent descriptions of ASE Scotland events held so far this session.

In particular ASE Scotland has developed three new initiatives this autumn to support teachers of science. First, the ASE Scotland Primary Group has organised four CPD days to support primary science with a geographical spread of Inverness, Dunblane, Ayr and Lauder to try and make them accessible to all. These have been well received and have shown how science can be integrated into the CfE curriculum with other subjects.

Second, working with IOP and 3B Scientific, a series of workshops on teaching with Teltron tubes was organised at five venues: SSERC in Dunfermline, then Ayr, Aberdeen, Fortrose and Glasgow in the space of a week. These workshops were attended by over 100 teachers and feedback has been positive. This has also resulted in interest from other organisations in doing something similar in the future, so watch this space.

Third, and most ambitious of all, seminar sessions have been organised at the four CfE Day Conferences organised by the four ASE Scotland Sections in Monifieth, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Glasgow. These sessions are the starting point for a project to write teacher support material for CfE. ASE has decided that, in the CfE vacuum, teachers of science in Scotland deserve some support. The follow-up writing weekend has been booked for 19-20 Feb 2010 when 20 invited teachers will gather to take the ideas forward and with a bit of editorial work it is hoped the final product can be published before the start of next session.

In addition to all that there have been the usual twilight and evening events around the ASE Scotland Sections. For example, in Grampian Bob Ironside and Charles Buchan, both experienced PTs and SQA Verifiers, provided advice on AH Investigations and in Tayside an event was organised for student teachers at Dundee University with the support of many others including Sensation, Tech-Fest, RSC, IOP and SESEF, another good example of ASE working with others to promote excellence and support teachers.

ASE is a supportive community. If you want to get involved please come along to the meetings and if you want to help in the organisation of events then stand for election to a Section committee at one of the ABMs in May.