Bridget Holligan

SO delivers a STEM education and public outreach programme that reaches about 50,000 people each year and which involves working with a wide range of community partners and STEM employers across Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire. SO ran a small science centre in Oxford for 23 years from 1990 and opened a new Science Oxford Centre in 2019. I led the development of the Science Oxford Centre; it was a special opportunity for me to realise a long-held vision that had been nurtured since my early days at The Exploratory.

In 2012, I partnered with Helen Wilson from Oxford Brookes University, to create a primary science teaching training programme called ‘Thinking, Doing, Talking Science’ (TDTScience). TDTScience was funded by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) and evaluated by the University of York as a Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT) with 42 Oxfordshire primary schools. The four-day training course was proven to have a significant positive impact on the attitudes and attainment of children in science, especially for girls and for lower achieving pupils as well as those in receipt of Free School Meals. As a result, TDTScience secured further EEF funding for two ‘effectiveness trials’ in 2016-18 and 2021-24, looking to see how to replicate the impact at scale with hundreds of schools across England. The TDTScience ethos was the foundation for the creation of the Science Oxford Centre and a a source of evidence for the EEF’s Improving Primary Science report; the latest trial results are published in November 2024. The Oxford Trust is working with the Primary Science Teaching Trust (PSTT) as the national delivery partner for TDTScience and I continue to work as a consultant for PSTT and others for TDTScience and informal science learning more generally.

What I bring

• I have a breadth of experience that covers many bases in informal science learning and public engagement with science, and which has involved working with many different audiences – from early years children to researchers.
• I have worked in both a large and small hands-on science centres and have led the creation of a successful new science and discovery centre, based on a vision informed by my experiences. I have been an active part of the SDC sector in the UK for many years – I was Vice-Chair and then Chair of BIG from 2011-17 and been the Education Chair for ASDC since 2017. I won the Beetlestone Award in 2020.
• I have particular expertise in primary science, which has been significantly strengthened by my experience leading the TDTScience project over 12 years, and the opportunity it has given me over many years to work closely with the Education Endowment Foundation, primary teachers across the UK and national primary science experts and policy makers.

Manifesto

In this digital age there is still something special about a science and discovery centre, the social, face-to-face experiences that they can provide, and the unique physical environments that they offer for developing inquiry and problem-solving skills as well as emotional connections to STEM. I think it is important that we play to our strengths and collaborate with other elements of the informal science learning eco-system in our collective bid to make a difference to all people’s lives and to engage a more diverse audience with what we do.

As someone who was involved in running a small science centre for many years, and who has had the experience of creating a successful new science centre, I would like to help to ensure that ASDC continues to represent, and offer opportunities to, all types of centres.

My experience of the TDTScience project demonstrated to me the impact that informal science learning expertise can have when applied to the development of high-quality, interactive, teacher CPD as well as to informal science learning provision with children directly. I want to be a champion for the skills that can be found within the sector and the difference they can make to the achievement and attitudes of young people in science.