Maggie Boswell University of Bristol
When the STEM SIG met recently, we gathered views on misconceptions about STEM. Here, are some perspectives that emerged.
A fact, of course is that communication across STEM differs greatly, and genres differ within the STEM genre. STEM is not just one thing. Indeed, STEM communication encompasses a much-widened spectrum, requiring competence in adapting register, content and form as well as non-academic genres including social media and digital genres (Negretti, Persson and Sjöberg-Hawke, 2022:205).
As EAP facilitators, we know that STEM is not humanities but the way STEM is communicated draws on humanities for linguistic devices and function, yet STEM communication frequently requires data and the way this is communicated needs to be clear, to both the facilitator and the scientific writer.
Enhancing good STEM communication
Perhaps we are not alone in creating stereotypes. It is easy to misunderstand, but the variation of departments will vary the communication by definition. Student Engineers might not realise the breadth and complexity of texts that they will be needing to produce later, in their careers, so that is down to us to explore, explain and help students understand that they would actually need to be very good written and spoken communicators.
Some STEM students, such as in Mechanical Engineering, are not necessarily required to write an essay. Yet, we need to support students to convince the reader that the line of argumentation is valid. In STEM this might be constructed differently on the page, and criticality may look different. If we ask students to explain what they mean on the page, there are lots of steps and these might be specific to the discipline. So, shouldn’t we support students in finding the balance with how much needs to be persuaded, or is universally understood, or where there is a need to contest knowledge? We think so but agree it certainly doesn’t stop there.
Navigating the “black box”
Then we felt that it’s important not to oversimplify, as we teach academic writing principles, yet recognise for some that our own EAP discourse community consists of often awkward meta-language, so how can that be a tool that could be used more sparingly, without losing its valuable focus? We recognised, for example, that the term “criticality” – can often be experienced as a term like a “black box” to some students, but if it was unpacked, within the context of the discipline, we felt it might help to bridge the gap.
Telling the story – Narrative construction
One way to achieve this might be to have students tell their story – What are the narratives about how science works? Rather than making students fit into the box that we teach, allow the students to bring their story to the discipline. Avraamidou and Osborne, (2009) explore the role of narrative in communicating STEM, and argue for greater use of narrative as a communicative tool within science.
Can we try to encourage students to think about principles, such as what academic writing is, as well as the conventions of academic writing. We think that how sources are used, the literature review, and project building could be combined, and make space for telling the scientific story too.
After gathering these views, we had time to consider how STEM communication might change in future.
Future thinking is needed!
We felt that there is a need to knock on and open some doors. Exploring and talking with colleagues in departments about how they perceive communication might change over time, in the advent of new mechanisms to communicate information. This led us to think about how we could get round misconceptions and think also about what STEM students are trying to do in terms of the language used for communication. Maybe inviting them (the students) to consider what a good STEM communicator looks like and whether they like it or not.
Another way to interact with changing styles and genres in STEM could be to access any new kind of communication that students will need to produce. We think that any new modes should be made accessible for EAP to help pave the way for students, and we could get samples from faculty.
Finally
To sum up, we wondered whether there is simply now much more variety in terms of STEM genre. We came to the conclusion that this is indeed so and that there are already a lot more formats. There’s an entire career emerging in public engagement – the audience, and purpose to fill gaps in knowledge. Despite all this, we recognise that challenges exist which are different from humanities. This, we concluded signified that the idea of STEM communication a misconception, in itself!
Bibliography
Avraamidou, L. and Osborne, J. (2009) ‘The Role of Narrative in Communicating Science’, International Journal of Science Education, 31(12), pp. 1683–1707. doi: 10.1080/09500690802380695.
Negretti, R., Persson, M. and Sjöberg-Hawke, C. (2022) ‘Science stories: researchers’ experiences of writing science communication and the implications for training future scientists’, International Journal of Science Education, Part B, 12(3), pp. 203–220. doi: 10.1080/21548455.2022.2060530.
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This blog entry has been built on opinions captured during the Dec 2024 BALEAP STEM SIG tea-time TEAMS meet. The ideas presented in this blog are aimed to stimulate thought and discussion.
Maggie.Boswell@bristol.ac.uk EAP Tutor | Centre for Academic Language and Development
Faculty of Arts, Law & Social Sciences University of Bristol | Richmond Building |105 Queens Road | Clifton | Bristol | BS8 1LN
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