Filter by section: Practice Insight

This practice report aims to outline the idea of science communication as a multidimensional practice that extends beyond the transmission of scientific facts to include the tacit, cultural, and experiential dimensions of science—with a focus on ‘the university’ as an embodiment of the culture of science. Drawing on the idea of ‘kitchen table science communication’, we present a board game designed to foster critical engagement with the implicit norms and structures of academic life among students, their families, and broader publics. Emphasizing science as a complex, adaptive, and culturally situated endeavor, the game serves both as an educational tool and as a medium for participatory meaning-making. Through iterative development and ethnographic testing across diverse academic and informal settings, we explore how playful, narrative-driven formats can open epistemic spaces and promote a more intuitive, affective, and accessible understanding of science. Our findings suggest that games—by embracing abstraction, indeterminacy, and co-creation—offer unique affordances for cultivating science literacy as lived experience rather than codified knowledge.

Through a series of projects dating back to 2015, the Science Hunters programme has delivered eight ‘Minecraft Clubs’ to engage children with Special Educational Needs, care-experienced children, and children in low socioeconomic status areas with science, technology, engineering, and maths. Science concepts are used as themes to build around, rather than the key focus of the activity, which is communal gameplay and having fun. Delivery has been developed through reflective practice, insights from which are drawn upon to extract key takeaways for engaging children with science outside of traditional settings through community-based activities and existing interests. These include drawing on the experiences of those with relevant backgrounds in design and delivery approaches, embedding STEM content rather than making it a primary feature of the activity, seeking and incorporating participants’ input, and having alternative approaches and resources available to facilitate accommodation of different needs and circumstances.

Digital games in museums face the challenge of translating complex scientific concepts into engaging experiences that facilitate both individual learning and peer discussion. This practice insight examines Symbiosville, a touchscreen learning game designed using an event $\rightarrow$ choice $\rightarrow$ consequence pedagogical model to increase visitor understanding of the human microbiome's role in health. Through visitor observations and survey data, this case study demonstrates how evidence-based game mechanics can effectively communicate microbiome science, with players successfully understanding relationships between personal choices and microbiome health. However, the study revealed limitations in encouraging peer-to-peer learning in museum environments, where individual screen-based interactions can inhibit social engagement despite networked game features. The analysis identifies key design considerations for science communication practitioners developing digital learning games for informal settings, including the tension between personalised experiences and collaborative learning.

Researchers and practitioners have emphasised the importance of evaluating science communication, but agree that, on the one hand, much research on evaluation does not find its way into practice, and on the other, researchers do not fully benefit from the wealth of data that practitioners produce. Using semi-structured interviews with heads of communications at different research organisations in four countries we show that practitioners agree on the importance of evaluation, but that obstacles to evaluation cut across organisational characteristics and countries. Our interviews suggest that communications leaders have a strong interest in working with researchers, and we discuss their proposals for practice-research interfaces that could improve evaluation practice.

This practice insight examines how science mediators facilitate students' appropriation of scientific knowledge. It focuses on the Science of Superheroes initiative, which is an informal education curriculum activity designed to engage middle school students in exploring environmental challenges through the creation of a superhero. Using Bruner's scaffolding framework, we analyze how mediators' interventions shift between scaffolding functions, depending on the task. While the appropriation of scientific knowledge is supported by questioning and information-sharing strategies, the creative phase sees an increase in proposal-based scaffolding, which struggles to counterbalance students' reliance on magical thinking. This cognitive tension highlights the challenges of integrating scientific knowledge into a fictional narrative. Our findings highlight the need for science mediators to refine their questioning techniques, foster greater self-regulation among students, and enhance their ability to meaningfully incorporate scientific concepts into their superhero designs. Our study contributes to ongoing discussions on the professionalization of science mediation and offers new insights for mediator training.

Theatre is a privileged medium for expressing and conveying emotions. Emotions play a significant role in audience engagement when communicating to create awareness and knowledge about a given subject. The Marionet Theatre Company has created a series of theatre performances related to health sciences over the past few years, to expand knowledge and reduce the stigma frequently associated with certain diseases. In this report on practice, we present the process of developing the theatre performance Oxymoron, between solstices and equinoxes, exploring bipolar disorder and its consequences. The artistic team devised the performance after a series of interviews with both patients and mental health professionals. In this article, we discuss the process of its creation, identify dramaturgical connections between the performance and the interviews, and examine the emotional engagement it provoked in the audience. We conclude by assessing the effectiveness of theatre in communicating health-related subjects, most particularly by involving the audience emotionally.

This article adopts the perspective of inclusive science communication by approaching the interface between science, technology, intersectionality, and the experience of female Quilombola leaders in Minas Gerais, Brazil. Quilombolas are an ethnic-racial group of Black origins associated with oppression and resistance over the centuries, particularly against slavery during the colonial period. The primary strategy for engaging these women with science was the web series Meios de Prosa (Means of Prose), developed across three seasons. Twelve women, aged between 21 and 73, shared their experiences of early labor, racism, community leadership, and resistance in the context of their access, use, and appropriation of information and communication technologies (ICT).

Promoting inclusion in science is essential for enhancing public understanding, strengthening science literacy, and addressing structural barriers to participation. To support this goal, we organized a science fair in a suburban city near Paris (France), featuring hands-on, inquiry-based activities designed to be accessible and inclusive. The event attracted a diverse audience, including groups underrepresented in science due to gender and socioeconomic background. Participant feedback emphasized the value of active engagement and direct interaction with scientists. Our findings demonstrate that inclusive, community-based outreach can effectively foster interest in science and support broader participation.