As part of my role as a pharmacology and physiology teaching assistant at the University of Aberdeen, I co-delivered two public engagement activities in March of this year. The first was a hybrid event in which senior secondary school pupils conducted a drug screening practical in their class whilst I instructed virtually. The second was an in-person event in which primary school pupils extracted DNA from their own cheek cells. At the end of these sessions, students were invited to ask questions about being a scientist, and both primary and secondary school pupils asked, ‘Is pharmacology a difficult subject to study?’. Given that this was the only question that overlapped between the two groups, it highlighted that a subject's perceived difficulty may influence whether students chose to study the subject in further education. This suggested to me that because science, in general, has the perception of being a difficult subject to study, this was turning prospective students away from studying pharmacology and other STEM disciplines.
This idea, as a new pharmacology educator, concerned me. Initially, this was due to the thought of pharmacology losing out on brilliant minds who may otherwise lead to major scientific breakthroughs. And secondly, that students were turning away from science because it still had the branding of being an ‘exclusive’ subject that could only be studied by those who achieved the highest grades. The media portrays scientists as devoted geniuses, who never leave the lab bench and who harbour little interest for anything other than their work (see Abby Sciuto from the TV show NCIS, and Penn Pershing from The Mandalorian). Therefore, it should not be surprising that students might think that they must also fit this mould to be able to succeed in the sciences. The acknowledgement that science subjects still carry this association led me down a rabbit hole of researching the answers people gave to the question ‘Is science hard?’. I hoped that by better understanding how pharmacology and the other sciences are viewed by the public, I could start to combat negative perceptions.
When you Google ‘Is science hard?’ the first result is an article from Caduceus International Publishing examining why science is hard to learn. The authors propose that science education places a higher level of cognitive and psychological demand on students which makes the effort required to learn science greater than in other subjects. Furthermore, science education requires students to memorise large quantities of information, have strong abilities in maths and reading comprehension and be able to write critically and think abstractly. All of these skills, difficult in themselves, are required to succeed and without these underlying abilities students find science hard to grasp. The authors posit that when students struggle to understand, their motivation and resilience decreases which leads to students abandoning their course of study. This could be because students often rely on memorising information by rote learning rather than developing a deeper understanding of concepts due to time constraints. As term length is unlikely to change drastically, it might be a good idea for educators to concentrate on students mastering a fewer number of fundamental concepts properly so that students are given the opportunity to engage in deeper learning rather than teaching and examining on a wide range of topics. Furthermore, educators can increase their signposting for resources such as in-house academic development centres and relevant YouTube videos as excellent resources for student learning and studying that do not add to the educator’s workload.
Student perception of science subjects has also been studied by the scientific community. A recent meta-analysis by Mao et al. examined the relationship between student attitude towards science and student attainment. This found that positive student attitudes towards science were strongly positively correlated with high academic achievement in science, and that this varied little across age groups, geographical regions, and publication year. Taken together, these results suggest that increasing students’ interest in science increases attainment and will in turn increase the number of students choosing and continuing to study science.
Therefore, to maintain and increase the number of students choosing to study pharmacology, science educators must make pharmacology interesting to school age pupils. An obvious solution is to deliver a greater number of public engagement activities covering a broad range of topics. Although public engagement is perceived by many scientists as taking valuable time away from their research, by providing activities that make pharmacology accessible, fun and interesting, public engagement has a positive impact on both the number of students choosing to study pharmacology and on public trust. By bridging the gap between scientists and Society, public engagement ensures that science research is valued and trusted, which increases the likelihood that children will be encouraged to pursue science.
One of the main barriers to providing public engagement activities is the lack of resources easily available to researchers. The amount of time required to develop activities (as well as delivering the event) is immense. To lower this barrier, I’d like to share the activities that we delivered to students. In the session delivered to secondary school pupils, the students played the role of a scientist working for a drug development company. Students performed a lead candidate selection efficacy experiment in which they analysed the physical and chemical properties of four drugs (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Image of PowerPoint slide from drug screening experiment.
Using the data collected, students would be able to advise which drug should be taken forward to the next step of the drug development process. The drugs selected for analysis were four different over the counter antacids and using a 24-well plate and various chemicals the students measured the pH, solubility in water or ethanol and analysed the reaction of each drug with simulated stomach acid. The chemicals and equipment were supplied by the school science technician and students performed the experiment during class time whilst we attended online. This set up worked well to reduce the time involved in travelling, acquiring and setting up equipment whilst still being able to interact with the students effectively. An instruction sheet and PowerPoint for this activity are available for use.
The DNA extraction activity requires a little more preparation time but can be performed using reagents and equipment already available in most labs. Using detergent and enzyme (laundry washing liquid), cheek cells harvested using a tongue depressor are lysed and DNA is extracted using ice-cold ethanol. Pupils can even transfer the DNA into a small glass bottle to keep! The instruction sheet for this activity is available to download. Prior to starting the DNA extraction, the pupils were given a short PowerPoint presentation to contextualise the activity. I ran my activity to a Primary 6/7 class (age 11-12 years) and kept the presentation simple by introducing DNA as a code which held the instruction manual for the body that was unique to everyone (except identical twins) and present in every cell in the body. I found that this was the right level to pitch this activity as some of the pupils had not heard of cells or DNA before. The activity could also be adapted to higher age groups by introducing concepts such as base-pairing and genes. Ultimately, what is most important is ensuring that every student in the class has understood the underlying concepts, so sticking with the basics is most important to increase student engagement in the session.
Ultimately, the aim of pharmacology education should not be exclusively for students to attain qualifications but to also share knowledge, spark curiosity and to enjoy learning. Pharmacology is, of course, one of the most interesting fields in science and it is necessary for us as scientists to continue to share our interest with our communities so that pupils no longer ask, ‘Is pharmacology a difficult subject to study?’ but instead ask, ‘How do I become a pharmacologist?’.
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