Thousands of school students meet scientists through I’m a Scientist every year, and they ask thousands of questions.

In June 2017, over 3,000 students took part, asking scientists more than 2,500 questions in the ASK section alone. This is also the event that we implemented our question coding system across all the zones to see what students are asking about.

This all got us thinking:

Do students from different types of schools ask more or less of certain question types?

We’ve identified two groups we want to look at:

Under-served: Schools more than 30 minutes travel time from a major research HEI

Widening Participation: Schools with an above average number of students eligible for free school meals

Taking the questions from the I’m a Scientist zones in June 2017 it appears that:

• Overall, the split of questions is similar across all groups of students
• Under-served students ask more “science topics” and “personal” questions, getting to know the scientists outside work
• WP students ask slightly more questions around “careers and education”

For all groups, questions about careers and education are the most common, and questions about the event or completely random and unrelated are the least (phew).

But why the differences?

Are they indicative of how students at different schools view scientists and STEM?

Do under-served students ask slightly more “personal”, and science topic questions to compensate for fewer opportunities to meet scientists in person?

Does the slightly higher percentage of WP students asking about “careers and education” demonstrate their greater interest in understanding future opportunities in STEM?

We don’t have the answers, but it’s certainly interesting to us that there are small differences in the types of questions students’ ask.

If you have thoughts on why this might be, we’d love to hear them, or if you want to talk about how you can support more under-served and WP students to have this opportunity get in touch: shane@mangorol.la | 01225 326892