As Honorary Fellow at Durham University, our multidisciplinary academic team is running a research and development project with a Science Centre in Newcastle, the International Centre for Life. We are investigating whether engagement with science improves when innovation and creativity is at the heart of science education.
In order to test this, Durham University’s researchers have worked with practitioners from the Centre for Life and with designers to form a multi-disciplinary team to co-produce exhibits, which enhance creativity, innovation and scientific thinking. Together, we have iteratively developed a new exhibit pod – specifically to encourage creativity and innovation, and to allow the research team to measure it. The Interactive Research Pod hosting the experiments is on the floor in the Brain Zone, a new gallery at the Centre.
Our first academic journal paper about using co-design and participatory action research approaches to develop the Pod and experiments has been published in Educational Action Research, and is available online open access for reading in full and downloading.
