Science communication teaching is a growing area in the UK, and a recent conference brought together teachers of existing and proposed courses to share information and experience. Their courses were of several types, from purely media skills courses for working scientists to theoretical and academic courses for undergraduate and postgraduate students in science, science studies and journalism. The conference stressed the value of skills but also of a theoretical background, and delegates welcomed contributions from fields such as the sociology of scientific knowledge and cognitive psychology. The conference established an electronic network, and formed a committee to maintain the group's interest and activities in the development of course materials and curricula.
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References
1.
Thanks to Paul Wymer, Teryll Helm and colleagues at the Wellcome Trust for organizing and hosting the meeting.
2.
The Wellcome Trust began to compile a Science Communication Course Directory from information supplied by delegates. A more complete version will be available from The Information Centre. Wellcome Centre for Medical Science, 183 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE, UK.
3.
The Bristol-based course produces an excellent newsletter, Wavelength, written by staff and students. Copies are available from School of Interdisciplinary Studies, University of West of England, Frenchay Campus, Bristol BS16 1QY, UK.
4.
These three case studies were prepared by Dr Nicholas Russell on a grant to Birkbeck from the Nuffield Foundation. They have been used in the second year of the Diploma in Science Communication and have been modified in the light of that experience. Our support from Nuffield provides for this material to be distributed to others running similar courses and typescript versions are now available. The three case studies are: Echoes of the Big Bang, which explores the explosion in media coverage of the discovery of George Smoot's team in 1992 of the ripples in cosmic background radiation, found by detectors mounted on the COBE satellite; How, Now, Mad Cow?, which looks at the press coverage surrounding the original BSE (`mad cow disease') scare of summer 1990; Manufacturing the News: a Breast Cancer Event, which looks at the follow-up of a press conference held by a cancer charity in 1992, and at the interests of the various producers and consumers of science. Each contains a suite of teaching exercises and assignments, for use together or separately, together with extensive documentation of media coverage and primary and secondary scientific material and some interview transcripts. Further details are available from Dr Shani Gbaja, CEMS, Birkbeck College, 26 Russell Square, London WC1B 5DQ, UK.
5.
For a comprehensive listing, see the guide prepared by Sharon Dunwoody and colleagues, available from the Center for Environment Communications and Education Studies, School of Journalism and Mass Communications, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA.
6.
Most recently summarized in Collins, H., and Pinch, T., 1993, The Golem What Everyone Should Know about Science (Cambridge University Press).
7.
See Royal Society, 1992, Risk: Analysis, Perception and Management (London: Royal Society), chap. 5.
8.
The (as yet informally constituted) committee consists of Nicholas Russell (Nuffield Curriculum Projects, London, chair), Ros Herman (Imperial College, meetings secretary), Lynda Birke (Warwick) and Peter Broks (University of the West of England). Nick can be contacted at Nuffield Science in Practice, 17 Rathbone Street, London WIP 1AF, UK, telephone 071 636 4612.
9.
The bulletin board will be run by the Information Centre at Wellcome, which can be contacted on 071 611 8720, or on e-mail at Wfllinfoaucl.ac.uk. E-mail users may also like to consider existing discussion lists relevant to our area. Notably Mersenne (message to mersenne-request (a mailbase.ac.uk) and Science Awareness and Promotion Discussion (send message `join sais-I' to listserv (a unb.ca). There is also a recently launched usenet newsgroup (misc.education.science), which I have not sampled but which is said to be very active. This is likely to be cross-listed with sais by the time you read this.
10.
SCAN is edited by Sally Goodman at the BAAS, Fortress House, 23 Savile Row, London SWIX IAB, UK, and is distributed free six times a year.
