The first female scientist to inspire me was
Marie Curie. I came across her work when I
was 8 in a graded reader at school. I can
still remember it, remember how the book looked,
the series of graded readers I finally worked
my way onto, and a fascination for chemistry
and isolating the elements really stayed with
me throughout the rest of my schooling although
I think even my 8 year old self had a suspicion
that maybe I wasn't quite cut out for the
kind of hard physical lab work that was involved
to take that further. These days I'm most
inspired by the women I meet who are not only
scientists in their own right but are inspiring
the next generation of children, of students,
young adults, to be scientists. Somebody whose
work I first came across a few years ago when
my husband was doing a PGCE was Jo Boaler,
and her book The Elephant in the Classroom
was something I was just really wowed by.
The great evaluation work she carries out
but all to the end game of making maths accessible
to everybody, students of all abilities of
all interests and looking at how maths relates
to things like art, design, how group work
helps children to learn, all these things
I find absolutely fascinating. I'm very privileged
in my role to spend quite a lot of time meeting
staff particularly in universities who are
out there thinking, talking , really doing
great work in education at the same time as
carrying on a scientific career, an engineering
career, looking at whatever is their specialist
topic, things about which I know absolutely
nothing, and still just having the most fantastic
engagement in things like how technology can
be used to enhance learning, so I'd like to
give a shout out to all of those great women
who I meet in the universities and colleges
around the country.
