Duration: 16 minutes 28 seconds

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Lisa Harvey Smith

Good morning, everyone, it's terrific to join you once again, it's STEM 2023, I'm just so delighted to be with you, zooming in from beautiful power country where I'd like to acknowledge the traditional owners of this land and pay my respects to their elders past and present. Look, good morning. I've spoken to STEM conferences before here in New South Wales, just wonderful to be back.

I've got something new for you this time, I've got something very exciting, because I wanna share with you a terrific project that my team's working on to try and create an environment where kids know that STEM is for everyone and where teachers and educators know that they can receive curriculum linked and aligned resources that are trusted, that are proven, and that can help you to help young people understand career paths, 'cause this is a very complex type of thing to do. So what I'm gonna do today is share Future You Australia with you.

Look, who am I? Adam just gave me a quick whizz there, but I just wanted to introduce myself as well. So I've worked for more than 20 years in academia, in research, and in building giant telescopes. That's me top left with the Australian SKA Pathfinder telescope, this gigantic just the beginning of a huge global telescope network, which is gonna help us uncover billions of years of cosmic history from the Big Bang to the present day, what were the first stars and galaxies that formed in space?

How did they form, how did dark matter, which is this mysterious substance that pervades space, influence the creation of the galaxies and stars that we see today in the universe? All of this probing through radio astronomy, which looks at invisible radio waves that come from deep space and helps us to understand that history. And it's really a cosmic time machine because we can see distant radio waves that have travelled through space at the speed of light for literally billions of years, and we can see into the past in that way.

As Adam said, I've done a lot of presenting, I love sharing science, I love sharing STEM and working with people like Brian Cox and Julia Zemiro on Stargazing Live and working with astronauts like Gene Cernan, Charlie Duke, and Buzz Aldrin, who have actually travelled to the moon in the 1960s and 70s, walked on the surface of the moon, feats that haven't been achieved since. But hopefully soon, we'll see new people walking on the moon. And that will really be a catalyst to inspire the next generation.

And in my work involved as the advisory board to the Australian Space Agency, we're seeing a new Australian astronaut candidate training now in Europe, so this is a very exciting time for young people to think about not only space but other areas of STEM that can help them develop. I also write children's books. In fact, I've got six so far come out and got a new one out this week, the bottom right one there, Universal Guide to the Night Sky, and these books help young people understand the glory of the night sky and then, and really connect to that, so I try and inspire young people in a number of ways.

But currently, my role is Australia's Women is STEM Ambassador. So I work with the government to try and boost Australia's STEM sector. This doesn't just mean scientists and mathematicians, it means people who use those skills and technology and engineering skills in their careers, even though it may not be a STEM career, so this is really important to break down structural barriers to participation that particular groups, especially young women, might feel through the traditional ways that our society has viewed the types of jobs that men do and the types of jobs that women do.

And we've still got a cultural hangover from all of this. So my team does a great deal of research. We create tools, we create things for workplaces and for educators to try to break down those barriers to do with gender. And we run an education programme called Future You, and it's all about STEM careers and helping educators with free resources.

I'll tell you about that in just a sec, here's the boring stats bit, sorry, Adam, it's not boring, sorry, Eddie, sorry, Lily, it's not boring, it's wonderful because this statistics, this mathematics piece helps us understand where the problem lies, we can't solve a problem if we don't measure it. We cannot look at a problem like gender inequity from only a social lens, you have to look at it also through a data lens. So every year, the government brings out this STEM Equity Monitor, which is a website which has all the stats on it.

Who's participating in STEM, at what ages do their attitudes change, what are educators and parents' attitudes about STEM, and what are the barriers in workplaces? So this one stat that we're gonna look at is year 12 subjects. So who is enrolling in year 12 in these different STEM subjects, we've got science, technology, engineering, and maths all separated here and we've got girls and boys. Unfortunately, other genders are not captured because of small number statistics and privacy concerns, but that's currently being looked at.

Now, look, in science and maths, you can see that it's basically equal between girls and boys, participation 42, sorry, 48/52, that's basically equal within the . So science and maths is pretty much a parity in year 12, so well done you, this is great, we've been trying to achieve this for a long time, and collectively, I think that's a great achievement.

You can see the stats are very skewed though for technology and engineering. When we talk about technology, that can mean IT, coding, digital technologies, robotics, lots of different areas of technology. And engineering is one of the really tricky ones where there are huge gender biases still and huge inequities in the workforce.

So those two subjects where we really have to focus our efforts and, of course, not let up our efforts in science and maths too if we're thinking about the participation of everyone in STEM. Now, what are some of the problems? Why do young people maybe not see themselves working in STEM, well, we've done this experiment, scientists have done this experiment over the last, I don't know, 70 years or so, since the 1960s, to draw a scientist, you say to kids, here's a piece of paper, here's a bunch of crayons, good old-fashioned fun, draw a scientist for me. Now, in 1966, when this experiment was done, more than 99% of students drew a man, normally in a lab coat.

So pretty much everyone saw a scientist as a man. It hasn't improved a great deal, it's still over 70% the last time this was done about five years ago. So you know what, we still got a little way to go in terms of what young people associate with science. And of course, that would apply for the other STEM subjects too. So when we actually look and ask questions to young people and say, well, why wouldn't you study STEM in the future? And here are on the right-hand side these little bar charts showing what percentage of students agreed with these statements, girls in purple, boys in green. A lot of students say, I'm not really interested in STEM subjects, it's not related to the career I want. I'm not very good at maths or science, I'm not very smart, I'm not smart enough.

So this really teaches us a lot about what students think about STEM, they think you have to be super smart, they think you have to be a lone genius and be like the people in the Big Bang Theory, which is a funny show, but it actually has a lot of problems because it reinforces those stereotypes, and it's funny because it's stereotyped, but also we don't want those stereotypes perpetuating too much because it actually harms kids' interest in STEM and their feeling that they belong in STEM.

So, in the classroom, it's all about challenging those perceptions, you know, creating young minds who are confident to learn, who are confident to fail, try, fail, try, fail, and try again. And that's what these subjects are about, and I know you know that as educators, but it's really interesting to see these perception surveys and really understand the root causes. You'd be pleased to see the very lowest reason for not studying STEM is around teachers not being very good. So that's means you are very good, so that's a great piece of news for you. Now, our programme, which is funded by the federal government, is called Future You.

Now, this is about challenging stereotypes in STEM and showing young people that future careers in STEM are for everyone and STEM skills are for everyone. But also, that there are a diverse range of pathways into STEM, it's not about being a genius, it's not about being super academic. You can work with your hands, you can be from a regional or remote community. It doesn't matter what your gender is, it doesn't matter what your cultural background is or disability, you have a place in STEM and you can solve problems using STEM skills. So it's a really exciting way to help teachers and young people and parents to understand STEM career pathways, and it provides curriculum aligned resources for that.

Now, it's free, completely free, it's paid for by the Commonwealth government, so you can jump on the website and explore after this. And as Adam says, after the sessions, hopefully. Now, I wanted to just show you the website so we can do a little bit of exploring. So it's futureyouaustralia.com.au.

But I'll tell you that lots of times, we've got curriculum aligned resources and we've got wonderful features, now, the series I'm gonna show you first is called Pathfinders. Now, these are the STEM role models and they've got STEM skills, they've come to STEM in a number of different ways.

We've got a number of Pathfinders at the moment, but we're gonna add some more. You'll notice that most of them are women at the moment, but we're gonna add people of different genders so that everyone's got people that they can maybe connect with. This is Mikaela, who is a Cabrogal woman, who is an entrepreneur, she has a wonderful background in STEM, and she is using STEM to tell traditional stories. And it's just a wonderful video that we made with a professional filmmaker, it's about four or five minutes long, and it really tells the story of Mikaela's life, why she caress deeply about what she does, and how her STEM skills are connected to what she contributes to society. It also goes through what people feel they're good at and what they feel they're not good at, so it demystifies people who work in STEM and shows that they're not these nerdy geniuses with, you know, wacky haircuts and holding test tubes, it's just not all about that.

So we're breaking down stereotypes and we've got a bunch of different resources for teachers, for the students, and for parents if they're using this at home. We've got different types of role models, so this is Louise, she's a heavy vehicle mechanic, so she grew up on a farm surrounded by motorbikes and tractors, and she taught herself to look at engines and then she did an apprenticeship through vocational pathways.

So again, showing that there isn't just one pathway into STEM, there are many, many routes. And she ended up being a teacher, so someone who teaches heavy vehicle fixing to other people, I don't know the terminology.

So this is great, this is really exciting, because it shows a lot of different pathways. You can be in IT, you can solve problems, or you can pretty much fix the world. You can tell cultural stories, you can invent new ways of creating foods that are environmentally sustainable. You can save animal species. It's just so much to explore.

So here are some of the teachers' resources, just having a little closer look. We've got wonderful posters for the classroom, so you can show these role models and students can peruse them every day as they go through the classroom or through the school, talking about what each role model is good at, what they can't do, and what their vision is, what challenges they faced in their career, and then what they're expert in.

So it really builds that kind of idea of whole person around the role model. Now, the teachers' resources support the curriculum in different ways, from the English curriculum, literacy, numeracy, to very different sort of general capabilities and comprehension, things like that, so it supports a number of curriculum areas. And I should have said at the start, but this is mainly aimed at approximately the age range 8-years-old to 12-years-old, sort of middle grade and upper primary. But you may find that there's some variability in that, and I think there's a lot of different good stuff that you can pick out.

So I wanted to show you another part of the campaign, that was the Pathfinders, the role models with wonderful films. The next part I wanted to show you was Imagining the Future. So we got some professional STEM fiction writers, some top Australian STEM fiction writers for young people, to write us some stories, fiction stories set in the future, set in space, in fact. So these wonderful stories we've created, we've had them illustrated, and they all come from very different perspectives, stories set in the future in space, and the protagonists are very diverse people. They're solving problems that they face in their journeys through space. And there are a number of different ways to access these stories, you can read them or even watch them, listen to them as podcasts. So the team have created this terrific sort of way of watching, which is text on a screen, and there's some wonderful music in the background as well. And you can go through the stories in this format.

This is called The Callistan Cycle, Callisto is one of the moons of Jupiter. And as I say, people in the stories are travelling from Earth into outposts on Callisto. And it's really interesting because all the different authors come from different backgrounds and different imaginations of the same concept.

They've all created exciting stories with, you know, hooks and mysteries or things that are challenging, things that are maybe precarious, and the protagonists solve these problems, so it's really showing young people that using STEM, you can solve problems.

You may not know how to do it at first, but with a bit of help from your friends, a bit of problem-solving, you can solve important problems. We've created the books, as I say, in this booklet format as well, you can read on a screen, you can print them out if you want and have them in the library.

We've actually partnered with a charity called Deadly Science, printed out hundreds of these to send to First Nations community schools across Australia, and that's a very exciting part of this. Future You has got a lot for everyone, it's got careers quizzes, it's got resources for teachers, students, parents, when you have time, visit futureyouaustralia.com.au, thanks very much.

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