EDUCATION FORUM

Jeremy Pritchard—an Englishman in the Sandwich Islands

Plant Biology 2009
An Englishman in the Sandwich Islands
Education Outreach Collaborations with the SEB Evolve at Plant Biology 2009

The Society for Experimental Biology (SEB) is the only society based in the United Kingdom that serves the research community interested in the function of the whole plant at the physiological and molecular level. While plants are integral to the SEB mission, the society’s interests range from cellular and molecular biology to animals and systems. Despite this apparently broad remit, the SEB performs a very similar role in the United Kingdom to the ASPB in the United States, in particular with relation to plant biology.

In recent years, there has been successful and developing collaboration between the SEB and ASPB, in particular in the area of public understanding of science and education. For example, the ASPB recently had a presence at the SEB annual meeting in Glasgow, building on collaborations dating back to the 2007 photosynthesis meeting, also held in Glasgow.

To further explore the areas of common interest, and also as part of the Year of Darwin 2009 events (as the Year of Science is called in the United Kingdom), it was suggested that it would be appropriate for someone from the SEB education committee to attend the 2009 ASPB meeting in Hawaii. As thoughts of maidens clad in grass skirts and sun-kissed beaches briefly flashed through my thoughts, I quickly accepted the assignment, however difficult it might prove; after all, I have always felt that you shouldn’t expect others to undertake tasks that you’re not prepared to do yourself!

There were a number of objectives to the visit: to develop the collaboration between the ASPB and the SEB and to explore the similarities and differences between the current challenges facing experimental scientists in both countries. In addition, as part of the ASPB Year of Science and the UK Year of Darwin, I had been invited to present a talk at the Education Minisymposium on the issues involved in teaching about evolution and also to present and demonstrate resources designed to facilitate the teaching and understanding of evolution. These resources had recently been presented at the SEB annual meeting in Glasgow in the “What would you tell Darwin?” session and the associated teaching evolution workshop. Excitingly, these resources are about to be supplemented with online videos of the keynote speakers from this session. Access these videos, visit and follow the link on the right to teachers’ resources.

Darwin traveled widely, but never got to Hawaii (at that time called the Sandwich Islands). However, he was very interested in the archipelago, corresponding extensively with Joseph Hooker, the head of Kew Gardens, about the flora of the islands, which provided important information about species isolation, adaptation, and diversification. Darwin mentions the Sandwich Islands in the Descent of Man, where he reports correspondence between himself and a whaler’s captain who informs Darwin that the body lice of the sailors die if they transfer to the islanders. For Darwin, this was an important piece of evidence informing his belief in the common ancestry of the human species. While the louse is not particularly pleasant or relevant for the ASPB, the diverse flora of the natural laboratories that are the Hawaiian Islands made it an ideal venue for both the ASPB meeting and reflection of Darwin’s legacy.

The ASPB Education Committee meeting was a useful orientation. I was immediately struck by the similarity of the issues facing the ASPB and the SEB and the common approaches being undertaken to address these. The SEB has plants as a component of its remit while ASPB focuses solely on this area, and it was surprising to see there are similar concerns in the United States about the lack of plant scientists moving through the education pipeline into research and beyond. As in the UK, it seems that U.S. students struggle to perceive plants as dynamic and having a relevance to 21st-century lives and careers. Similar approaches are being considered to overcome these issues, but perhaps a qualitative difference with the UK is the clear acceptance in the United States that the research scientists of the ASPB need to engage early on in their career path and work with schools. To this end, it was informative to meet with 20 teachers from local schools to discuss issues of plant and evolution education. Unlike the UK, there is not an imposed curriculum—this is more locally decided—and teachers seemed more willing and able to engage with the resources made available by the ASPB. The SEB-sponsored Evolution Teaching Resources were demonstrated to this group and interestingly, despite the well-reported difference in the reception to Darwin’s ideas in the United States, the teachers reported no great problems with the more radical opposition to evolution teaching that conversations with similar groups of UK teachers have revealed.

Throughout the four days of the conference there was a steady stream of visitors to the SEB Teaching Evolution Resources stand. There was a wide range of people, from eminent professors to early careers scientists, and nearly 350 took home the SEB USB flash drives, preloaded with teaching resources.

While visiting the stand, over 80 delegates from a wide range of countries signed up for an e-mail list that will be used to get feedback on the usefulness of these resources and to help develop them further. An interesting distinction between the early career scientists visiting the stand in Honolulu and our experience in the UK was the clear understanding of the U.S.-based scientists that teaching was potentially part of their career development. It is often apparent in the UK that students at the same stage of their career are more focused on developing the research and are either less interested, or more likely less aware, of the future need to develop a more rounded portfolio of skills on their CV. This may reflect a fundamental difference in the U.S. system or be because career opportunities in the UK are perceived as a more linear postgrad–postdoc academic route, rather than a job market that is increasingly more diverse.

While I can report some examination of sun-kissed beaches, the grass-skirted maidens eluded me. It was a great meeting with excellent interaction with our U.S. and other international colleagues with whom there was an extensive exchange of views. There are many similarities where collaboration can strengthen our responses to the changing scientific landscape, but also areas of different experiences that can inform the responses of each society as the education sections provide continued support to the members. Look out for the ASPB Education section at the SEB meeting in Prague in 2010, where the ideas and collaborations identified in the current visit will be continued. T

Jeremy Pritchard
University of Birmingham, UK
Chair, Education Section, Society for Experimental Biology (SEB)
A modified version of this article will also appear in the SEB Bulletin, September 2009.