Title: Stimulating Scientific Interest of Junior High Students

Recently, losing interest in science of students has become apparent in Japan. Japanese students
ranked the bottom among 47 nations for the question asking their interest in science, according to thesurvey of OECD last year.
This result makes us, Kosen students feel disappointed, because most of Kosen students are inlove with science.

It also makes us think whether there is something we can do to change thissituation. So in this presentation, first, we will talk about when and why students lose their interestin science. In the second part, we propose one solution Kosen students can assist in. Finally, we’llpresent mini show.
First, when do Japanese students start losing their interest in science? Please look at this figure.
This is one of the results of surveys about students’ interest in science. Upper data indicates that ofelementary students. Lower one is that of junior high students. At a glance, the result of junior highstudents is more unfavorable than those of elementary school students. This tendency is shown inalmost everything of other results in this survey. So we have focused on losing interest in scienceduring junior high school days.
Next, why do junior high students lose their interest in science? After examining this problem,we’ve found two possible causes. First, the reduction of science experiments through the relaxed policyof Ministry of education. Another is unpopular stereotype of scientists.
Now, we’ll explain the first cause, the reduction of science experiments through the relaxed policyof Ministry of education. Actually, do you know how many hours for science experiments in junior highschool have been cut down through this policy? A teacher of ICU high school, Mr. Takigawa reported
that the total school hours in three years of junior high school have been reduced from 420 to 350 hours.
In spite of this reduction, the educational contents were not reduced accordingly so that theexperimental hours drastically declined.
Another possible cause is unpopular stereotype of scientist. An international comparative
research project, ROSE reported that a lot of Japanese children have stereotyped images of scientists
as being introverted and geeky like this. And in fact we have to say it is uneasy to know real scientists
as an occupation in their daily life.
In this section, we explained the two possible causes of losing interest in science.
Based on these 2 points, we propose you one solution that Kosen students can assist in. That is adelivery service of science experiment. Our plan has three parts. So we will explain about these partsin the next section.
The first part is that our plan is able to provide junior high students with opportunities forparticipating in experiments. We expect that they become interested in science by doing experiments
in our plan.
Next part is that Jr. high students are able to meet real scientists through this activity. That’s
because this delivery service is conducted by Kosen staff, Kosen students under supervise of Kosen
graduates and Kosen professors. They are scientists, so we believe conducting experiments with thesepeople can improve unpopular stereotype of scientist
Now, the third part is adding Kosen spice to make our plan interesting.
Specifically, we think the following 2 points make our plan interesting, Conducting experiment
without knowing how the experiments will end up, and connecting experimental knowledge todaily-life phenomenon around us.
If you conduct experiments without knowing the results, you have to find out the answer byyourself. This makes experiments more interesting. In addition, if you can realize how much your life
is related to science, you can enjoy experiment even more. On the basis of these 2 points, now let us
show you one example of how to proceeds an experiment. C’mon teacher and student. Please imagine
Mr. Kurosawa is a teacher and Mr. Muto is a junior high student.

Teacher: Good morning everyone.
Student: Good morning Mr. Kurosawa.
Teacher: Today, I need your help.
Student: What is it?
Teacher: At the party yesterday, I spilled some red wine over my favorite white shirt by mistake!
In this case, what should I do to get the red stains out without taking it to the cleaners?
Student: Soak it in water or milk? Or… salty water?
Teacher: Ok. Let’s find out the answer by doing experiment!
At this point, we wouldn’t teach the answer to students in haste. We let each student conduct theexperiment by trial and error and wait until each student finds out the result.
If you were the student, what would you do?

Teacher: Okay, did you succeed in getting the stains out?
Student: Yea!!! White wine worked!
Teacher: Good for you! But, do you know why it worked?
Student: I don’t know why.
Teacher: Well, let’s think about it next.
Student: Yea!!
Thank you, teacher and student.
Did you understand the meaning of doing experiments without knowing the result andconnecting experiment to daily-life phenomenon? We want to give this kind of surprise to junior highstudents in our delivery service of science experiments.
Now, we are moving to the conclusion. The phenomenon of losing interest in science has becomeapparent in Japan. So in this presentation, we proposed one solution Kosen students can assist in. A
delivery service of science experiment. Through our plan, we expect Jr. high students become lovescience. In terms of the expense and manpower, this does not look easy to implement. But we areencouraged by one data. When we asked Tokyo Kosen students if they were willing to take part in thiskind of project, 70 % answered they would like to join! Kosen students are motivated enough to do it.
Thank you.