Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2013 Nov 15;8(11):e80928.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0080928. eCollection 2013.

Changing children's understanding of the brain: a longitudinal study of the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures as a measure of public engagement

Nathalia L Gjersoe  1 , Bruce Hood
Affiliations

Changing children's understanding of the brain: a longitudinal study of the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures as a measure of public engagement

Nathalia L Gjersoe et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Demonstrating the impact of public engagement is an increasingly important activity for today's academics and researchers. The difficulty is that many areas of interest do not lend themselves well to evaluation because the impact of each single intervention can be hard to trace and take time to become manifest. With this in mind, we evaluated a lecture based around the 2011 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, "Meet Your Brain," delivered to school children from low performing schools. We compared knowledge about four neuroscience facts one week before, one week after and six weeks after the lecture. Analysis revealed significant knowledge transfer one week after the lecture that was retained five weeks later. We conclude that public engagement through tailored lectures can have significant impact in the moderate term with the potential to leave a lasting impression over a longer period.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Percentage of correct responses from primary students for each question for each survey.
Neurons refers to Question 1, Speed to Question 2, 10% to Question 3 and Memories to Question 4. The blue bars represent the percentage of primary school children passing each of the questions before the lecture. The red bars represent pass-rates 1-week after the lecture and the green bars represent pass-rates 6 weeks after the lecture. Chance pass-rates are 25% for questions 1, 2 and 4 and 33% for question 3. Significant or approaching significant increases in pass rates occurred on all questions between Times 1 and 2 and between Times 1 and 3.
Figure 2
Figure 2. Percentage of responses from secondary students for each question for each survey.
Neurons refers to Question 1, Speed to Question 2, 10% to Question 3 and Memories to Question 4. The blue bars represent the percentage of secondary school children passing each of the questions before the lecture, the red bars represent percentage pass-rates 1-week after the lecture and the green bars represent percentage pass-rates 6 weeks after the lecture. Chance pass-rates are 25% for questions 1, 2 and 4 and 33% for question 3. Significant increases in pass rates occurred on all questions between Times 1 and 2 and between Times 1 and 3.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. NCCPE (2010) National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement. Available: http://www.publicengagement.ac.uk. Accessed 18 October 2013.
    1. HEFCE (2010) Higher Education Funding Council for England. Available: http://www.hefce.ac.uk/. Accessed 18 October 2013.
    1. NSF (2010) National Science Foundation. Available: http://www.nsf.gov/. Accessed 18 October 2013.
    1. Concordat for Engaging the Public with Research (2010). Available: http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/documents/scisoc/ConcordatforEngagingthePublicwith.... Accessed 18 October 2013.
    1. Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) (2011) Assessment framework and guidance on submissions. London: Higher Education Funding Council for England; Available: http://www.rhul.ac.uk/research/documents/researchpdf/refgosincludingadde.... Accessed 18 October 2013.

Publication types