Interview with Claire Welsh - Primary Schools Programme Manager

ER. I'm going to take you a bit of a step back. So I wonder if you could tell me about your own personal theories or philosophies or beliefs around learning.

CW Right - I think this idea of children making, you have to make your own sense, sense of things, so, basically people come with, you come with, you come with your prior knowledge, you come with certain ideas and things. And it's, I've forgotten the term but, constructivism kind of thing where, you, you have to reconstruct whatever. So whatever comes in, you're, you adapt whatever you already know on, on the, you know, beforehand. I think - and I think talk, I think talking I would say is very important.- I think children make sense of what they're, what they're doing a lot by talking about things, and I think that's one of the nice things here is that, I mean not so much in shows but in workshops and things, and in the exhibition, you know, we don't - we don't want them to be quiet, we want them to talk about things and as they, I think as you talk about things then you, you get to understand what you're doing and if someone, as you're trying to explain something to someone, you know, and they say "well what do you mean?" you know, it gets you to, understand things more. So I think that's a vital part of what goes on as well. ((pause))

What else? ((pause)) It's a good thing in my job you see, I don't have to, I don't ever have to talk about these things ((ER: laughs)) I just, I just sort of, you know, they just sort of filter in, "I do think this and I do think that" and I never have to talk about them. ((pause))

I mean, I think practical, doing things in a practical way, is a very good way of, good way of learning. I'm not sure about - other people say about "oh some people are visual and some people are this and some people are that" and - I'm sure there are elements that, I'm sure there are elements of it, and I'm sure people are better at thing than another, but I think sometimes, almost like it can be, then if something is only auditory or something I think it can almost be and excuse for well "oh I'm not going to understand this then" and I think, there's a sense in which, you want to, yeah you want to make things as varied as you can and use as many different methods as you can. But, it's - it's just having a - I suppose a thirst for finding things out, is the important thing really if you, if you're keen and you're hungry then you're, you're going to make sense of it however it's, sort of put to you, really.

But I think and the nice thing in Techniquest is we've got such good, sort of equipment and you know if we're running a workshop we've got loads of, I mean I borrow stuff from - I go round the university, museum and just, so I've got, nice, you know, I've got visual things, I've got practical things people can do. So I can use as many varied things as I can and that, that all helps.