Kudos award for Waikato academic

Finding better ways to teach science still drives University of Waikato Faculty of Education senior lecturer Dr Anne Hume, the winner of this year’s Kudos Science Teacher/Educator/Communicator award.

Dr Hume has extensive experience and influence in the national education scene including being part of the writing team for the national science curriculum in 1993, and on the science expert panel for NCEA and still maintains her passion for teaching.

Celebrating Science

The Kudos awards are a Waikato initiative held once a year to celebrate science achievement in the region. Dr Hume believes current methods of teaching science need to be changed, to reflect what she calls “real science”.

“I think it's important we increase the science literacy of all of our students. Unless everyone has an understanding of science we'll have problems in the future,” Dr Hume said after receiving the award at a ceremony on October 13.

"To teach kids science through experiments with an established aim and method is teaching by recipe. In my programmes I get my students to work on open-ended problem solving - I give the students a problem and encourage them to come up with a way of solving it. This reflects authentic science."

Academic Achievements

Dr Hume has been awarded a New Zealand Suffrage Medal for contributions to science education and been a Fulbright Scholar. She has done work with the development team for the Science Learning Hub run out of the University of Waikato, and this year is a researcher in a Teaching and Learning Research Initiative (TLRI) funded project promoting pedagogical content knowledge development for early career secondary teachers in science and technology.

Recently she has developed a series of contextual science workbooks for use in junior science classrooms to support teachers in the implementation of the New Zealand Science curriculum, and worked as an education consultant to two NIWA-led environmental education projects.

“I am only now appreciating the huge contribution I can make to science through science education by teaching my tertiary students how to learn how to teach science, and how they in turn can teach school students how to learn and love science.

“It never fails to amaze me how I keep learning about science and science education as I teach.”

The University of Waikato had two other finalists in the Kudos awards – Dr Johan Verbeek and Dr Charles Lee.