Resources - Archived Materials

Section Four: Recommendations - Program Delivery Issues

4.6 Partnerships: parents, post secondary institutions, business, industry, community

Partnerships are invaluable in many ways. Parents and community organizations can provide resource people with specialized expertise in science, as well as mentors for students working on projects. Colleges and universities can provide in-service training and upgrading for teachers to improve the content and strategies of their teaching. Members of the faculties of science and education within colleges and universities may help develop science curricula, especially the subject-specific elective courses described in subsection 3.7, and provide teaching aids that are practical, hands-on, and relevant. Business and industry can provide much needed financial support in the form of awards, bursaries, scholarships, and co-operative and career opportunities for students.

At present, however, Ontario has too few science partnerships like those described above, and those that exist are not coordinated across the province, across education sectors, or across business, industry, the community, and teacher organizations. As recommended in subsection 2.3, a coordinating body, such as an Ontario Science Foundation could be created to accomplish this. Such a province-wide, non-profit consortium could be financed in part by important stakeholders such as business and industry, and could be governed by a board representing business and industry, colleges and universities, teachers' organizations, the local community, and government

It would perform several functions, including:

• developing and updating links among elementary schools, secondary schools, colleges and universities, and the workplace;
• helping develop and update specific science curriculum programs;
• sponsoring in-service training institutes for teachers across the province;
• taking on a strong advocacy role for nurturing experiential science with connections to technology and real-life applications.

Examples of this kind of consortium are the Fields Institute for Mathematics in Toronto, Science Alberta Foundation, and the National Science Foundation in the United States.