Interview with Gaëll Mainguy: “It is absolutely critical that Science Engagement is realized by everyone as one of the key factors for our society to move forward.”

By Désirée Böhm and Kathryn Spickermann

Gaëll Mainguy, Executive Vice President of The Learning Planet Institute, shares his goal with the International Year of Science Engagement (an initiative to become a United Nations International Year in 2027) #IYSE2027: promoting science engagement to the general public. The Learning Planet Institute specifically targets a younger demographic in order to help motivate kids from a young age and to nurture the innate curiosity inside. In this interview, Gaëll Mainguy explains projects and initiatives that reach young people. He discusses why science engagement, as well as the methodology of new approaches to science education, is important.

What does Science Engagement look like at an educational level?

We could summarize it by the FIDS acronym, which means you Feel, you Imagine, you Do, then you Share. What brings you strong feelings? As a teacher, you discuss that with the kids and you open the possibility for them to imagine what could be different, and what they could do to mitigate that feeling. Then after that, they try to do it in real life. This is a very generic method and there are all kinds of tools to equip the teachers. You start from the kids’ needs and then from there you go on and you build up a sequence where they can actually do something, so they can have the feeling of trying to contribute to their community and make it better. This method has been developed by Design for Change and applied to thousands of schools across the globe.

Recently, the Institute deployed Bâtisseurs de Possibles, the French adaptation of the Design for Change program. The project contributes to the transformation of the educational system and to the construction of a learning society for a more sustainable world: it is thus fully in line with our strategy and strengthens the youth action of our Institute.

So, the children will have an intrinsic motivation to discover the world afterwards?

Exactly, that is the perfect transition. Another program born in the Institute is called Savanturiers, which can be translated to “adventurers of knowledge”. The program is about pairing a classroom, a teacher and their children with a researcher, or a master or PhD student to foster inquiry-based science. It can be started with kids as young as four years old. The first step is having the children reflect on what they would like to investigate, what they are interested in.

By doing this, we focus only on the methodology, which is developing critical analysis skills as well as scientific methods. So, whatever the subject, the question is: What do you see? How can you discuss it? Can you try to imagine potential settings where you could test the hypothesis that you have formulated?

In their quest to advance understanding of the phenomenon they are interested in, the kids realize how difficult it is, and how it is important that everyone is pitching in with hypotheses and propositions to test the mechanisms. It is about doing and realizing the set up for testing abilities, but it is also about discussing the results. What can we do with what we have obtained? Do we need to have other experiments? All these subtleties that make science what science is.

Do you have an example of one of these methods at work?

There is a scientific paper called “Blackawton Bees” signed by 8-10 year old children. The children were interested in how bumblebees decipher flowers, as they realized that the bumblebees were not randomly picking them, but that there was a pattern. However, the children and the teacher did not know which pattern the bumblebees used and after they did not find an answer in the research literature either, they set up their own experiment. With the help of one of the kid’s fathers, a famous neurologist, they designed a small experiment with fake flowers, changing the color, the pattern, and other factors, and counted the number of times the bumblebee visited the flowers. Upon these observations they made a hypothesis. The paper was completed and everyone learned something, one of which is that science is cool!

It is important to provide children with challenges they can tackle at their level, where they can learn, test, and see how they can advance their understanding to find solutions by themselves. You have an issue. You need to find a solution.

We are working towards an International Year of Science Engagement in 2027 and are pleased to have the Learning Planet Institute as one of our partners. Why do you think an International Year in this area is important?

I think the IYSE is an opportunity to put light on the fact that we are drifting away from the roots of our society. We have drifted away from the roots of what progress meant before and now we must get back on track. If we want to solve current problems we’re not going to solve them with less knowledge. We should see the International Year of Science Engagement as more than just a year. It should be all the time because it is absolutely critical that science engagement is realized by everyone as one of the key factors for our society to move forward.

Which topics are important to tackle in this year of action?

In our world, distorted by social medias and distrust, Science Engagement has a critical role to play to help people understand the different notions of truth, opinions, facts, controversies, uncertainties, and the key principles of scientific conversation that help refine understanding. Science Engagement is an important component of democracy: as citizens, we all need to understand the flow of information and the process by which knowledge is gradually curated, criticized, refined and established. Without a shared understanding of these processes, agreement on a common reality becomes challenging and undermine democracy.

How does the Learning Planet Institute contribute to science engagement projects?

We created the LearningPlanet Alliance with UNESCO three years ago to identify all those wonderful stories and people that are behind the stories. The Learning Planet Institute is a research and development center, as well as a graduate and post-graduate school. We develop programs for kindergarteners and doctoral students alike, and every age in between – even for lifelong learners. The Institute offers services to government agencies, companies, and other types of organizations as they embark on their learning-society transformation. At the LearningPlanet Festival, for instance, everyone is invited to share what they have learned and to show all these inspiring projects. We want to create a movement out of this to influence and provide help for policy making by showcasing what is already working. It is not just an idea in a vacuum.

To find out more about the Alliance as well as how to join as a partner, please visit https://www.learning-planet.org.

To learn more about the LearningPlanet Festival and how to take part, please visit https://festival.learning-planet.org/.

What is the most emotional project or story you have experienced in your personal work with science engagement?

I am incredibly inspired by the young students from College Catts Pressoir, Haiti, who won the Physics Olympiads with their seismograph network to predict earthquakes in the country. I am particularly impressed seeing eight year old children programming robots that are coming from junk or building a hydraulic system with old syringes. This project shows that science is a way to access knowledge and development, even when you come from difficult circumstances. If you have an idea and it works, and if you are in school or in the lab, then just start! The story of the good mathematician is that you need a piece of paper, a pen and a rubbish bin, and that is all you need.