Making sense of science education | Academia et al

In this episode of Academia et al, Zeinab El Khateeb speaks with Dr Jasper Green about a career that has moved between biology, classroom teaching, doctoral research and teacher education. Jasper shares how an inspiring biology teacher helped him develop a sense of identity within the subject, and how later academic experiences led him to questions about learning, misconceptions and what it means to teach science well. He also offers advice for early career researchers on thinking with precision, writing with confidence and taking time to understand smaller questions in greater depth.

More about Dr Jasper Green and his work: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/news/2026/jul/making-sense-science-education-academia-et-al

More IOE Insights podcasts: https://uclioe.info/podcast
UCL Institute of Education: https://ucl.ac.uk/ioe

Creators and Guests

ZE

Host

Zeinab El-Khateeb

What is IOE Insights?

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Voiceover 1: 00:00

You're listening to IOE Insights, the UCL Institute of Education podcast and University College London.

Voiceover3: 00:23

This is Academia et al. The podcast for anyone and everyone figuring out life in academia.

Zeinab El-Khateeb: 00:39

This is Academia et al, the podcast for Early Career Academics. I am Zeinab El-Khateeb, I'm a lecturer in Teacher Education at IOE, UCL Faculty of Education and Society. In this series of episodes, we are going to hear stories about academic journeys, achievements and legacy, which we hope will inspire you to embark on your own adventure as an early career researcher. Today, I'm delighted to welcome Dr Jasper Green, the Head of Initial Teacher Education at the IOE.

Zeinab El-Khateeb: 01:14

Dr Jasper, welcome to the studio here with us and thank you for joining us today.

Jasper Green: 01:18

It's great to be here, Zeinab. Thank you for inviting me.

Zeinab El-Khateeb: 01:20

Pleasure. Firstly, it would be helpful if you could provide the audience with an overview of your academic journey and progression to the present day.

Jasper Green: 01:30

Okay. I think it's an interesting question to think about where my academic journey begins. I think you and Alison would probably say right in the early years. I don't disagree with that, but I think particularly the most sort of significant moments for me were in secondary school towards the end where I had a really amazing biology teacher called Frances Myers, and she introduced me to the subject. Yeah.

Jasper Green: 01:53

And I think there were two things that happened. One, I became actually successful at school. Well, up to that point, I hadn't really felt that, but I became particularly interested in the subject of biology areas such as evolutionary biology and botany. Those are things that I suddenly became really keen to understand. And from that, I went to University of Oxford and studied biology.

Jasper Green: 02:17

And within that program, I had the opportunity to do a research project. So coincidentally, that is down the road here from UCL and it was part of UCL back then called the RAIN Institute. And it was a medical faculty or a medical research center and I was just there to do a short project, but the actual work I went to do didn't work, so it was meant to do some sort of lab work, that didn't work. But it was a time when they were starting to sequence organism genomes And I became really interested in thinking about whether the protein the lab was studying, which is called stomatin, was present in other organisms. So I was able through searching databases of genome sequences to see what organisms contained this protein.

Jasper Green: 02:59

So that was my sort of induction, if you like, into research. And I got to the end of university and I was like, okay. So where do I go? Do I pursue a career in scientific research? Or do I pursue a career in teaching?

Jasper Green: 03:13

And I took decision Very hard decisions. It was a hard decision. We can do both. Well, it's awesome. Exactly.

Jasper Green: 03:20

And at that point, I don't think that was actually I wasn't aware of the field, particularly of science education research. That was until I came here. So many years ago, I did my own PGCE here at the Institute of Education. So it was a science PGCE. And that was a time that sort of started to galvanize my interest in science education research, how children learn, thinking very much about misconceptions, which is something that I actually held many of the misconceptions we were learning about, thinking about how we could address these through our teaching, thinking about the aims of science education.

Jasper Green: 03:57

All of those interesting questions were suddenly open for discussion. And it was a great year that so many of the seeds have continued to grow throughout my career and interests. But I then left IOE. I then worked in London for a short period of time as a teacher. And then the opportunity came to complete a PhD up at University of York.

Jasper Green: 04:20

And that was a funded four year PhD for me to continue the research I'd started in my undergraduate. Yeah. So I took some It's good time to work. So I went to York. Oh, interesting.

Jasper Green: 04:31

Yeah. I moved to York.

Zeinab El-Khateeb: 04:33

Lovely.

Jasper Green: 04:33

Lovely part of the world.

Zeinab El-Khateeb: 04:34

Of course. Yes.

Jasper Green: 04:35

Of course. And I loved it. It was four years where I could Amazing. Yes. Spend time thinking really deeply about evolutionary biology.

Jasper Green: 04:43

It involved both lab work, but also developing phylogenetics of building evolutionary trees. And that's relevant because that's been formed something I did later on. But I got to the end of that junction in my life and I thought, okay, now what do I do? Do I continue in science research or do I continue a career in teaching? And again, I hadn't really thought about science education, but I took a job down in London.

Jasper Green: 05:13

I became a science teacher again. I worked in schools, became head of department. And then as I was doing that, I undertook a master's at King's College London. So that was an MA in science education.

Zeinab El-Khateeb: 05:27

That was- went to King's College as well. Okay.

Jasper Green: 05:30

So we both did. What did you do there?

Zeinab El-Khateeb: 05:32

In modern languages, which is my co year and it was 2007 on that time.

Jasper Green: 05:38

Goodness, I have to get my CV out. I did it part time while teaching, and did take a long time.

Zeinab El-Khateeb: 05:47

Same, yeah, of course. It's worth it,

Jasper Green: 05:49

because you could sort of think about how your practice relates to your theory, how the theory relates to your practice. And that really opened my eyes, I think, to some really important aspects of science education, like cognitive acceleration through science education that was research carried out there and draws on some of her work. So and and just lots of research that was centered around science education I became aware of, and it became a really interesting I

Zeinab El-Khateeb: 06:21

know you've been listening to it. I have

Jasper Green: 06:23

been listening very motivating. You're thinking about these questions that are not just theoretical, but applied to my practice in classrooms. So I completed that and then that led me to here as a senior teaching fellow and then later on now head of initial teacher education.

Zeinab El-Khateeb: 06:44

Wow. It's amazing, Julia. And it really shows the impact of one teacher.

Jasper Green: 06:49

Yeah.

Zeinab El-Khateeb: 06:49

How a great teacher can impact the whole of the journey. Yeah,

Jasper Green: 06:54

totally. Yeah. And the disposition to learning, science isn't something I find particularly easy through whatever happened in terms of how, you know, Francis Meyers sort of opened up the world a little bit to not just it wasn't about passing exams. It wasn't just about learning information. Was right.

Jasper Green: 07:15

Really making sense of that, thinking, forming a sense of an identity within that subject.

Zeinab El-Khateeb: 07:22

Yeah.

Jasper Green: 07:22

And that is something very much that I know the institute stands for today and something that I am absolutely passionate about promoting, that level of subject specificity in terms of the professionalisation of teaching.

Zeinab El-Khateeb: 07:36

And that leads to the next question. What professional accomplishments or initiative do you consider the most significant to date? Which is very much related to what you've discussed, but maybe in more detail.

Jasper Green: 07:51

Yeah, I think probably in about 2020, I wrote a book and

Zeinab El-Khateeb: 07:59

is that before or after pandemic?

Jasper Green: 08:01

It was sort of during, some of it was during. Excellent.

Zeinab El-Khateeb: 08:04

That's amazing. So

Jasper Green: 08:05

I started writing it before when you're working here and then that continued into the pandemic. And so it was a book, but it still is a book. It still exists. So that's something quite, whenever you write something, it's quite a personal thing.

Zeinab El-Khateeb: 08:26

And

Jasper Green: 08:28

a book is really quite an endeavor to actually complete because there's so many sort of tensions. Think whenever you write anything of that length, there's a lot of tensions about what you include and what you don't include.

Zeinab El-Khateeb: 08:42

Absolutely.

Jasper Green: 08:43

As you write it, your ideas change. So for me, that that book was a way for me to put down onto paper everything that I had sort of thought about over the past ten, fifteen years working in science education about what it means to teach science well and thinking about how we can support people who are coming into the profession, Planning lessons, for example, is an incredibly complex process. And what frameworks can we provide or I provide through this book to support new science teachers coming into the profession to plan science lessons? So the book really was focused around big ideas, really trying to support children develop meaning in science and supporting science teachers to plan those kinds of lessons.

Zeinab El-Khateeb: 09:33

Interesting. Did you write it by yourself, or did you have any help or support?

Jasper Green: 09:37

That's a good question. I because I wrote it Hello. I wrote it by myself, but it but it was a culmination of many people's ideas. And I think that's the thing. Really, a book when you write a book, you're boring people's ideas, really, and some of them are your own.

Jasper Green: 09:50

But, you know, huge amount of influence over the years have been colleagues I've worked with both here at the institute, but also in schools, discussions around what what might be working, why might it be working. So all of those conversations I've been having, all of those thoughts, was opportunity to sort of bring them all together and to try and organize that material into what I hope is an interesting book that is also practical. So it's something that science teachers knew to profession or existing science teachers can

Zeinab El-Khateeb: 10:24

Was it part of your PhD

Jasper Green: 10:27

or before? No, it came after my PhD.

Zeinab El-Khateeb: 10:30

Yeah, it's nothing due with the PhD.

Jasper Green: 10:32

No, nothing to do with the PhD. Lovely. Although I probably draw on certain things

Zeinab El-Khateeb: 10:36

from it. Because some doctors did do the PhD, they published a book, isn't it? But yeah, Okay, it's so was there an individual or more than one individual who inspired you intellectual development? And did their research focus align with your interests? It can be one, two, three, multi individuals.

Zeinab El-Khateeb: 10:57

You've already mentioned about your biology teachers.

Jasper Green: 11:01

Yeah. I think there'll be many individuals throughout my

Zeinab El-Khateeb: 11:04

life I can imagine.

Jasper Green: 11:04

Throughout my sort of life who have supported my intellectual development. And I think it's interesting to think why and what that sort of involved. But I think it's almost a sort of fantastic combination of both providing that support and being an advocate for me, but also providing that level of challenge. And that I remember who's had an impact on me. Are people who have often fed back on my writing, and really post some really good questions about why I'm saying something or this isn't clear or have you thought about this?

Jasper Green: 11:46

And the precision of those questions and the impact they can have is, I think, quite profound when you provide feedback on on work. Yeah. And I think many people at the institute, and I think of Ralph Levenson, I can think of him all the way back in the day when I was in a PGCE classroom, so it was twenty years ago, just posing sort of problems, if you like, for us to think about. Posing, you know, drawing a tennis ball on the board and asking us to labor the forces. What happens when a ball has been released from the hand?

Jasper Green: 12:16

And they're very simple questions, but they're questions that remote, a huge amount of thinking and reorganization of ideas. And I think it's not that one example, but it's what that illustrates just generally around thinking about what does it mean to to learn science, and what does it mean to teach science? And it's people who have, perhaps reorganized and changed how I I think about things that have made a big difference.

Zeinab El-Khateeb: 12:45

Yeah. And that's very important feedback. It feeds you forward. To think, isn't it?

Jasper Green: 12:50

Yeah. And the sort of thinking about the you can have feedback who just improves you on that particular task, which can be helpful. But then this feedback that you remember that comes back to multiple tasks. So it's exactly, it has a long lasting effect.

Zeinab El-Khateeb: 13:09

I- For further stuff to bite, isn't it? Has an ongoing relevance. You hear that question in your head.

Jasper Green: 13:15

I don't know about you. When I write sometimes I can hear those voices in my head saying focus or sharpen this.

Zeinab El-Khateeb: 13:25

Yeah. Yeah. Of course. I get it all the time from my PhD supervisor, which yeah. Yeah.

Zeinab El-Khateeb: 13:30

What academic advice do you have for early career recessions? This could be staff, student, or staff and the student. You know, like, we have staff with two hats, including myself.

Jasper Green: 13:43

I think focus. Well, that is definitely something that has resonated a lot with me throughout my sort of academic career is focus. And focus doesn't mean it needs to become narrow. Actually, focus can promote real depth of thinking, arguments. So the temptation, certainly my temptation is to be over ambitious in terms of maybe a particular question I'm asking or study I want to do.

Jasper Green: 14:15

And it's not all about finding out what works in terms of proving something works, proving something doesn't work, but more about sort of understanding some of the qualities of the things. So I was interested once in a research as part of my looking at assessment. I was trying to work out whether a particular way of assessing was better or worse, but actually what was more interesting was to use that and really understand how people came to assess things. So it's almost like taking one step back, don't be too quick to answer the big questions. Perhaps some of the smaller questions are are more interesting and really understanding things.

Jasper Green: 14:53

Yeah.

Zeinab El-Khateeb: 14:54

It's building up this knowledge, isn't it?

Jasper Green: 14:56

Yeah. Incrementally and not trying to jump too far. But I definitely in my PhD, I was constantly looking for the big breakthrough. Yes. And Of

Zeinab El-Khateeb: 15:05

actually sometimes Towards the end, I guess.

Jasper Green: 15:08

Yeah. Exactly. You're better or I would I would have been better just thinking a little more in a more focused way, but trying to really understand in more detail a smaller part of the problem. I think the other things I would say is find your voice. And for me, that's a really critical part of what academia is about.

Jasper Green: 15:36

If you take an assignment or a presentation, it's really a means for you to make an argument and make a case. And when you start out, I think that can be quite challenging, especially when there are lots of dominant or more expert voices. But, you know, it is it's really worth holding on to really working out what it is you think and working quite hard to to arrive at that and writing for what you think rather than what you think people might want to want to hear. And I think as part of that, really try to avoid orthodoxies, you know, falling into particular camps, but be really nuanced in in in in the statements that you make and really make sure that they are supported both by your own voice, but obviously the research and the sort of supporting evidence. But, I still think finding out a voice is is important and back yourself to a certain extent.

Jasper Green: 16:29

Sometimes I have wanted to write things and say things that maybe other people have not thought of. But later as I've got old, particularly in science research, how actually later come helps me, maybe actually I had a point. But at the time I wasn't secure enough in what I would say. And I think the third thing I would say is sort of use your experiences and interest in your research and scholarship. So whether that's researching your own practice or I, for example, was very interested in evolutionary trees, sort of building evolutionary trees, but I was also interested in how concepts learn.

Jasper Green: 17:10

And somehow the two elements, sort of science education and and my science have come together to help me to understand how concepts evolve using my knowledge of evolutionary biology. So I think really interesting things in research happen at this interface between

Zeinab El-Khateeb: 17:26

Yes.

Jasper Green: 17:26

Your sort of boundaries Yeah. And that might be your own different domains of your different sort of disciplines, it might also be your own perspectives and your own practice. Yeah. So that's where I think it's interesting and and exciting things can happen.

Zeinab El-Khateeb: 17:41

Lovely. Thank you so much. It's very interesting, very informative.

Jasper Green: 17:45

Thank you, Zeinab.

Zeinab El-Khateeb: 17:46

My pleasure. Thank you for joining us today. Please follow the link in the show notes to find out more about Dr Jasper Green's work and also to discover more podcasts from the IOE. And if you like what you've heard, please give the IOE podcast a five star rating on Apple or Spotify.

Zeinab El-Khateeb: 18:11

This will help us to reach more listeners who may also enjoy the podcast too. I am Zeinab and thank you for listening. Have a good day.

Voiceover3: 18:28

Academia et al is brought to you by the IOE's Early Career Network and IOE Marketing and Communications. The podcast is presented by Zeinab El-Khateeb. The theme music was composed by Ronnie Zhu, editing by Teresa Baker of UCL Educational Media, and Jason Ilagan is the executive producer of the IOE podcast.