This paper explores an example of meso curriculum making (Priestley et al. 2021), that is curriculum development that sits between practice in the school or community setting and official policy, connecting the two and facilitating the former.  

The context is STEM education in Scotland. Students' lack of engagement in STEM subjects in school is a concern of many European countries (Kudenko and Gras- Velazquez, 2016). Moreover, the consequence of this across European nations is a diminishing number of appropriately qualified STEM professionals (ibid.). STEM professionals are important for many reasons, including: the creation of a scientifically literate population, where informed individuals are in a position to make sense of scientific information in relation to their own health and global issues; and the development of young scientific minds. Scotland prides itself on its tradition of skill and innovation in the STEM arena and its Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics: education and training strategy was released in 2017 (Scottish Government) and three subsequent annual reports have been produced in 2019, 2020 and 2021 (ibid.) detailing progress.    

An Educational Science Centre in Scotland has developed an accredited program within school and community settings to foster STEM literacy and enthusiasm.  The program facilitates students to both lead and participate in STEM activities, positioning them as curriculum makers (Priestley et al., 2021) and peer role models.  To support the development of this programme, the Science Centre has trained over 500 tutor assessors and, from this pool of tutor assessors, set up a network of 17 regional tutors representing the school and community settings. This paper explores the affordances that this network of regional tutors - the meso site actors - offer both to the Science Centre and to the agency of the regional tutors and tutor assessors involved.   

Research questions 

• What are the barriers and drivers for an Educational Science Centre to the develop a tutor network to support a STEM initiative?  

• How, and in what ways, do the regional tutors affect curriculum making in the school and community setting?
  • What role do the regional tutors fulfil?
  • In what ways, if any, do regional tutors enhance STEM curriculum making

• What affordances does the tutor network offer to professional agency? 

Theoretical Framework  

This research draws on theories relating to curriculum making (Priestley et al., 2021), particularly the role of meso actors as curriculum brokers (Leat and Thomas, 2018) and their professional agency. Priestley et al. (2021:) suggest that ‘curriculum making comprises many types of social practice in distinct contexts within an education system’. The meso site of curriculum making activity is found in the spaces between national (macro) sites and the school and community setting (micro sites). Alvunger, et al.(2021, p. 282) describe the meso site as a ‘melting pot’. 

[T]he meso site of activity emerges as a space ‘in between’, where ideas and experiences of nano and micro curriculum making meet supra and macro curriculum making. The meso site of activity is, in a way, comparable with a ‘melting-pot’, where policy, support and guidance on curriculum making are (although with varying success) provided, coordinated and communicated (ibid: p.282)

The theoretical tools also include an ecological view of agency (Emirbayer and Mische, 1998; Biesta and Tedder, 2007; Priestley et al., 2015) and the social network concepts such as tie strength (Coburn and Russell, 2008). 

This research is a sub-section of a broader mixed-methods evaluation project comprising both survey data and interviews. In this paper, we draw on data from in-depth qualitative interviews of actors from the meso sites of activity (Science Centre and the regional network of tutors). A team of 17 regional tutors (from secondary, primary and community settings) were employed by the science centre. Ethical approval, following BERA guidelines, was granted by the University of Stirling. All interviews and focus groups took place online due to COVID requirements. A series of individual and focus groups interviews took place with the National Science centre team focusing on the development and operationalisation of the tutor assessor and regional tutor role. Eight individual interviews with tutor assessors, three individual interviews with regional tutors and three focus group interviews with regional tutors representing secondary/primary/community settings were carried out. The qualitative data was transcribed and imported into a qualitative data analysis package (NVivo). Following transcription of the interviews, a framework analysis was undertaken (Ritchie, Spencer and O’Connell, 2003) This approach enabled systematic thematic analysis of the semi-structured interview data and provided a clear structure for the research team to engage with the data. All qualitative data is being analysed using an abductive/reproductive approach (Ackroyd and Karlsson, 2014). This firstly comprised: a grounded approach to developing themes from the data; the data was read by at least two of the researchers individually and assigned to pre-determined codes identified to guide observation. These codes were; affordances to professional agency, barriers, and opportunities. A discussion session was held with both researchers to clarify or re-categorise the data, this also involved an open coding session to identify any additional aspects of the data as appropriate to the research question (s). This will be followed by a thematic analysis, utilising the above theory as a heuristic and lastly the generation of context-specific theory from the data.

The regional network of tutors operates as a form of meso curriculum making and crosses boundaries between community and school practitioners. Preliminary analysis of data suggest that, whilst the drivers for the development at the Science Centre were to support fulfillment of their policy objectives (delivering training and quality assurance), the development of the network has challenged these parameters as the regional tutors bring their experiences to the network and shape and are shaped by it. The experiences expressed by the regional tutors of belonging to such a network illustrate how the trust that emerges from these ties affords opportunities to achieve agency in the face of constraints, such as tight control mechanisms in school limiting their freedoms. Furthermore, it illustrates how curriculum policy is negotiated and refracted through professional beliefs, school cultures and community experiences. Moreover, their experiences highlight how involvement in a network outwith their workplace provides a reciprocal space for the generation of ideas and possibilities both for their own practice and their educational workplace.

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