Reinventing Science Fairs

Science fairs have a remarkable hold on the public’s attention. President Obama, in his 2011 State of the Union address, said, “We need to teach our kids that it’s not just the winner of the Super Bowl who deserves to be celebrated, but the winner of the science fair.” The 2018 film Science Fair won that year’s Sundance Film Festival favorite award. The 2018 book The Class chronicled a year in a classroom where science fairs are at the center of science education. And a recent GEICO “Science Fair of the Future” television commercial had more than 11 million views on YouTube in its first month.

As conspicuous examples of kids learning about science, science fairs ought to receive a lot of attention from the education community, but they do not do so as much as might be expected. For example, in three major National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) reports on science education—Successful K–12 STEM Education (2011), A Framework for K–12 Science Education (2012), and Next Generation Science Standards for States by States (2013)—the term “science fair” appeared once, in a footnote.

One of three key dimensions of science education identified in the Next Generation Science Standards, which were developed in a partnership of states, NASEM, and other educational organizations, is experiencing the practices of science: “students cannot comprehend scientific practices, nor fully appreciate the nature of scientific knowledge itself, without directly experiencing those practices for themselves.” The question, though, of how to integrate the practice of science into science curricula is not new, and debates about how to do so permeate the history of science education. Science fairs would seem to be good vehicles for giving students the experience of the practices of science, both individually and combined. But to achieve this potential, science fairs must be reinvented.