This blogpost is written by Dr Joanne Eaves. Jo is a Vice Chancellor Independent Research Fellow in the Centre for Mathematical Cognition, Loughborough University. Jo’s work focusses on the transition from primary school mathematics to secondary school mathematics. She has a particular interest in the transition from arithmetic to algebraic thinking, the role of patterns and executive functions in this transition, and flexibility with arithmetic. Please click on the link at the bottom of the blogpost to learn more about Jo’s work. Edited by Dr Bethany Woollacott.

In this blogpost Jo talks about a new public engagement initiative, MindMasters, that she developed at Green’s Windmill and Science Centre (linked below). MindMasters gives children and their families an opportunity to learn about Loughborough University’s research, and take part in live research studies. Here, Jo outlines the benefits that the initiative has brought to researchers, families and the Windmill to date, and emphasises the unique demographic that has been reached thus far. If you’d like to get involved as a researcher or volunteer for a future event, do get in contact with Jo as families are very keen for the event to run again!

Background

Recruiting participants for research studies is hard. Even recruiting from the general adult population with no exclusion criteria has its challenges: they don’t notice recruitment adverts, they aren’t interested, they don’t have the time, they can’t always get to testing settings. Take this to a less accessible population, school-aged children, and the problem becomes much larger. Not only does it require recruitment via the general adult population, but it also typically involves testing in school settings. Researchers frequently talk about the difficulties of getting ethical approval for conducting studies in schools, with opt-in consent resulting in a low response rate and opt-out consent being difficult to get ethical clearance.

Even with ethical approval, there are additional challenges to recruiting children via schools. Getting a school to agree to host your study is an art more than a science: you need the right tone of email, that email to reach the right recipient (a receptionist, a teacher, a subject lead), and the email to be received at the right time (when staff are not too busy, currently interested in the topic, willing to respond, and not too close to the school holidays!). How on earth do we manage to run our research studies and reach the number of participants we require?

During my postdoc at the University of Nottingham, I had some wonderful experiences of engaging with the public about research such as Science in the Park, and Summer Scientist week. During such events, many children and their families wanted to participate in studies, appearing positive and enthusiastic about engaging with research. It seemed strange to me that there was no ideal way of reaching these families outside of these events.

Inspired by Professor Lucy Cragg (my fantastic mentor, colleague and all-round genius), who organised these events alongside a public engagement team, when I moved to Loughborough (June 2024) I wanted to create something similar. In November 2024, I did just that. With the help of Oscar Hutton and Amy Jennison-Boyle (School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences), I piloted and launched MindMasters, a new 4-day public engagement event at Greens Windmill and Science Centre, Nottingham.

MindMasters – what was it?

MindMasters operated like a smaller-scale version of Summer Scientist Week, with 4 days of psychology activities and events for 6 – 10 year-olds and their families. Including:

Hands-on activities:

• Hook-a-duck: How many ducks can you hook… blindfolded?!
• Memory Twister: Become a human corsi-block task! Remember as many colour-number locations as possible and navigate your way around the twister board.
• Healthy eating crafts: Copy and make a balanced plate of food in <30 seconds!
• Tic-tac-toe subitising: Be the first to subitise two dice and cross out a line of digits!

What did we achieve through MindMasters?

1. We reached a diverse population!

One of the most important outcomes was that the location of the event allowed us to engage with an otherwise hard-to-access population. The immediate area of St Ann’s/Sneinton is ethnically diverse and scores highly on government measures of deprivation¹. Other science outreach and engagement events in the East Midlands typically reach families from medium to high socioeconomic status², who have often participated in outreach events before or are already associated with a University. In this way, MindMasters was unique, with attendees from:

• 25% St Ann’s 
• 22% Sherwood, Mapperley, & Arnold
• 16% West Bridgford
• 12% outside of Nottinghamshire
• 6% Wollaton
• 19% other (e.g. Southwell, Nuthall, Bakersfield, Bingham, Clifton)…

AND 85% had not attended any events run by a University before!
To me, this feels like exactly the kind of population we want to be reaching.

2. Families had fun, learnt lots and want more University events!

Families completed feedback forms as part of the event. We were overwhelmed with their positive comments, and they had some very useful ideas for how to develop MindMasters. Here’s some of my favourite feedback from parents:

 “The research activities were brilliant – they kept my children entertained for ages, and they were a good challenge for them”

“The staff at the university were really friendly, helpful and engaging”

 “The setting is great – we did memory games, maths games, went on a trail, up a windmill and some illusions, all for free!”

“My children got exposed to different aspects of further education – they got a glimpse of what happens at Universities, which is otherwise a mystery”.

3. Researchers collected data for three separate studies:

“I collected data from 40-50 children aged 6 – 9 years on tasks involving patterning, arithmetic, and verbal skills. It allowed me to finish collecting data for a study I started at Summer Scientist Week (2024). I now need to write this up!”

Jo Eaves

“The research that I conducted at the Windmill was exploring how strongly the children experienced the Anne Boleyn illusion, whether this is related to autistic traits, and whether these two factors are related to unusual sensory experiences that a person may have had (such as feeling a touch when there is nothing near).”

Amy Jennison-Boyle

Amy’s findings extended an existing published study and will be written up as a report.

“My research focused on exploring the children’s interpretations of the Anne Boleyn illusion, Velvet Hand illusion, and Slinky demonstration. People interpret these new feelings and sounds in many different ways, and I wanted to see if the children could change their initial interpretations. experience was greatly beneficial for my PhD, as it allowed me to collect a lot of data with children (an often-inaccessible population) quite quickly. It was also really fun!”

Oscar Hutton

Updates (February 2025)

MindMasters ran again at the Windmill for two days in February half-term (2025) and they were, by far, our busiest days yet, with 50 children booked on per day, and families queuing to take part in the research studies!

I’ve not yet analysed the feedback forms, but my impression so far is that families want more – more activities, more volunteers and more events! The Windmill have also said that they would welcome us back:

“The events have proved a great addition to Green’s Windmill by putting on something we don’t have the budget, personnel or skills for, and for bringing a new audience to the windmill.”

Plans for the future

We’ve enough interest and experience now to potentially run the event twice a year in the school holidays. But I can’t do it alone! Anything that can be done really depends on people’s support – whether a researcher wanting to run a study, a student or staff member wanting to volunteer some time for a good cause or engage with children and families, all help is critical! Let me know if you would be interested in helping in any capacity for a future MindMasters event at the Windmill, and I’ll then schedule some dates.

Here is the team of researchers involved in MindMasters 2024-2025:

Summary

In sum, I’d encourage everyone to get involved in public engagement work at least once in their career. It’s such a rewarding, eye-opening experience. You get to teach children and their parents a thing or two about your research, and other’s research, and spread the word about the University as a whole. It can also help you to see research through a different lens – maybe the issue or ‘thing’ you’ve been focusing on for a long time is not at all what you think it is. The public might have a totally different, refreshing opinion!

Note: This blogpost was written without assistance from ChatGPT or other AI.

References

[1] Scott-Arthur, T. A. (2017). Exploring deprivation, locality and health: A qualitative study on St Ann’s Nottingham [Thesis, Loughborough University]. https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/thesis/Exploring_deprivation_locality_[…]

[2] McDonald, S., Beer, S., & Cragg, L. (2023). The impact of out-of-school science activities for primary school children on science knowledge, interest and later academic choices: An evaluation study. Research for All, 7(1), Article 1. https://doi.org/10.14324/RFA.07.1.20