Emma Swift is an experienced science teacher and co-author of Succeeding as a Science Teacher with Natalie Chilvers. In this interview, she reflects on her unexpected route into teaching, the importance of subject knowledge and what effective science leadership really looks like. Her answers offer an honest and practical account of how teachers and science departments can continue to improve.
Question 1
What first made you want to become a science teacher?
Honestly, it wasn’t the plan. I’d intended to join the Army, which would have been a very different life, but a significant knee injury put an end to that. I was nearly at the end of my undergraduate degree at the University of York, home to the Science Learning Centre, and suddenly had to rethink my whole career direction from scratch.
It genuinely came down to a simple thought: I love talking about science, I like children, and I should be a science teacher. That was it. I did my PGCE at York straight after, and I count myself extremely lucky to have fallen into a job I love as much as I do.
The best part of my working day, every single day, is teaching young people. It’s intellectually challenging, and the kids make me laugh. That’s where the joy comes from too.
Question 2
Looking back over your career, what has changed most in the way you think about good science teaching?
For me personally, it’s curriculum design and schema building. We didn’t even use the word ‘schema’ when I started teaching, but thinking properly about how ideas connect and build on each other, rather than just what gets taught in what order, has changed how I plan more than anything else.
For most departments, though, I think the biggest shift has been the move away from summative assessment and towards formative assessment. It’s the real-time adjustments, responding to what’s happening in the room and moving learning forward in the moment, rather than waiting to find out three weeks later in a test, that have genuinely changed practice.
Really, the two are connected. Summative assessment still has a place, but only where it actually feeds back into curriculum design, whether that’s the sequencing, the schema we’re building or the teaching itself. A test that just confirms that 43% struggled with moles calculations and then gets filed away hasn’t earned its place in the timetable.
Question 3
What do you know now that you most wish someone had told you when you started teaching?
That feeling shaky about your subject knowledge isn’t a personal failing; it’s part of the job. Early on, I’d be mid-lesson, perhaps about to demonstrate a heart dissection, and suddenly go blank on which way round a valve faces. It would feel as though the whole lesson was unravelling because of it.
What I know now is that this is a completely normal cognitive-load problem, and the solution isn’t to grit your teeth and struggle through it. It’s about building a habit of knowing where to go: a good textbook, a subject knowledge enhancement course, a colleague or a technician, whose knowledge is often underused by new staff.
Even now, I still carry notes for practicals or topics I haven’t taught in a while if I’m not feeling confident. That’s not a weakness; it’s just sensible preparation.
I also wish someone had told me that I’m a unicorn and that I get to choose where I go. When I started out, I felt as though I had to take a job – any job. Now I know that not all schools and school cultures suit everyone, and finding your place matters. That means that if you don’t excel in a setting, it isn’t always a reflection on you. Sometimes it just means you’re in the wrong place.
Question 4
What prompted you and Natalie Chilvers to write Succeeding as a Science Teacher?
We’d been working together again, and we loved being able to talk endlessly about the science curriculum, teaching and learning. Between us, we felt that we had something we wanted to say about what we’d learned, with her teaching me the biology knowledge I lacked and me doing the same for her in return.
Underneath that was something more urgent too. England is short of science teachers, and too many are leaving the profession. That means those of us still in the classroom aren’t just teaching; we’re shaping what happens to science education itself.
We wanted to write something that would genuinely help people at every stage of their careers, from trainees through to experienced Heads of Science, and even non-specialist senior leaders trying to support a science department effectively.
Question 5
If a new science teacher could take just one idea from the book into their classroom tomorrow, what would you want it to be?
Honestly, I think it depends on where you are in your teaching journey.
For everyone, I’d start with ‘teach and check’. Don’t move on until you know, rather than assume, that the idea has landed, whether that’s through a quick hinge question or the use of mini-whiteboards before you push further.
If you’re an aspiring Head of Department, it would be curriculum design: really understanding sequencing and encounter hierarchy, and how ideas need to be built up deliberately rather than simply delivered in the order in which the specification happens to list them.
If you’re already a Head of Department and are building your team, it’s the coaching approach in the book. Pick one teaching move at a time with a colleague, track it against real pupil evidence and resist the urge to try to fix everything at once.
If you’re a non-specialist teaching practical work, it’s understanding the disciplinary knowledge approach: breaking a practical down into its component skills rather than expecting fluency across all of them at once, so you know exactly what you’re trying to develop in that lesson.
If you’re a PGCE student, it’s the section on applying and interviewing for a role. Use the interview lesson to assess the school as much as the school is assessing you. Finding the right fit early saves you a lot of pain later.
Question 6
What do science teachers sometimes spend too much time on?
Producing assessment data that nobody then acts on. I’ve spent entire evenings colour-coding QLA spreadsheets, and I’ve come to think that a lot of that time achieves less than we assume.
A beautifully detailed spreadsheet showing that 31% understood quantitative chemistry means very little if the curriculum sequence, explanations and retrieval schedule all stay exactly the same afterwards.
KS4 is also shorter than we pretend. Once you strip out mocks, revision, intervention days and exam leave, you’re teaching something closer to a four-term course. Every hour spent generating data is therefore an hour not spent redesigning the teaching that actually produced the weak outcome.
The instinct when results are poor is almost always to add more assessment. I think the better instinct, most of the time, is to go back and interrogate the curriculum. And while we’re at it, please, no more card sorts.
Question 7
Have we underestimated how useful a really good textbook can be in science teaching?
I’d frame it slightly differently. I don’t think we’ve underestimated textbooks; I think we’ve stopped asking what we actually need them to do.
I’ve seen a textbook used brilliantly with a top-set class, but the book wasn’t the lesson. It was a tool used alongside expert modelling and deliberate questioning. Handed over passively in a cover lesson, the same book runs out of road after about twenty minutes because a typical double-page spread rarely has enough well-sequenced questions to sustain an hour, and it won’t anticipate misconceptions for you.
Used well, a textbook is a genuinely useful source of structure and coherence. Handed to students as the lesson itself, it stops being much use at all. With new specifications arriving in 2028, I’d like to see the next generation of textbooks built to do more of that anticipatory, diagnostic work themselves.
Question 8
What makes an explanation particularly effective in a science lesson?
The choice of representation, after you’ve already explained the concept scientifically. Once you’ve built the explanation on prior knowledge and connected it to the big ideas, you need something that makes the abstract concrete.
Take current and voltage, which students constantly muddle. I like the rope model here, where you can physically show what’s moving and what’s driving it. This can be introduced in a starter and checked using mini-whiteboards before practical work.
However, a single good representation isn’t enough on its own. That knowledge needs repetition, interleaving and revisiting so that it actually becomes embedded. I think it matters to be explicit with students when something is simply the same underlying idea turning up again in a new context, rather than allowing them to treat it as brand new every time.
Don’t assume that because you said it once, they know it. If it’s important underpinning knowledge, it needs to be treated as such: planned back in deliberately and not left to chance. Making an idea land is only half the job. Making sure it stays is the harder and more important half.
Question 9
How should teachers deal with the misconceptions pupils bring into science lessons?
Anticipate them at the planning stage, not the marking stage. When you’re sequencing a topic, ask explicitly what students already believe about it and where those beliefs are going to clash with the science.
With electricity, that means not opening with circuit diagrams but building a clear model of current and voltage first. Use hinge questions early to catch the idea that ‘electricity gets used up’ before it hardens, and then deliberately revisit it later in energy and magnetism topics.
Misconceptions are stubborn precisely because they feel logical from the student’s point of view. ‘Heavier objects fall faster’ isn’t a silly idea; it’s a sensible one built on everyday experience. Treat misconceptions as sensible but incorrect ideas and plan for them accordingly, rather than simply marking them as wrong when they appear in a test.
Question 10
How important is a teacher’s own subject knowledge to great science teaching?
It is foundational, but it’s only half the story. Secure subject knowledge is what stops a lesson from unravelling when a student asks an unexpected question or a practical doesn’t go to plan.
However, knowing your content isn’t the same as knowing how to teach it. That’s the distinction that pedagogical content knowledge draws out: using analogies, models and representations to make an abstract idea concrete for a particular class.
Subject knowledge gives you the depth to teach confidently. Pedagogy gives you the skill to make sure students actually understand it. You genuinely need both. I’ve seen teachers who are secure in their subject knowledge but have no repertoire for representing it lose a class, and teachers with brilliant pedagogy get caught out by shaky subject knowledge further down the line.
Question 11
What does genuinely inclusive science teaching look like without lowering expectations?
It starts with showing students that science is for them and that people like them do it. That’s where paralleling stories matter: finding scientists, technicians and engineers whose backgrounds and experiences echo those of the students in front of you.
These people often come from the global community and are not just the famous canonical names. This allows students to see a version of themselves already represented within the subject.
From there, it’s about challenging what I’d call the ‘genius myth’: the idea that science is done by exceptional, world-changing individuals, when in reality most scientific work is incremental, collaborative and team-based.
If the only scientists students encounter are Marie Curie and Newton, they quietly absorb the message that science is for prodigies and not for them. Widening who and what they see – local scientists, technicians, citizen science projects and applied engineers alongside the canonical names – does the opposite.
Underneath all of that, however, I think truly inclusive teaching means giving every student the knowledge to play an active part in a scientifically literate society. That’s not a soft aim. It demands really robust teaching, built on solid understanding and proper scaffolding, so that every student, whatever their starting point, actually gets there. Inclusion without that is just good intentions.
Question 12
What place should practical work have in a strong science curriculum?
It should be central, and not just used as a box-ticking exercise for the required practicals. Science is something you do, not only something you know.
A lot of departments have quietly narrowed practical work down to the exam board minimums because of time pressures and equipment constraints. As a result, students lose the wider experience of the experimental method itself.
I find it useful to be really explicit about why a practical is happening. In the disciplinary knowledge approach, the point often isn’t for students to discover an unknown outcome, since they can predict it from what they already know. The point is to develop procedural fluency: spotting errors, evaluating reliability and thinking like a scientist rather than simply following steps.
Once students understand that this is the goal, practical work stops feeling redundant, even when the result is predictable.
Question 13
What advice would you give to a trainee or ECT who feels overwhelmed by everything they are expected to master?
Break the composite into components. Don’t try to master the whole ‘lasagne’ at once. You need to make sure that you know how to make the Bolognese, the béchamel and the pasta before you put it all together.
A single practical lesson involves eight or more distinct skills: identifying variables, measuring accurately, drawing conclusions and so on. If a student can’t do it, and you can’t yet do it fluently yourself either, you won’t know why unless you isolate the individual components.
Give yourself permission to become properly good at one thing at a time, rather than expecting instant fluency across subject knowledge, behaviour management, practical safety and new curriculum content all at once.
Use what’s around you: a well-resourced curriculum with teacher guides and model explanations, subject knowledge enhancement courses, a colleague or the department’s technician. Nobody teaches this alone, and asking for support early makes you better at the job more quickly.
Question 14
What separates a good Head of Science from a great one?
I think the real challenge of being a Head of Department is making your team better teachers. That’s the hardest part of the job, full stop.
It’s also a lot easier if you have consistent staffing and a team whose members are all already operating at a decent baseline. I know that isn’t the reality for a lot of Heads of Department. Much of the job therefore becomes about narrowing the gap between your best and least effective teachers, using whatever expertise you have across the team to raise the floor, not just polish the ceiling.
Beyond that, I think it’s about self-awareness and having the discipline to match your response to what the moment actually needs, rather than defaulting to your natural style. No single leadership approach works everywhere.
Transformational leadership builds momentum when a department needs direction. Transactional leadership protects learning time and consistency when things are drifting. Distributed leadership works once a team is stable enough to be given real ownership.
A good Head of Science has one mode. A great one has learned to read the room and move between them.
I’d add one more thing: being honest with yourself about the difference between ‘those who can’t’ and ‘those who won’t’. A colleague whose lessons look calm but in which very little learning is happening needs a completely different response from someone who is genuinely struggling. Conflating the two wastes your energy in the wrong place.
Question 15
What does useful professional development for experienced science teachers actually look like?
Small, active and specific – not another twilight INSET session on generic pedagogy.
The CPD that has actually changed practice, in my experience, blends subject knowledge enhancement, pedagogy and collaborative planning. It uses active formats such as lesson study, paired planning, video reflection and micro-coaching focused on one teaching move at a time. Its impact is tracked through pupil evidence rather than a feedback form.
A targeted ten-minute coaching conversation about a single sticking point – students stalling at step two of a calculation, for example – followed up two weeks later, tends to move the needle more than a whole-staff session on something broad.
Experienced teachers don’t need to be told that science teaching is hard. They need one precise, well-supported thing to work on at a time.
Question 16
Why is it important for classroom teachers to engage with the wider science education community beyond their own school?
Because no teacher should be solving these problems alone. Many of them, particularly the harder ones – teaching emotive or sensitive topics, closing a persistent subject knowledge gap or separating good curriculum ideas from noise – are genuinely easier when you have other people’s thinking to draw on.
Professional networks, subject associations, national conferences, organisations such as the Ogden Trust and online communities of teachers writing openly about their practice all do something that a single school’s CPD calendar usually can’t. They expose you to how other departments are solving the exact problem you’re stuck on.
Engaging with the wider community also protects against isolation. Inclusive or emotionally difficult teaching, in particular, shouldn’t fall on one person’s shoulders. Connecting with people beyond your own staffroom is often where both the reassurance and the better ideas come from.
Question 17
If you could change one thing about science education in secondary schools, what would it be?
There’s simply too much in the science curriculum. We don’t have the time, and often don’t have the depth of expertise across a department, to deliver all of it well.
What we need is less breadth and more depth: a much sharper focus on the underpinning, foundational knowledge, followed by the time to embed it properly so that every teacher, specialist or not, can deliver it with confidence.
This isn’t about dumbing down the content – quite the opposite. Teaching more, more often, usually just means that students end up understanding less.
Layer the assessment demands on top of that and it gets worse. So much time is swallowed up by mocks, QLA and intervention tracking that there is less and less left for what we actually love doing: teaching the science itself and building students’ practical understanding of it.
Between the sheer volume of content and the weight of assessment, the current curriculum has become a bit of a grind. I think that is turning students away from a subject that should be full of wonder.
If I could change one thing, it would be to trust teachers with less to cover and give them more time to teach it properly.
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