I stumbled across this September 19, 2025 article by Rosie Fernandez for Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s (CBC) radio programme “Qurks and Quarks” highlights science education designed to encourage critical thinking skills in some unexpected populations, Note Links have been removed,
In a world filled with misinformation, geophysicist Philip Heron is on a mission to share the benefits of critical thinking.
He is founder of a program called Think Like a Scientist, which he pioneered in the U.K., and has now brought to Canada.
It’s a brief course — only seven weeks long — that he’s taught in schools, but more surprisingly in prisons. [emphasis mine]
And for some of those who’ve experienced the program, it’s been life-changing.
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As a day job, Heron teaches in the department of physical and environmental Sciences at the University of Toronto’s Scarborough campus, and runs this program in the summer, including at a number of Canadian prisons.
He says he designed the Think Like a Scientist to teach the scientific method to those who don’t necessarily see themselves as students of science, including people who have been incarcerated.
The importance of failure
Heron says one of his aims is to help people understand that failure — in life, as in science — can be a pathway to success.
Heron says that many people in prison have had negative experiences with traditional education methods for a variety of reasons, including learning differences, race, gender, class or neurodiversity. So he avoids structuring his program like a traditional classroom, and instead encourages conversation about the topic he is presenting.
Some of the topics explored are climate change, earthquakes, robotics, space mission and the science of sleep. One of the key points in this course is the idea of embracing failure. Heron says this is a fundamental part of the scientific process.
“Behind the scenes, scientists fail so often that it’s just commonplace,” Heron told Quirks & Quarks host Bob McDonald. “And really what I want to teach the students in prison, as well as to students at the University of Toronto, [is] that failure is part of the process and it’s something that should be accepted.”
“We don’t just fail and stop, we fail and move forward.”
In part of his curriculum about space exploration, Heron shares a quote from Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques about managing mental health in space, given that when conflict arises, there’s nowhere to go and you’re far away from the people you love.
“After I finish …the whole room is like, ‘that’s prison! Throw in terrible food and you’ve got prison. I could be an astronaut!'”
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Some of Heron’s former students in the U.K., such as Phoenix Griffin, say they were so inspired by the course they have gone to pursue academic careers of their own.
“The biggest thing I took away from it was the confidence to try new things,” said Griffin, who is now out of prison and in her third year of university.
“It just gave me a new way of thinking. You learn from your mistakes so if you get it wrong it’s fine. So that was really big for me.”
The September 19, 2025 article has the 18 mins. 5 secs. “Quirks and Quarks” segment embedded there.
Phil Heron’s eponymous website can be found here along with its Think Like A Scientist webpage,
‘Think Like A Scientist’ is a course designed to improve critical thinking and encourage independent thought for students in any educational environment. We use adaptive education practices to increase accessibility to science education.
Thanks for stopping by! We are a collection of educators trying to make science more accessible. We run science outreach programs but also train graduates to be more accessible in their science communication.
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Science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) subjects have historically struggled to be inclusive and accessible to students from diverse backgrounds. STEM subjects at school and university have often been rigid in their teaching structure, creating barriers to education for students with more specific (or unrecognised) learning needs.
Furthermore, exciting and important science topics (such as climate change and space exploration) are often communicated in a way that reinforces these barriers. To discuss these issues, and to combat such barriers to education in academia and in the public, I have been working on creating accessible science frameworks for researchers and educators – in the form of the course and workshop Think Like A Scientist.
Think Like A Scientist started in 2017 in the English prison system and has recently featured in prisons in Australia (2024-2025), Spain (2025), and Canada (2023-present). However, we have run the courses in other settings, including schools, adult learning facilities, and youth work (both online and in person). The success of the course is based around the creation of a classroom dynamic that is accessible, inclusive, and relatable to students from all backgrounds.
Fundamentally – science is for everyone.
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Yes, science is for everyone.
