Audio Transcript

Published: March 29, 2018
APA 7 Citation: Newsome, B. (Host). (2018, March 29). Inclusion in STEM with the Warren Centre [Audio podcast transcript]. Fizzics Education.
https://www.fizzicseducation.com.au/podcast/fizzicsed/inclusion-in-stem-with-the-warren-centre/

Ben Newsome CF is the recipient of the 2023 UTS Chancellor’s Award for Excellence and a Churchill Fellow. He is a global leader in science communication and the founder of Fizzics Education.

[00:00:00]
Alexandra Harrington: That business nous, there’s this misconception that women have poorer business nous than men. I just think that needs to be challenged. I think the young girls, particularly through the school environment and through their networks, should be supported to understand that you can challenge those stereotypes. You can have a go at these business ideas, find those learning opportunities, and build your knowledge about what options are available for you.

[00:00:33]
Announcer: You’re listening to the Fizzics Ed Podcast. For hundreds of ideas, free experiments and more, go to fizzicseducation.com.au. And now, here’s your host, Ben Newsome.

[00:00:48]
Ben Newsome: Yes, welcome again to another Fizzics Ed Podcast. Yet again, we’ve got a big episode because we get to speak with someone doing some fantastic work when it comes to including people in STEM. That’s very much what Alexandra Harrington is truly about. She’s the Chief Operating Officer out of the Warren Centre. If you’ve never heard of the Warren Centre, they’re out of the University of Sydney and they’re very much a think tank. They do lots of big-picture thinking and helping industry to innovate and think towards the future in many different ways.

[00:01:23]
Ben Newsome: One of the programmes they’ve been really working on lately is Inclusion Squared, which is partially funded under the Women in STEM and Entrepreneurship programme, which is an initiative of the National Innovation and Science Agenda. So, we’ve got a bit to hear about because it’s all about getting young women into STEM and not only doing the science, the tech, the engineering, and the maths; it’s all about leading it and being entrepreneurs and really producing some serious value for Australia and beyond. So, without further ado, let’s hear from Alexandra Harrington. She’s got a lot to say and I loved having a chat with her.

[00:02:10]
Alexandra Harrington: So, my role is the Chief Operating Officer at the Warren Centre. We’re a science, technology, and innovation think tank based at the University of Sydney. What we do is we look at the way things are operating in industry and in society, and we do research where we write reports, go and talk to people, put together industry roundtables or networking events where we work out if there is a problem or a better way to do something, and get people collaboratively thinking about how they can move forward with a different way of doing something.

[00:02:50]
Alexandra Harrington: We started in 1983. Our first project was looking at local area networks and how they can improve productivity. Local area networks people now would just completely take for granted, but back then the idea of having networked systems was quite foreign and businesses didn’t tend to operate that way. So, that was something that the Warren Centre did, putting that information out there. We’ve done lots of projects like that. We looked at electric vehicles in 1991. We looked at coal seam gas as an energy supply in 1994.

[00:03:28]
Alexandra Harrington: One of my favourite projects was in 1988. We looked at a project called Preparing Australians for a Future with Technology. That report identified that we probably needed to do better in terms of letting society know how technology was going to change the world that they lived in. One of the outcomes from that report was to encourage better collaboration between industry and academia around research and training, and that led to the formation of the Cooperative Research Centres programme, a programme that some recent reviews estimated has added $14 billion worth of value to the Australian economy. So, it’s quite significant.

[00:03:59]
Ben Newsome: Not only significant, what a vibrant place to work in. I was just trying to get my head around moving from electric cars through to looking at the future. Wow. I mean, what a brilliant thing to actually have put together as a think tank. More than just thinking and producing reports, actually helping steering people in the real world in the real industry that does real things.

[00:04:22]
Alexandra Harrington: Absolutely. We’ve looked at things like energy efficiency for a very long time and we’ve done a project every couple of years looking at how different sectors of industry can improve their energy efficiency, whether that be the process industries, bulk production industries, or the built environment. We’ve done these projects to say, “Hang on, you’re performing better than you are. Why is that the case? What are the factors that are making you more energy efficient?” We put that together and we publish it to industry so it’s owned by industry so they can implement it.

[00:04:55]
Ben Newsome: Wow. I’m just wondering with all this, it’s a genuine scope. How did you get involved with this personally?

[00:05:05]
Alexandra Harrington: I came to the Warren Centre from a large property group where I was working on sustainability. We were involved in a project called the Low Energy High Rise Project. This was one of these energy efficiency projects, and it was basically a project that wanted to understand why, when two buildings were built the same with all the same plant and equipment, one would always perform better from an energy efficiency point of view than the other. What were the management factors? What were the soft skill factors that were going into influencing the energy efficiency?

[00:05:42]
Alexandra Harrington: I was working on the property side of the equation and decided that I wanted a change from corporate life. I’d just finished writing a $41 million energy efficiency upgrade plan for our property portfolio. It was a big job and all of those contracts were being let, but I wanted to do something different. I spoke to the Warren Centre about volunteering a bit more on the project if I took some time off, and they said, “Well, why don’t you come and join us?” So, I did.

[00:06:13]
Ben Newsome: And fast-forward to today, you’re now heavily involved in all these projects yourself. That’s obviously a fantastic outcome for yourself, but also being able to bring your background in energy and looking after buildings. By the way, schools actually do model this a lot in their own classrooms. There are very much energy units within the school curriculum and it’s great to hear that it’s not just pretended to happen in the real world; it genuinely happens.

[00:06:39]
Alexandra Harrington: Oh, it absolutely matters. For a lot of industries, their two biggest costs are people, but then also their operational costs. What does it cost to keep the lights on and the business running? For manufacturing and technology-based industries, the energy input, and particularly into things like the mining sector as well, that energy input can be quite significant and, as a result, it comes with a high cost. So, understanding how to improve that and how to be more energy efficient is something that really drives businesses, and there are dedicated roles across industry focused exactly on that task.

[00:07:18]
Ben Newsome: Now, amongst all your different projects, and let’s be honest, there’s a plethora of them, one which certainly grabbed my eye and very much impacts the sort of things that we get involved with and what schools and the broader community get involved with is this new programme called Inclusion Squared. I’d love you to tell us a bit more about this because I reckon it’s a fantastic thing.

[00:07:40]
Alexandra Harrington: Oh, great. Yeah, absolutely. So, Inclusion Squared is our Women in STEM and Entrepreneurship programme. What we did was we looked around and said, “Right, who’s doing other activities in encouraging greater gender diversity in STEM fields particularly?” We thought we didn’t want to replicate what’s out there. So, we took a three-tiered approach. The first tier is to support girls in school. The second tier is to look at entrepreneurship and how to give women the skills in understanding entrepreneurship so they can look at taking a step on that journey if they want to. And the third step is senior career progression.

[00:08:21]
Alexandra Harrington: I might talk about the videos in schools because it’s probably the most relevant. When we looked around, we saw that a lot of STEM videos were kind of like, “Here’s me at the International Space Station,” which is not really relatable. The reality is not a lot of people actually get to the International Space Station, especially if you’re female. So, that sort of video we didn’t think was particularly inspiring. We also noticed there was a bit of a tendency to want to characterise people in STEM careers by the way they looked. So, you know, talking to someone or presenting someone as a scientist and making sure they were wearing safety glasses and a lab coat. There are an awful lot of scientists out there who don’t wear a lab coat or safety glasses.

[00:09:06]
Alexandra Harrington: So, what we did was we asked young women who are on their own STEM career journey at university to go on film and to talk about their experience, their process, what inspired them at school, and what was happening to them. What you take out of that is a couple of things. One is that girls are really motivated by what they’re interested in and having an impact and making a difference. They don’t see themselves as their career. So, they don’t necessarily talk about “I’m going to be a computer scientist.”

[00:09:37]
Alexandra Harrington: These young women will talk about, “I really enjoy engineering,” or “I really enjoy maths and I like applying it in terms of computer science” or whatever it is that they’re interested in. They don’t define themselves by that role. I think that’s really important because we don’t know what the jobs of the future are going to be. Skills transference and adaptability are just going to become so important. Pitching to students that idea of “We need to study really hard, you get a good ATAR, and then you go and become an engineer,” sounds very finite and destination-focused when really what we were trying to get across is it’s a journey and you can take multiple different steps across industries and into different fields and locations.

[00:10:25]
Ben Newsome: Absolutely. They are fantastic videos and very heart-to-heart, exactly how undergraduate students have experienced it to date and where they think they’re going to go in their future. I can imagine this is going to really help with people’s participation in year 11 and 12 STEM subjects as it gets out into the broader community.

[00:10:48]
Alexandra Harrington: Oh, absolutely. One of the things that’s really important is that STEM learning can be really great, and it’s unfortunate that often at school the emphasis is very much on the ATAR, which is a ranking, but there’s so much more learning and opportunity that happens beyond that. There are multiple different ways that you can access university. There are different pathways available to you; it’s not all about the ATAR. I think the important thing, especially for young women, is to find the thing that really interests you and then don’t let anyone hold you back. If you’re interested in it and you’re passionate about it and you connect with that field, you’ll be motivated more than you need to succeed in it.

[00:11:31]
Ben Newsome: And what I really love about this programme is it’s not just “Hey, here’s a report, here’s some videos, and digest if you wish or don’t watch if you don’t.” You’ve partnered with Rare Birds, which is very much about entrepreneurship in a big way. Let’s hear more about what Rare Birds does.

[00:11:50]
Alexandra Harrington: So, Rare Birds is an amazing organisation started by brilliant entrepreneur Jo Burston. Jo runs her own business called Job Capital. She set that up nearly six years ago now and it’s worth $40 million. So, she’s successful in her own right. She’s done a couple of other startups, but one of the things she did is she took a film crew back to her primary school and back to her high school, and when she asked the question “What is an entrepreneur?”, the response was typically a man who does something or a businessman. No one identified that females could be entrepreneurs just as successfully as men, and no one was able to point to any examples of this.

[00:12:31]
Alexandra Harrington: So, she started the Rare Birds programme deliberately to try and counteract this. She’s put together some fantastic resources. They’ve got a book called #IfSheCanICan and it’s all about the fundamental principle that if you can see it, you can be it. She’s got a wonderful book called 50 Female Entrepreneurs in Australia where she interviewed all these women who’ve set up their own businesses and are really successful, talking about their journey and what worked, what didn’t, the successes and the failures, which are just as important.

[00:13:09]
Alexandra Harrington: It’s a really great programme. We’ve been doing an entrepreneurship 101 masterclass, which is built around the idea that there really wasn’t a place you could go to understand, right, what does step one look like in setting up a business? What does step two look like? What does step three look like? So, we put it together as a one-day masterclass. It’s setting up your business and accounting for your future, why you have to register a business, what that process looks like, and all the legal 101. It’s all around “these are the things you need to be aware of to not create problems for yourself.”

[00:13:53]
Alexandra Harrington: We did intellectual property and trademarks, branding and marketing, getting online, and then we had a sort of speed dating afternoon with entrepreneurs in practice. We had four female entrepreneurs in different areas. So, Jo Burston obviously was one of them, Anne Moore from Plan Do, Louise Gagan from Fold7, and Carola Jonas from Everty. They’re very different companies, but all of those women volunteered their time and spoke to these small groups about their experience, what they learned on their journey, and it was a really fantastic day.

[00:14:32]
Alexandra Harrington: We finished with an overview of the startup ecosystem. What are the resources that are available, be that through an accelerator, through an incubator, through a government grant, through universities, through training organisations? And finally, a session from Jo Burston about maintaining the enthusiasm, which is so important. Especially once all the fervour has gone down when you’re getting all your trademarks together, eventually you’ve got a business to run and you do need that energy behind you to keep that going day after day.

[00:15:02]
Ben Newsome: I’m just thinking about a day like this; that’s just obviously highly valuable for anyone who was able to attend. I kind of think, if you’re a teacher with kids who are thinking about business or science and they’re not quite sure, that “if you can see it, you can be it” headspace is very important. But it’s very hard for high school students to see, and even sometimes as you go out into early adulthood. I’m just wondering what sort of advice would you give for someone who wouldn’t be able to attend your programmes because not all of us can always attend? How could you emulate something like that if you’re in a regional area?

[00:15:52]
Alexandra Harrington: Oh, definitely. Look, I would talk to high school teachers. This is absolutely one of the pathways that’s available. You know, my generation when we grew up, it was you went to university and you became an agricultural scientist. That was it; you went and worked for someone. We know that there are many other options available. One of the things I would do is start with your local state organisation. In New South Wales, for example, they have Business Connect. Just pick up the phone or get online, have a look at those platforms and see what resources are available.

[00:16:32]
Alexandra Harrington: It’s quite astounding that there’s lots of information out there. Kids really need to understand that having an idea and seeing if it works, that’s entrepreneurship. I heard someone the other day say, Annie Parker, who’s the global head of Microsoft startups based here in Australia, she’s a wonderful motivator and she was saying, “Entrepreneurship is finding an idea, testing it, finding an idea, testing it, until you get the one that works.” That determination and tenacity and finding that opportunity to succeed in running your own business and pursuing your own idea is a wonderful skill. There are a lot of programmes out there. Have a look at state programmes, look at organisations like Questacon, and just start looking online and seeing what’s available.

[00:17:22]
Ben Newsome: And I suppose as we go into the future, hopefully things start to even out. I mean, in 2014 only one in four startups were founded by women. So, I’m guessing the outcome that you’re hoping for would be it would actually go on parity with what the gender percentages actually are in the real world.

[00:17:41]
Alexandra Harrington: Yeah, absolutely. There’s an incredible woman in Canada called Vicki Saunders who runs a programme called SheEO. Her programme is very much about the ideas that women come up with that are very insightful but they’re not traditional business ideas. So, she was showing us one that was a beeswax-based food wrap. So, it keeps food fresh while letting it still breathe. She was saying that’s exactly the sort of thing that you show to people who are doing any food preparation in the home and they go “this is brilliant,” but if they’re not doing any food preparation in the home and they’re sitting in a venture capital firm going “should I fund this?”, it’s very hard for them to see that opportunity.

[00:18:31]
Alexandra Harrington: So, she had a lot of really great examples like that, but I think the other thing is we know now that the largest economic group globally is women. Women are making most of the purchasing decisions, women are making most of the discretionary spend decisions, and many of them are running the household budget. So, that business nous, there’s this misconception that women have poorer business nous than men. I just think that needs to be challenged. I think the young girls, particularly through the school environment and through their networks, should be supported to understand that you can challenge those stereotypes and you can have a go at these business ideas, find those learning opportunities and build your knowledge about what options are available for you.

[00:19:16]
Ben Newsome: It is these sort of programmes like Inclusion Squared that really help this happen. It’s brilliant. Happy days. It’s going to be a good thing. It’s great for diversity and it’s great for the world at large. And I must say, speaking of opportunities, you’ve been lucky enough to pick up quite a bit of an opportunity yourself. Congratulations on your Churchill Fellowship.

[00:19:45]
Alexandra Harrington: Oh, thanks, Ben. Yeah, I’m really, really looking forward to it.

[00:19:48]
Ben Newsome: So, where are you going? What are you getting up to? What is the thing that you’re involved with here?

[00:19:55]
Alexandra Harrington: So, one of the things I’ve been doing at the Warren Centre is we do a weekly tech newsletter. It’s called The Prototype. So, if anyone’s interested in it, go to thewarrencentre.org.au and look for The Prototype and you can sign up to it. It’s a great resource for teachers because it’s all the tech news around the world. So, what’s happening at the leading edge? And we do have teachers who subscribe to it and they think it’s wonderful because they are super informed when they’re talking to their class. So, this is great for a high school teacher.

[00:20:23]
Alexandra Harrington: Through that experience, I started to become aware of how quickly autonomous vehicle technology was developing at a rapid rate around the world but through different schemes, different mechanisms, different perspectives. So, everything from the way it would operate to be safe, the way the security would work, who would be the responsible party for the autonomous vehicle, differed depending on which company was doing it and which location it was at.

[00:20:51]
Alexandra Harrington: So, that led me to explore the idea of doing a PhD in the field. I then thought, hang on, I’m going to have to travel overseas to really study this properly. How am I going to fund that? And then I came across the Churchill Trust, which I encourage everybody to have a look at. It’s a wonderful organisation that supports Australians from all walks of life to go overseas and study a subject that they are passionate in. And for me, that was autonomous vehicles.

[00:21:32]
Alexandra Harrington: What I’m going to do is travel to Europe, the US, and Japan later in the year to look at how autonomous vehicles are being managed in different locations and ask questions around who owns this technology. Does it serve what the public needs? Is it safe? Is it functional? How does it work versus public transport, for example? Is it useful for people with greater needs, so people with limited mobility or vision impairment and things like that? What’s the role that autonomous vehicles can play and can Australia be part of this opportunity to roll out autonomous vehicles in a way that is practical, sensible, safe, and beneficial for society? That’s really what I want to find out.

[00:22:02]
Ben Newsome: It’s a huge thing. We do a lot of work with the NRMA, the National Roads and Motorists’ Association, and speaking with the Senior Motoring Education Manager there, they know that this is coming down at us. Whether it’s five years, 10 years, 20 years, at some point this is going to happen and a project like this is just critical, as simple as that.

[00:22:23]
Alexandra Harrington: Oh, absolutely. I am so grateful to the NRMA because they’ve funded my scholarship. The NRMA-ACT Road Safety Trust have been a big supporter of my fellowship, so that’s fantastic and I’m enormously grateful to them.

[00:22:37]
Ben Newsome: Absolutely. A quick shout out to them. If you go on to churchilltrust.com.au, go check it out. We are going to put this out before closing time, so it is going to close on the 27th of April, by the way, if you want to apply and you’ve got a project you know will help your community, do so! Go for it! It’s worth your time.

[00:22:53]
Alexandra Harrington: Absolutely.

[00:22:54]
Ben Newsome: Hey, Alex, thanks so much for coming on board and sharing with us a little small snippet about Inclusion Squared. I’m guessing we can find most information on the Warren Centre’s website, yeah?

[00:23:05]
Alexandra Harrington: Yep, thewarrencentre.org.au. Absolutely.

[00:23:07]
Ben Newsome: Awesome. What we’ll do, we’ll put that all in the show notes as well. Fantastic. Hey, when do you get to fly out, by the way?

[00:23:15]
Alexandra Harrington: I haven’t finished booking everything but I think end of October will be the plan.

[00:23:20]
Ben Newsome: Wow. Just in time for winter over there. Well, have a fantastic trip. Undoubtedly we’ll catch up before then. Well done. I really hope that if you want to get engaged, if you’re listening in and going “You know what? Maybe I should get my class engaged,” or whatever it is that you happen to be involved in, go check out the Warren Centre with the Inclusion Squared programme. I think it’s fantastic and certainly going to help us in the future. Thanks so much, Alex, for coming on board.

[00:23:46]
Alexandra Harrington: All right, thanks so much, Ben.

[00:23:49]
Announcer: This is the Fizzics Ed Podcast. We’re all about science, ed tech and more. To see 100 fun free experiments you can do with your class, go to fizzicseducation.com.au. That’s physics spelled F I Z Z I C S and click 100 free experiments.

[00:24:07]
Ben Newsome: Well there you go, we were just hearing from Alexandra Harrington who has a lot to say about women in STEM and she’s doing something about it, which I love. Really, go check out what the Warren Centre has been doing with Inclusion Squared and check out what Rare Birds has been doing too for women and entrepreneurship. It’s very, very cool.

[00:24:29]
Ben Newsome: Now, you might be wondering how can you get involved yourself? Now, this particular initiative, there’s a few different ways you can do this. Perhaps if you happen to be working at a major company or even a minor company, you could be sponsoring and helping support some of their events. Perhaps you might want to think, well maybe could you consider committing someone from your organisation as a programme participant or nominating mentors or speakers from your organisation to help these young women along their journey?

[00:25:13]
Ben Newsome: It would be very, very cool. And I tell you what, it’s really something to keep an eye on because this Inclusion Squared is part of a greater movement to get women into STEM and it’s not just about talking about it; it’s about making it actually happen.

[00:25:03]
Announcer: You’re listening to the Fizzics Ed Podcast. Why don’t you book us for a science show or workshop in your school? We love seeing students get excited about science and you will too. Go to fizzicseducation.com.au and click on schools for more info.

[00:25:19]
Ben Newsome: Only recently we had International Women’s Day and in light of this, Kate and Duncan on our sister podcast, Fizzics Twist, were chatting about just where the divide starts to happen in STEM and you’d be amazed just how early it actually is when they did some research.

[00:25:34]
Kate: But yeah, they also did this really interesting study about when girls and boys decide that they’re smart.

[00:25:42]
Duncan: Really?

[00:25:43]
Kate: Yeah, apparently people are five. You decide if you are smart when you are five years old.

[00:25:51]
Duncan: Wow, that seems younger than I thought.

[00:25:53]
Kate: Yeah, right? I was like, oh man, that is not cool.

[00:25:57]
Duncan: Surely you’d need some sort of basis of comparison to make that decision, but by the time you’re five you’ve only just started kindergarten.

[00:26:06]
Kate: So apparently five-year-old girls are just as likely to say that girls can be really, really smart, but when they’re six, they think that boys are more likely to be smart than girls.

[00:26:14]
Duncan: Wow. Is that because they’ve just entered school and all of a sudden that is being thrust upon them?

[00:26:20]
Kate: That’s the only thing that this study I was reading was saying, but it’s really hard to know. Apparently girls are more likely to go for games and activities where they have to work hard rather than be smart, which is really interesting. So girls apparently have a much better work ethic.

[00:26:34]
Ben Newsome: Yes, serious food for thought without a doubt. It’s amazing what sort of expectations we’re setting our kids without even realising it. I mean, amazing Kate had found this research that says five-year-old kids are making that assumption of themselves at such a tender age. Big serious problem for not only schools but households and the greater public as a whole. Yes, we’ve got to do something about this.

[00:27:03]
Ben Newsome: In fact, it’s well worth listening to Kate and Duncan’s conversation on Fizzics Twist, our other podcast, where they get right into this issue and it’s well worth your time subscribing to that podcast because they do all sorts of different areas of science and technology. Well worth your time. But we’ve still got more episodes coming up too, but until then, I hope you’re making your classrooms awesome, engaging, fun and incredibly inclusive so that the whole world can benefit as a result. You’ve been listening to me, Ben Newsome from Fizzics Education, and you’ve been listening to the Fizzics Ed Podcast. I’ll catch you next week.

[00:27:29]
Announcer: You’ve been listening to another Fizzics Ed Podcast. We’re excited about science. Subscribe to us on iTunes to download the next episode as soon as it’s released. And don’t forget, for hundreds of ideas, free experiments, our new Be Amazing book and more, go to fizzicseducation.com.au. That’s physics spelled F I Z Z I C S.

[00:27:57]
Announcer: This podcast is part of the Australian Educators Online Network. aeon.net.au.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is the Inclusion Squared programme?
Inclusion Squared is a Women in STEM and Entrepreneurship programme developed by the Warren Centre. It takes a three-tiered approach to support girls in school, provide women with entrepreneurship skills through masterclasses, and assist with senior career progression in STEM fields.

2. How did the Warren Centre influence the Australian economy in the late 1980s?
A 1988 Warren Centre report titled “Preparing Australians for a Future with Technology” recommended better collaboration between industry and academia. This directly led to the formation of the Cooperative Research Centres (CRC) programme, which has added an estimated $14 billion in value to the Australian economy.

3. At what age do children begin forming gender-based stereotypes about intelligence?
Research discussed in the podcast suggests that children as young as five decide if they are “smart.” By age six, many girls begin to perceive boys as more likely to be smart than girls, highlighting the critical need for early intervention and positive role modelling in schools.

4. What is the “If you can see it, you can be it” principle?
This principle, championed by entrepreneur Jo Burston and Rare Birds, emphasizes that young women are more likely to pursue STEM and entrepreneurship careers if they have visible, relatable female role models to look up to, rather than stereotypes of scientists in lab coats or male entrepreneurs.

5. What is Alexandra Harrington studying for her Churchill Fellowship?
Alexandra is studying the management and roll-out of autonomous vehicles. Her research involves travelling to Europe, the US, and Japan to investigate safety, public accessibility, and how this technology can benefit people with limited mobility or vision impairments.

Extra thought ideas to consider

• Reframing STEM Identities: The podcast highlights that many young women in STEM do not define themselves by their job titles (like “engineer”) but by the impact they wish to make. Educators should consider shifting classroom focus from “learning to be a scientist” to “learning tools to solve real-world problems.”
• Entrepreneurship as a Core Skill: Given that women make the majority of global purchasing decisions yet founded only 25% of startups in 2014, there is a clear gap. Integrating entrepreneurship 101 concepts into the STEM curriculum could help students see science not just as a study of facts, but as a vehicle for viable business innovation.
• Early Cognitive Intervention: Knowing that gendered views on intelligence can set in by age six, primary schools must actively work to dismantle these perceptions during the foundation years. This includes diverse representations in classroom materials and inviting varied STEM professionals to speak with younger year levels.