Three Minute Learning - an online story library and interactive resource that uses proven pedagogies to improve understanding of STFC research

The new Scottish school curriculum, with its emphasis on cross-curricular learning and creativity, offers a wonderful opportunity to get physics, chemistry and biology out of their silos and into the heart of modern culture, where they belong. Through our work in educational journalism - interviewing curriculum planners and teachers - it was an opportunity we recognised some time ago, motivating us to develop and test methods of making cutting-edge science accessible and interesting.

Science communication often focuses on content and overestimates a reader's or listener's ability to absorb that content through written and spoken language. This can create high barriers for learners. At the heart of our whole approach is the aim of breaking down those barriers, using knowledge gained from research and classroom practice of what works in learning and literacy.

The principal partners - Real Science and Glasgow Science Festival - have made considerable progress, including interviewing dozens of researchers, testing the methods in schools, refining and developing the initial concepts, and creating a new resource called Three Minute Learning.

3ml is designed to take science learning and literacy to a new level, by engaging users with short, readable texts on a wide range of topics. Simple reading activities - described in more detail below - are employed within an appealing online learning resource. Essentially 3ml is a method of smuggling science into every subject in school.

The proposed project now plans to use this resource as a vehicle to engage schools and the wider community with cutting-edge physics research. We will create and test a new library of stories based on interviews with STFC-funded researchers in Scotland and at CERN. We will pilot this extensively in schools. We will test a new method, based on our research, of engaging learners with science stories, even when they have little prior knowledge of the content.

The long-term aim is ambitious but, we believe, achievable. Science will no longer be seen as esoteric, occasionally interesting but inaccessible to normal people. Big ideas in science will be discussed as readily as politics and economics are now. Higgs bosons, gravitational waves and dark matter will take their rightful place in modern culture, alongside Shakespeare, Dickens, Mozart and Monet.

Once the new STFC-funded library of stories is written and piloted in the 10 schools we will produce an action research report for publication.

We will raise awareness of the project through our existing network of contacts, by attending the calendar of relevant Scottish education events and offering programme presentations to the organisers. We aim to roll the project out across Scotland and the UK, so a programme of talks, publications and articles in education bulletins will be an important next step.

Rebecca Crawford is a member of the British Science Association West of Scotland Branch Committee, the Scottish Science Festivals Network and the UK Science Festival Network, and is active on Sputnik (the online Institute of Physics teacher forum).

We work closely with ASE Scotland whose acting chair Carolyn Yates, already a project supporter, has invited us to deliver a session on 3ml at the ASE Scotland Conference in March 2014.

We work closely with the IoP Teacher Network. We will discuss links with their CPD support programmes, with Tom Clark, Ronna Montgomery and Brian Redman, as well as a presentation at the IoP summer schools and the Stirling conference.

We will offer to write articles for the STEM Ambassadors newsletters and communications, for the STEM Advisory print and electronic bulletins, for the Education Scotland STEM Central website and for SSERC. We anticipate they will all be interested. We will use GLOW, Facebook, Twitter, Teachmeets and RadioEdutalk.