Children are natural scientists, frequently asking questions about the world around them. But ask one to draw a picture of a scientist, and they will typically sketch an older white male in a lab coat, holding a beaker, with pens in his pocket.
Graduate students at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) are helping students to draw—literally—more accurate and positive conclusions about what scientists look like and do.
The graduate students are fellows in the VIMS GK-12 PERFECT (Partnership between Educators and Researchers for Enhancing Classroom Teaching) program. Over the year-long Fellowship, these graduate students receive training and mentoring in science education from VIMS education staff affiliated with Virginia Sea Grant and get embedded with a teacher to co-teach classes. By embedding research scientists, the program aims to improve curriculum and stimulate interest in science.
In 2010, Fellow Lindsey Kraatz wanted to test whether that goal was realistic. At the start of the semester, Kraatz and two other fellows asked their classes to draw a scientist, describe their drawing, list three words that come to mind when looking at their scientist, and describe what their scientist does on a typical day.
All of the students drew scientists wearing lab coats, and most scientists had glasses and were holding test tubes or beakers. The odds were 5 to 1 that students drew male scientists. Common adjectives were smart, crazy, nerd, weird, lab coat, and old.
After one semester of having scientists in their classroom, students drew scientists again. This time the drawings showed scientists in less stereotypical settings. Scientists were outside collecting samples, observing nature, or working with others. Even the adjectives students used to describe scientists changed, from weird, lab coat, and old to nice, experiment, chemicals, and fun. In general, positive words became more common, and negative terms decreased. The male to female ratio dropped to 2 to 1.
“The students in our classes came to see that science was not as overwhelming as they initially thought, and they became less apprehensive of science concepts and scientists,” said Kraatz.
Kraatz says the most important change was that the students’ “expanded their perceptions of what a scientist is or can be.” She was particularly encouraged by “after” drawings in which the students drew themselves as the scientist.
In the five years of this NSF-funded project, 47 graduate fellows interacted with more than 5,500 students and spent more than 13,000 hours in local science classrooms.
This article is based on a longer article by Dave Malmquist about the GK12 program at VIMS. The original article can be found here: http://www.vims.edu/newsandevents/topstories/archives/2010/draw_a_scientist.php
