Research

Role Models Matter: Investigating Students' Science Perceptions and Identity Using Draw-A-Scientist

Chiamaka Utom, Antoinette Obiefuna, Luke Winter, Mateo Requejo-Tejada, and Vanessa Woods
 

Despite efforts to promote gender equality in STEM, there remains a persistent gender gap that seems to be related to gender biases from early childhood. Students' ideas about who can do science can impact women’s beliefs about their competence and identity in science, and male bias hinders female retention in STEM fields. SciTrek is a science outreach program designed to give students authentic science experiences. Guided by college students mentors, this program aims to enhance student’s confidence and interest in science through guided discovery learning and experimental design. The Draw A Scientist Task (DAST) is a measure used to gauge childrens’ perceptions of who comes to mind when they think of a scientist. Using the DAST as a measure, we investigated if SciTrek’s use of diverse college student mentors might have an influence on girls’ perceptions of scientists. For this study, we ran a mixed linear model analysis on a coded data set of students’ perceptions of scientists on 2nd through 6th grade boys and girls. In the 2021 data set, we asked the students to write who their scientist was after they finished the drawing. Results revealed that girls were more likely to draw SciTrek volunteers (college student mentors) than boys, and boys were more likely to draw famous scientists than girls. Prior research suggests girls tend to draw fewer scientists than boys in early elementary school, and boys tend to draw men as scientists at all stages of elementary school, which increases with age (Miller et al., 2018). Our results were inconsistent with this finding, as 2^nd and 3^rd grade girls drew women as scientists more often than boys, but this rate decreased between grades 4 and 6. 2^nd, 5^th, and 6^th grade boys drew men as scientists more than girls, but this rate declines in grades 3 and 4. These findings suggest mentors who align with underrepresented groups, like women in STEM, could foster higher science interest in girls, combat their decline in science identity, and promote greater female interest in STEM in the future.

Making Women Feel Welcome: How Volunteering Impacts Undergraduates' Biases in STEM

Will Cordett and Vanessa Woods

As new female undergraduates first enter the academic STEM community, many are met by a hostile environment that makes them feel as though they don’t belong. While the transition to university life is hard on most students, female undergraduates in STEM deal with disproportionately unwelcoming circumstances due to their field of study being a largely male-dominated space. Previous research suggests that this hostile environment is caused largely by a societal idea that women are not suited to be scientists — gendered media, peer interactions, and a lack of representation in these fields dissuades women from trying to enter them or encourages them to switch majors (Cheryan et al., 2013). One way of combating this hostile environment is by causing a change in the biases that STEM undergraduates may hold against women in these fields. There is evidence that volunteering causes introspection regarding one’s self and beliefs (Tierney et al., 2022), and therefore may encourage a reevaluation of the notion that women are less capable in these fields. Volunteer programs exist at many universities where undergraduates work with younger, underserved populations to encourage the pursuit of science for everyone — in some of these classrooms, the children’s beliefs on who can be a scientist are probed as well. Programs where undergraduates work with elementary and middle school classrooms to foster science interest are hypothesized to lead to a change in the volunteer’s own biases as well, as they will be forced to confront their beliefs and evaluate their validity. Volunteers who signed up for such a program were recruited via email and surveyed regarding their beliefs on the importance of gender in STEM and related fields both prior to their volunteering in the classroom and after it. A smaller subset of volunteers also took part in qualitative interviews, where their experiences in the academic STEM community were explored for themes related to the role of gender bias in their experiences. This research has the potential to give insight into how the academic science community can become a more inclusive and welcoming place for women, and potentially other minorities with future research.

Addressing the Gender-Science Stereotype: Effects of participation in a second-grade science-outreach program on students' science identity and teachers' confidence

Lindsey Dickerson and Vanessa Woods

Stereotypes often form based on direct observation of group members and information in the media (Miller et al., 2018). In part due to the absence of female scientists in the media and the classroom, children often succumb to traditional gender-science stereotypes that associate interest in science with men (Steinke et al., 2007). The impact of the gender-science stereotype on girls’ can be seen in their identity dissociation with STEM and their absence from STEM occupations. Girls recognize and follow the stereotype that scientists are male as early as elementary school, indicating the significant role of science education exposure in science identity formation (Miller et al., 2018).

Although the California public school system has implemented the California Next Generation Science Standards which focuses on what scientists do, students are not federally required to take the California Science Test until the end of elementary school (California Department of Education). The absence of a state mandated science assessment and curriculum in lower elementary school causes little motivation to introduce science in lower grades, and by doing so denies students the opportunity to challenge and overcome gender-science stereotypes. To address the lack of education in early elementary school, a phenomenon-based science outreach program has been implemented that is grounded in three-dimensional teaching. Utilizing mentors in the classroom, students are guided through investigating and justifying explanations for phenomena to deepen their understanding of science. Students are mentored while creating experiments, analyzing results, and drawing conclusions. Pre and post assessments include performance and identity measures to see how students’ personal identity aligns with that of a scientist. My project examines this program’s second-grade data to determine if students’ identities are predictive of their performance. Additionally, teachers will be interviewed to determine if there is a correlation between the teacher’s confidence in teaching and willingness to teach science, teacher’s gender, and students’ performance and identity measures. I expect that providing a space to create experiments and analyze data as a means of identity will cause young girls to exhibit greater science identity and performance scores, which will strengthen alongside the teacher’s confidence and willingness to teach science.