Effect of women science career role models on early adolescents' attitudes toward scientists and women in science

Abstract

In order to change the attitude of early adolescent female and male students toward scientists and women in science, students in the middle school/junior high grades were exposed over a two months' period to women science career role models as part of their science instruction. This treatment positively affected the students' attitude toward scientists and toward women in science. It is suggested that teachers of science in the middle school/junior high should periodically bring community resource people who use science in their careers to the classroom to act as role models and that women should be included among this group so that the attitudes of both male and female students toward scientists and women in science might be improved.

Gender and Science: Women Nobel Laureates

“…Women still remain underrepresented in science and engineering. Exposure to women scientist role models in middle school and junior high school can enhance students' attitudes toward women scientists (Smith & Erb, 1986).…”

One Science, One Sex?

“…Female scientists, both from the past and present, can serve as positive role models for females. Teachers can influence a positive attitude change in female students through women scientist role models andpresentations concerning women who have made important contributions in science (Smith &Erb, 1986). Graduates (Blair, 1984), Reflections on Gender and Science (Keller, 1985), Those Magnificent Women in Their Flying Machines (Oakes, 1980), Women Scientists Roster (Weiss & Place, 1979) …”

Scientist-Image Stereotypes: The Relationships among their Indicators

“…From this perspective, many studies have been conducted in the literature on altering students' scientist-image stereotypes. These studies utilized approaches such as visiting scientists (Scherz & Oren, 2006;Smith & Erb, 1986) and science camps (Farland-Smith, 2012), inviting scientists to class (Bodzin & Gehringer, 2001;Mason, Kahle, & Gardner, 1991), inviting scientists to class and visiting them in their environment (Flick, 1990;Hopwood, 2012), hands-on research activities (Avraamidou, 2013), and presenting scientists' biographies (Sharkawy, 2009). As a result of these studies, the approaches that were implemented in these studies, such as science camps, hands-on research activities, and so on, were stated to enable students to revise or enhance their scientist-images.…”