Mixed Messages for Our Next Generation of Scientists

Abstract

Scientists have been in the media ever since Frankenstein in 1931. Today's youth may not have seen the original movie or read the book, but they have seen cartoon reiterations of the famous classic as the work has inspired numerous ilms, television programs, video games, characters in books and movies. The concept of the "mad scientist" creating a creature, monster, or weapon that eventually falls out of his control, leading to the scientist's eventual defeat or ruin, is a common theme in science-iction and comic books.Draw-A-Scientist protocols have been utilized by science education researchers to investigate learners' perceptions of scientists. This chapter discusses historical perspectives of scientists in the media, the methods for analyzing students' perceptions of scientists and how aspects of their illustrations relate students' perceptions of scientists. The discussion presented here is framed in the context in which young children hold a range of perceptions that are based on cultural inluences, and sometimes these images are limited, and sometimes they compete within the individual. The position of this author is that each of these three are interconnected with the others, support each other, and must be considered along with students' cultural background and science identity if these illustrations are to fulill any promise of its utility for research or instructional purposes.