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Research
That Matters
What influences a child's conceptions of science? Tiffany Lee, a post-doctoral fellow with the LIFE Center (Learning in Informal and Formal Environments) has been examining this question using interviews and drawings of scientists by very young children. What does a "scientist" look like?
One girl just starting kindergarten responded by drawing a smiling biologist out in nature, surrounded by a skunk, a turtle, a "mommy bird, daddy bird and baby bird." When Lee asked a graduating first-grader the same question, the girl drew a scientist in a lab coat, in an indoor laboratory, surrounded with flasks full of liquids.
Other drawings showed the same trend: the youngest children's drawings often reflected informal, wide-open ideas of what constituted science; the older children were more likely to draw formal lab-and-beaker chemistry scenes. "In science classes, we teach more than just chemistry, and we don't necessarily teach that in early elementary school, but kids get this image that that is science," says Lee.
"Their images seem to grow more stereotypic as they go through school and are exposed to more media and societal expectations."
The drawings show young children can have sophisticated ideas about science before they ever step foot in school. "They begin with broad ideas of science that reflect their everyday experiences," says Lee, who interviewed each young artist. "Then we see this narrowing of their perceptions. Science becomes more defined for them; very specific things count as science.
"Even as adults, if you asked them to do the same exercise, I would guess that most would draw a similar image of a laboratory chemist. It's a very clear and pervasive image."
"There's a mommy bird and there's a daddy bird and that's me and that's a skunk and there's a baby bird and there's a turtle with a beautiful shell." She says she is a "biologist" and that's her as a "grown up."
"It's a girl and she makes these kind of liquids..she makes them
into experiments. She likes to do science a lot because she likes it
and she thinks it's fun... She's wearing a long shirt and a little coat,
and so if it spills it's white."
Issue Contents
- Home
- Introduction
- A Wide World of Learning
- Early Childhood: A Jump Start for Head Start
- Elementary School: Making Science Matter
- A Child's Eye View of Science
- High School: Knowledge in Action
- "May It Please The Court…"
- How Dreams Are Derailed for Multicultural Students
- Latinos Left Out of the Loop
- Student Profile: Connecting Two Worlds
- ‘Invisible’ Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders
- Adult Training: Building a Workforce to Support Children with Autism
- Contributing Faculty
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