Learning, Belief, and Ideas About Who Can Be a Scientist

Picture a scientist: who do you imagine? Go ahead and draw your scientist on a piece of paper or in a journal. Once you are finished, put your pencil down and read on. We will come back to your drawing later.

Have you ever wondered how you know what you know? How does your brain understand that, by combining certain letters together, you spell a specific word? Or how do you know how to make a bowl of cereal in the morning? Have you ever wondered why you think the way you do? Scientists in the fields of psychology and cognitive science are working hard to answer questions like these. They study something called cognition, which is the process of learning and understanding through thought, experiences, and using the senses (touch, taste, sound, smell, sight, kinesthetic, proprioceptive, etc.). Humans know what they know because of cognition, and our brains use various cognitive processes to help us understand ourselves and the world around us. Some examples of cognitive processes are solving problems, making decisions, or using memory [1]. The processes used by our brains to learn things like math or language are different than the brain processes used to form the beliefs we hold about ourselves—these beliefs are called our self-concept.

Science shows us that there is a link between people’s self-concepts and who they grow up to be [2]. How do we know what we can be if we never see anyone like us doing the job? How do we believe we belong somewhere without role models that we identify with? One area of scientific study involves people’s beliefs about who can be a scientist. Historically, only white men were allowed to be scientists and women, people of color, individuals with disabilities, and other minority groups (like people in the LGBTQ+ community) were intentionally excluded from science [3]. This caused two problems: first, there were very few scientists who were not white and male; and second, because there was a lack of diverse scientists, the belief that a person must be white and male to be a scientist was reinforced. In other words, there were very few diverse scientific role models, which reinforced people’s beliefs that women, people of color, and others did not belong in science.

We wanted to see if providing diverse scientific role models to students could influence their beliefs about who a scientist could be.

STEM to STEAM

Research shows that girls start to lose interest in science around middle school, and that interest in a subject is a strong predictor of career choice [4, 5]. So, we created a STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) lesson for middle school students, called the In Their Eyes: Conservation + Comics program [6]. Teaching STEM in creative ways—such as with comic books—has been shown to be a fun and effective way to learn [7]. To do so, our lesson added art to change STEM to STEAM (science, technology, engineering, ART, math)!

Every part of our lesson featured diverse, real-world scientists as role models: first, there was a classroom lesson in which students read scientific comic books and won scientist trading cards through a vocabulary game (Figure 1). Next, students took a virtual fieldtrip to a national park, for a lesson on biology and conservation taught by a female scientist. After learning about these topics, the students made their own scientific comic books to tell their conservation stories. Lastly, the students took everything they learned and created posters to show to their classes, friends, teachers, families, and 16 diverse guest scientists.

Did They Change Their Minds?

To understand if people’s ideas have changed over time, scientists must gather information both before the experiment (like our STEAM lesson) and after the experiment. Then, they compare before (pre-experiment) to after (post-experiment). This tells them if their experiment had any impact on what the person thought, knew, or believed. To test whether our lesson changed the students’ ideas about who could be a scientist, we used something called the Draw a Scientist Test (DAST) both before and after the lesson (Figure 2).

The DAST is a method that has been used by scientists and education researchers to study people’s perceptions of scientists since the 1980s [8]. It has been updated many times over the years and is widely respected. The DAST asks students to “draw a picture of a scientist”. The student is also asked follow-up questions, such as: “Was the scientist you drew a man or woman?”, “Was the scientist working outdoors or indoors?”, and “What was the scientist doing in your picture?”.

The drawings and answers from this study were collected and examined to uncover stereotypical ideas of scientists. A stereotype is an oversimplified belief about a person that is often wrong, such as “only men can be scientists”. Stereotypes like this demonstrate a limited idea of who can be a scientist and what a scientist does. For example, a drawing with facial hair indicates a male scientist, and a person wearing a white lab coat shows only one type of scientist (many scientists do not wear lab coats at all). After analyzing the DASTs, we then compared the number of stereotypes pre-experiment and post-experiment to see if there was a change.

Mind Detectives

Studying people’s beliefs, thoughts, and knowledge is like being a mind detective! So, did we solve the mystery about how to change people’s perceptions about who can be scientists by using diverse role models?

After reviewing the pre-DASTs and the post-DASTs, we found that students drew fewer stereotypic images in the post-DASTs. Out of the 33 students that completed both pre- and post-DASTS, 22 of them drew traditional scientific equipment (such as beakers and flasks) before the lesson, yet only 12 of them drew this type of equipment after the lesson. In addition, 14 students drew protective gear like lab coats before the lesson, and only 6 students drew protective gear afterward. Lastly, before the lesson, an equal number of students drew men and women as scientists; but after the lesson, 19 students drew women, 10 students drew men, and three students drew non-binary scientists.

We also found that students shifted some of their ideas about science. Our lesson featured diverse women in the field of biology, and the number of drawings that featured biologists increased from 16 to 25. In fact, six students drew scientists they had been introduced to from the lesson (Figure 3)!

Picture a Scientist

Why does all of this matter? These numbers show us that our lesson could be breaking harmful stereotypes about what a scientist is and who a scientist can be! By peeking into students’ beliefs about science and scientists, we were able to determine one part of a solution to the lack of diversity in STEM fields. It will take a lot of work to make STEM equal for everyone, but this could be one important step toward future success.

Now, picture a scientist again—who do you imagine this time?

Glossary

Psychology: ↑ The field of science that studies human minds and behaviors.

Cognitive Science: ↑ The field of science that studies specific processes in the brain, like memory, perception, and language.

Cognition: ↑ The mental action or process of gaining knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses.

Self-Concept: ↑ The image we have of ourselves and our behaviors.

Role Models: ↑ People looked up to by others as examples to be imitated.

Diverse: ↑ Very different or variety. In this context, people from a range of different social and ethnic backgrounds and of different genders, sexual orientations, etc.

Perceptions: ↑ Ways of thinking, understanding, or believing something; mental impressions.

Stereotypical: ↑ A widely held, oversimplified idea that is often biased, prejudiced, or wrong.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

Funding for this project provided by the IF/THEN^® She Can Change the World grant.