Developing Young Scientists: The Importance of Addressing Stereotypes in Early Childhood Education

Children are born natural scientists. Research has shown they draw less stereotypical images of scientists the younger they are and less school experience they have. This chapter explores stereotypes young children hold of scientists and engineers and how teachers might recognize, address, and combat these stereotypes in the early childhood classroom. From an early age, children receive messages directly and indirectly about scientists, from their parents, media, television, books, and school. The messages they receive help them shape their science identity and test ideas about who can be scientists and what stereotypes exist. Evidence has demonstrated that students are aware of stereotypes and they are able to recognize and discuss stereotypes in a way that broaden their perception of scientists and engineers. To begin the discussion of pedagogical methodologies, the history of drawings of scientists (and engineers) will be discussed. Likewise, these discussions of stereotypes and new awareness can increase career choices including these two fields: science and engineering. Explicit instruction about the stereotypes the stereotypes and implications that follow for early childhood science classrooms will be discussed

Mixed Messages for Our Next Generation of Scientists

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 films, 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\u27s eventual defeat or ruin, is a common theme in science-fiction 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 influences, 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 fulfill any promise of its utility for research or instructional purposes

Early Childhood Education

This book will serve as a resource for students, researchers, and practitioners in the area of early childhood education. The 18 chapters are divided and organized into the major areas relevant to early childhood education: early childhood development, play, science, mathematics, technology, literacy, and exceptional learners. Each chapter contains an overview of background information pertinent to the chapter and a synopsis of research or a new research study. The information contained in this book provides a foundation for past and/or present research and suggests future research studies

Eighth Grade Students Conceptions of How Engineers Use Math and Science in the Field of Engineering: A Comparison of Two Cohorts

Over the last fifteen years, engineering has made its way into science curriculum at all levels, elementary, middle, and high school. A need to analyze students’ perception the field of engineering is warranted. Previous techniques for studying representations of scientists and build on what researchers in the science field have learned from researching images of scientists. The purpose of the study was to compare two eighth grade cohorts’ conceptions of engineers through the use of multiple drawings and a rubric. Half of the students were enrolled in an iSTEM Cohort and received instruction focusing on engineering while the other half of the students in this study were enrolled in a traditional cohort and received instruction via a traditional approach to science in the eighth grade. Data analysis involved two phases of eighth grade students in two cohorts, iSTEM and traditional (N=146). The first phase was a content analysis of the actions and artifacts of engineers at work based on the work of Capobianco, Diefes-Dux, Mena, and Weller (2011). In the second phase, illustrations were analyzed using the Draw-An-Engineer-At-Work-Test Rubric DAEWT (Thomas et al., 2016). A two-tailed, independent sample t-test was used to compare illustrations from each group. It was discovered that more themes of engineering emerged from students in the iSTEM Cohort than the traditionally taught students. Data revealed a significant difference (p<.05) in the portrayal of the use of science as related to the work of an engineer and the field of engineering with the iSTEM Cohort when compared with traditionally taught eighth grade students. The Draw-An-Engineer-at-Work Test when evaluated with the Draw-An-Engineer-at-Work Rubric provides researchers many visualizations of students’ conceptions of how engineers use math and science in their work and can help educators understand students’ conceptions concerning the engineering field