Tipo de materia organica

Since Hirsch's and Mead and Métraux's original research, many studies have examined children's, high school students', student teachers' and teachers' perceptions of and attitudes toward science and scientists and have found

"worldwide stereotypic commonalities" (Christidou, Bonoti & Kontopoulou, 2016, p. 497) with Mead and Métraux's perception of the scientist.

In 2009, Koren and Bar undertook a meta-analysis of the physical and social image of the scientist among school children, student teachers and teachers throughout the intervening fifty years since Hirsch's and Mead and Métraux's studies.

Although they found that the Mead and Métraux perception of the scientist "was widely held in the western world regardless of country or age" (Koren & Bar, 2009a, p. 144), they also discovered that studies in the early and mid 2000s had begun to recognise and then emphasise the influence of social, economic and cultural

background on the sociological perception of the scientist (Finson, 2002; Fung, 2002; Koren & Bar, 2009a; Song & Kim, 1999).

Buldu (2006), too, taking particular account of children's age, gender and socio- economic status, recognised that

[w]hile children of parents with lower socio-economic status drew more

stereotypical scientist images, children of parents with higher economic status drew different images of scientists, a result which showed us that the scientist perceptions of young children differ with socio-economic status. (Buldu, 2006, p. 122)

53 Sjøberg (2002), in a study of 12-13 year old students in 20 countries, also

determined that industrialised/developed countries had a different perception of the scientist than that of developing countries.

In developed countries, the Mead and Métraux image predominated and, although students believed that scientists did want to help people, there also existed the perception of the 'mad' scientist (Koren & Bar, 2009a; Sjøberg, 2002).

In developing countries, however, scientists were seen as "heroic, brave, and intelligent, helping other people, curing the sick, and improving the standard of living for everybody" (Koren & Bar, 2009a, p. 145); they were perceived as "helping the poor and underprivileged, they are servants of humanity, and heroes of society" (p. 145; see also Anderson, 2006) – and the notion of the 'mad' or 'evil' scientist was not prevalent.

Whether the past perceptions of scientists in developing countries have changed, or will change, from the hero or servant of society, to include the mad or evil scientist, and whatever it is that brings about any change in perception, might be a matter for further research. Koren and Bar's own studies in 2009, however, showed that in the developed West, attitudes among young students were beginning to change.

High School Students

Koren and Bar studied high school students' (14-18 years of age) attitudes to science and scientists by referring to representations of the same in some classical works and some popular works of science fiction dating from the beginning of the 18th century to the end of the 20th century.

Besides asking the students to write essays (as Mead and Métraux had done), they used closed questionnaires and semi-structured collective interviews about the stories in order to determine more closely "the personality behind the physical stereotype" (2009a, p. 141). They found:

A few of [the students] stated that the scientist is isolated from any social framework, from the family web, and interaction in the political world. Others stated that the scientist is connected to society, possessing good

communication skills and is open to others' views. In addition to the characteristics that refer to the scientist's intelligence – stubbornness,

54 hardworking – the scientist was presented as enthusiastic, open to the beauty of nature, and some possessing excellent social talents. They describe

scientists that can move large groups, to convince people of different fields, to help them and to raise money for the execution of research projects. (Koren & Bar, 2009a, p. 159)

Amongst high school students, therefore, more complicated and mixed images of the scientist had begun to emerge – with Koren and Bar feeling that contemporary high school students were, indeed, "pro-science and regard[ed] science as a useful area of society" (2009a, p. 142).

Yet, high school students having positive attitudes towards scientists and regarding science as having a worthy function in the world was still not leading them toward careers in science. One reason for this could be because unappealing ideas about scientists – scientists being "isolated from any social framework" or being too "hardworking" (Koren & Bar, 2009a, p. 159), for instance – might have been putting students off a career in science, and this is something I wanted to explore.

Elementary/Primary School Students

Chambers, in 1983, about twenty five years after Mead and Métraux's studies (and at about the same time the Royal Society was commissioning the Bodmer Report in 1985), undertook a large-scale study with elementary school children.

Pioneering the 'Draw a Scientist Test' (DAST) with 4,807 American children from kindergarten to grade 5 (aged 5-10 years), the Chambers' study produced similar results to Mead and Métraux: the scientist as a white male, with spectacles, peculiar hair and/or a beard wearing a white lab coat and working alone in a laboratory surrounded by test tubes and bottles. Furthermore, Chambers found that the stereotypical perceptions of the scientist emerged as early as second or third grade, that is, at 7 to 8 years of age. Chambers repeated the study in the People's Republic of China and found that the images drawn by Chinese students closely matched those from Western culture (Avraamidou, 2013; Chambers, 1983).

The DAST, subject to refinement, became a widely used tool in determining young children's perceptions about scientists and many studies using the technique confirmed Chambers' initial findings (Boylan et al., 1992; Christidou et al., 2016; Fort & Varney, 1989; Schibeci & Sorensen, 1983).

55 In the mid 2000s, however, Buldu (2006) suggested that the predominance of the Mead and Métraux image had begun to change for young children, too.

Buldu (2006) found that since the Mead and Métraux and the Chambers studies, the body of research examining children's perceptions of science and scientists was burgeoning (Finson, 2003; Koren & Bar, 2009a). When working with young

children, this body of research, in the main, used children's drawings to discern children's perceptions of scientists and again found "pervasive, but questionable, preconceived ideas of scientists among all age levels of children" (Buldu, 2006, p. 122); children in these studies "generally perceive scientists as males with glasses, beards and strange hair, and wearing white lab coats: individuals who work in the laboratories, generally messing about with chemicals" (pp. 123-124; see also Fort & Varney, 1989; Huber & Burton, 1995; Schibeci & Sorenson, 1983).

Buldu's own study, working with children 5-8 years of age, using the DAST technique however, revealed that

unlike previous studies, around 35% of the scientist figures drawn were of the social scientist type. ... [Children] drew scientists as journalists who type on a typewriter, together with novelists/poets, artists who paint and university professors who teach in class, rather than stereotypical images of scientists as drawn in previous studies. (Buldu, 2006, pp. 121 & 126)

Christidou, Bonoti, and Kontopoulou (2016) achieved similar results. Besides their findings being consistent with Chambers' (1983) study, in that "even second- or third-grade [7-9 years old] pupils have developed a fairly clear image of scientists and science" (Christidou et al., 2016, p. 515), working with 8 year old Greek and American children they, too, used the DAST together with a picture selection exercise and found

[s]tudents' drawings and picture selections indicate that the participants apparently adopt aspects of an enduring image of scientists, which has

remained unaffected by radical scientific development during the last decades. On the other hand, other features of the stereotypic image have been found to fade. (Christidou et al., 2016, p. 519)

More specifically, with respect to these both enduring and fading features, they found that the stereotypic indicators were more evident in the picture selection

56 exercise but the DAST, as Buldu's research had done, revealed more diverse

images and a fading of the stereotype. Although the scientists the children drew were "in their vast majority of European origin (87.9%)" (p. 508), they were only "more frequently male (59.3%) than female" (p. 508). Also, although the scientists were still mainly depicted as working in laboratories (74.7%), they were

in majority represented in casual clothes (76.9%), without eyeglasses

(73.6%), or peculiar facial hair (90.1%) ... individuals largely appeared to be young (95.6%) and their facial expressions mostly implied positive feelings and a friendly mood (81.3%). (Christidou et al., 2016, p. 508)

Evidentially, non-stereotypical perceptions of scientists are beginning to emerge among young and primary school children, too, wherein, although ethnicity ('mainly white') and working environments ('laboratories') are still similar to Mead and Métraux's and Chambers' findings, the children's image of scientists' gender, attire, appearance, age and demeanour are all beginning to change.