PROBING STEREOTYPES THROUGH STUDENTS DRAWINGS OF SCIENTISTS

The Draw-A-Scientist Test is an assessment tool devised to explore and measure children's stereotypical views of scientists. We administered this test to a group of 49 undergraduate and postgraduate students en rolled in a teacher certification program. While this was originally i ntended as a purely pedagogical exercise, we were struck by the degree to which the drawings so produced resembled, in stereotypical content , those usually produced by children. This suggests that stereotypes o f science and scientists formed during childhood, presumably via the i nfluence of the media, remain largely unaffected by the subsequent pas sage through high school and college, despite the fact that numerous r eal-life figures of science teachers and scientists are presumably enc ountered throughout those formative years. We argue that this state of affairs has subtle and far reaching consequences, and is worthy of ou r collective attention. (C) 1997 American Association of Physics Teach ers.