Mad Scientist Mwahaha

Have you ever searched the internet for an image of a scientist? If so, your web page filled up with picture of white lab coats, grey hair, males, goggles, and test tubes. Have you ever asked an individual to draw a picture of a scientists? If so, you probably received the same stereotypical image. Even I view scientists as the stereotypical Albert Einstein image. In fact, at the start of my course in Science methods, my class was asked to draw a picture of a scientist. Mine, along with the majority of the class created pictures similar to this.

This image of "Dr. Copper" who's name I took from the character Sheldon on "The Big Bang Theory" shows a man with crazy hair, a lab coat, a bow tie like Bill Nye of course, safety goggles, a chalk board, atom models, a computer, and a bubbling beaker.

The article, Breaking Science Stereotypes by Alec Bodzin and Mike Gehringer, opens up the conversation about how scientists are perceived. Children of one fourth grade class and two fifth grade classes were given the same assignment I was; draw a scientist. The commonalities were expected. The students drew man in lab coats with crazy gray hair. This is the image of a scientist we are exposed to since childhood. In order to break this stereotypical view, each classroom invited a scientist to join them for a lesson. This allowed the children to see how scientists really look. The fourth grades were exposed to a women engineer. Some aspects of their scientist image proved to be true as she entered the room in her protective lab coat. She also mentioned how she wears other safety equipment, such as a hard hat. That fact that this scientist was a women, was important for the class to see. The majority of individuals view science as a male dominated field. Seeing a women can be encouraging to young girls who strive to do work in the field of science. The fifth grade class had the opportunity to meet a male physicist. To the children's surprise, he was not wearing a lab coat, but rather a shirt and tie. Weeks after meeting the scientist, the students were asked again to draw a picture of a scientist. The new images were for the most part drastically different from the original drawings. There new scientists displayed less stereotypical components than their first images. It is important for teaches to break students of stereotypes. Everyone suffers from stereotypes in some way. These stereotypes can often hold individuals back from making achievements. I chose this article because I was given the same task as these students and it opened my eyes to the strong influence of stereotypes. I hope to encourage my students to look past stereotypes in the world and feel as though they can do anything no matter if they are a boy or girl, tall or short, blonde or burnett, Caucasian or African American.