{"id":25195,"date":"2016-10-07T09:30:15","date_gmt":"2016-10-07T14:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=25195"},"modified":"2016-09-14T18:58:56","modified_gmt":"2016-09-14T23:58:56","slug":"role-models-and-gender-stereotyping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2016\/10\/07\/role-models-and-gender-stereotyping\/","title":{"rendered":"Girls Exposed to a Diverse Set of Scientists Shift their Assumption that They’re Mostly Men, But Boys Do Not"},"content":{"rendered":"

Flashback Friday.<\/em><\/p>\n

Eden H. sent in an exploratory\u00a0study<\/a> about kids’ stereotypes of scientists. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermilab asked\u00a07th graders to draw and describe a “scientist” before and after visiting the lab on a class trip. They first read about the Fermilab, then came to the lab and meet with some of the scientists and talk about their work. From the Fermilab website<\/a>:<\/p>\n

What we changed for this field trip was the before and after descriptions and small group sessions for each student to meet with two of three physicists rather than one large group session. We deliberately chose a typical white male, a young female and an African American physicist. We let the students and physicist take their discussion where they wanted.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here are some of the before-and-after pictures and descriptions (all 31 are available here<\/a>):<\/p>\n

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In general, the students seemed to come away with an idea of scientists as being more like “normal” people, not just stereotypical geeks in lab coats. But some of the other changes are interesting, too. The author of a\u00a0post about the study at Restructure!<\/a> analyzed the before-and-after images (as best as she could identify the sex of the drawings):<\/p>\n