‘I’m good at science but I don’t want to be a scientist’: Australian primary school student stereotypes of science and scientists

ABSTRACT

Low participation rates of students studying science at the secondary level are of international concern. One of the under-researched factors influencing low participation rates in the sciences in Australia is primary school student stereotypes concerning science and scientists. We explore how Year 4 (9–10-year-olds) students perceive science, scientists, and a career in science. Data sources included 45 students (m = 29; f = 16) attending six primary schools in diverse contexts in Queensland, Australia. Analysis indicated that when prompted to consider a career in the sciences 13 students aspired to a career in science, 6 students were unsure, and 25 students indicated no aspirations toward an occupation in the sciences. Findings indicated there were no significant differences regarding aspirations towards a science career based on the location of schools with socio-economic status not a salient influence. Categories and sub-categories identified included (i) Stereotypical views of scientists (non-gendered; paraphernalia), and, (ii) Non-Aspirations (difficulties and pressure; science work as physically dangerous). Outcomes provocate research into tensions between the non-gendered language used by students to describe who can be a scientist, on the one hand, and their reluctance to become a scientist due to the masculine nature and dangers of such work, on the other hand.

KEYWORDS:

• Primary school
• science career aspirations
• gender
• science identity
• stereotypes

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Australian Research Council [grant number DE170100990].

Notes on contributors

Laura Scholes

Laura Scholes, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor at the Institute for Learning Sciences and Teacher Education at Australian Catholic University and Principal Research Fellow, Australian Research Council (DECRA). Her research explores student experiences of education and the impact of factors such as gender, identity, and economic marginalisation. She is currently working on cutting edge approaches to preparing students’ ability to think, focusing on new research on evaluative thinking and knowledge necessary for adjudication on conflicting multimodal reading sources related to social, economic, and scientific concerns, such as climate change, pandemics, and terrorism.

Garth Stahl

Garth Stahl, Ph.D. (@GarthStahl) is an Associate Professor in the School of Education at the University of Queensland and Research Fellow, Australian Research Council (DECRA). His research interests lie on the nexus of neoliberalism and socio-cultural studies of education, identity, equity/inequality, and social change. Currently, his research projects and publications encompass theoretical and empirical studies of learner identities, gender and youth, sociology of schooling in a neoliberal age, gendered subjectivities, equity and difference, and educational reform.