Print Media Representations of Science Fairs

Abstract

Science fairs are an almost unavoidable experience for students at some stage in public school. This paper examines how student projects and science fairs—and, by extension, professional science—are portrayed in newspaper media coverage of national and local science fairs. Despite a high student participation rate and a high number of science fairs (100+ regional fairs/year), media coverage is infrequent. Of the newspaper coverage that does occur, much of it reflects four ideological themes: i) Science is competitive, ii) Science is instrumentalist, iii) Commodification of science, and (iv) Corporatism. Notably, we found that detailed descriptions of student involvement in science investigations were infrequent. We conclude by posing questions for possible future action, both in regards to the media discussing the ideologies identified earlier, and for shifting focus to more about the student projects themselves and the student participation in those projects.

Résumé

Pour les élèves des écoles publiques, les expo-sciences sont une expérience pratiquement inévitable au cours de leurs études. Cet article analyse la façon dont les projets étudiants et les expo-sciences—et donc, par extension, les sciences professionnelles—sont traités dans la presse écrite nationale et locale. Malgré le nombre élevé d'expo-sciences réalisés (plus de 100 d'expo-sciences régionaux par année au Canada), et malgré un très bon taux de participation de la part des étudiants, il est peu fréquent que ces événements soient couverts par les médias. La couverture existante reflète principalement quatre thèmes idéologiques : 1) la compétitivité des sciences, 2) l'instrumentalisme des sciences, 3) la ≪ commercialisation ≫ des sciences, et (4) le corporatisme des sciences. Notre analyse montre également que les comptes-rendus détaillés de la participation étudiante aux recherches scientifiques sont plutôt rares, et que la plupart du temps ces comptes-rendus sont centrés sur les projets qui se sont vu attribuer des prix. Nous concluons en posant des questions qui ouvrent certaines avenues d'action, notamment pour faire en sorte que les articles soient plus centrés sur les projets eux-mêmes et sur la participation étudiante à ces projets, au lieu d'un traitement limité aux idéologies mentionnées plus haut.

Research supported by SSHRC Standard Research Grants to G. M. Bowen and J. L. Bencze.

Notes

∗Number of years that a complete electronic search of records was available, to July 15, 2007.

1. The national science fair in the USA, for example, began in 1950 (Bellipanni & Lilly, 1999). Canada's national science fair began in 1962 (YSF, 2003). Australia has only recently started the equivalent of science fairs, “Student Research Expos,” that are regional and focus on more than science and technology subjects (Ayre, 2004). China has city-based science fairs, but not a national one. The U.K. has both CREST awards (CREativity in Science and Technology), Young Engineer competitions, and a National Science Competition, as well as a larger celebratory event that pulls together thousands of students and teachers called “The Big Bang.”

2. Cultural capital includes a person's “wealth” in terms of discourse practices, knowledge, skills, etc.; while social capital refers to a person's access to a network of people with cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1983).

3. About the authors’ involvement: GMB had been a student participant at the national fair in 1978, and JLB and he had both engaged students in science projects and fairs in their teaching and professional development careers.

4. Using data from Table 1, average numbers of articles per year for national newspapers was about 1.8 [(1.2 + 2.4)÷2] and 2.05 [(1.2 + 1.8 + 0.5 + 4.7)÷4] for regional papers.

5. To preserve student anonymity media sources are not being cited.

6. This deficit model perspective, now seen as problematic from a research and policy perspective, is quite persistent in society (Wynne, 2006), and is essentially the starting point for the media in determining what to write about. It is this anticipation of what the public does not know about but might want to know about, or at least read about, that directs media focus to develop their clientele base.

7. Although clearly articles about global warming/climate change belie this latter argument that newspapers avoid controversy on science topics, as that issue is now frequently in newspaper media; see Bowen & Rodger (2008) for some details of the controversy present in such articles.