The effect of the visiting-scientist approach supported by conceptual change activities on the images of the scientist

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study was to analyse the effect of the visiting-scientist approach supported by conceptual change activities on high school students’ images of scientists and perceptions of gender and risks that scientists take. Twenty-five students attending 10th grade in the 2017–2018 academic years participated in the study. A quasi-experimental model with a pretest and a post-test without a control group, one of the quantitative research techniques, was used. In the implementation, activities based on conceptual change and the visiting-scientist approach of were carried out. To determine students’ scientist images, A ‘Draw-a-Scientist-Test’ and a ‘Scientist-in-Images-Scale’ were administered before and after the implementation, and interviews exploring their drawings were conducted. Similarly, the ‘Gender-of-Scientists-Perception-Scale’ and ‘Risks-of-Being-a-Scientist-Perception-Scale’ were conducted to determine students’ perceptions of the gender of scientists, and the risks encountered by the scientists. A descriptive analysis approach was used for the analysis of qualitative data collected before and after the implementation, and a Paired-Sample t-test and Wilcoxon signed-rank test were used for the analysis of quantitative data. As a result of the analysis, it was found that, after the implementation, students thought of the scientist less stereotypically and their roles less risky than they believed before.

KEYWORDS:

• Scientist image
• perception of the risks of scientists
• perception of the gender of scientists

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey [Grant Number 118B397].