Still persistent global problem of scientists’ image

There is no doubt the image of scientists is a part of science. The first study of drawing scientist was come by anthropologist M. Mead and medical researcher R. Metraux (1957), who had given 35,000 high school students the task of writing an essay depicting their image of a scientist in 1957. After their study, David W. Chambers (1983) created the Draw-a-Scientist Test (DAST) via analyzing of 4807 children in order to learn the person’s image of a scientist. Drawings were analyzed for seven indicators, lab coat, eyeglasses, facial growth of hair, age and grade level, of the image that children held stereotypical views of scientists. Symington and Spurling realized that students draw represent what they perceived to be the public stereotype of a scientist instead of their own perception of a scientist, they revised DAST and named the Draw-a-Scientist- Test revised prompt (DAST-R) (1990). They added “Do a drawing which tells what you know about scientists and their work" section. Then they tested and compared students’ drawings given both sets of prompts. There were found the enough differences that the DAST prompt is critically examined for what it actually is asking the students to draw. Nowadays, the most common technique used to identify students' images of scientists is the Draw-A-Scientist Checklist (DAST-C) developed by Finson, Beaver, and Cramond (1995).

Meanwhile many researchers had been using DAST to determine various factors in students, including perceptions of scientists at the elementary through high school level, and perception of technology, career goals, and gender differences in 1980-90’s (Barman, 1996; 1997; 1999; Bodzin & Gehringer, 2001; Chambers, 1983; Chiang, & Guo, 1996; Finson, 2002; 2003; Finson, Beaver & Crammond, 1995; Finson, Pedersen & Thomas, 2006; Flick, 1990; Fort & Varney 1989; Fung, 2002; Huber & Burton, 1995; Jane, Fleer, & Gipps, 2007; Koren & Bar, 2009; Monhardt, 2003; Moseley & Norris, 1999; Newton & Newton, 1992; Schibeci & Sorenson, 1983; She, 1995; 1998; Song & Kim, 1999; Symington & Spurling, 1990; Türkmen, 2008) . Each of these studies has shown that students have interesting stereotypic images of scientists in their minds. The common finding was that scientist is white men, who wears a white coat and glasses, has weird smile, funny hair, and wild eyes, works alone in a laboratory or basement, and also are elderly or middle aged. This has been interpreted as showing strong confirmation of a stereotype of the scientist by many researchers (Chambers 1983; Finson, Beaver & Cramond 1995; Fort & Varney 1989; Huber & Burton 1995; Matkins, 1996; Newton & Newton, 1992; Parsons, 1997; Schibeci & Sorenson 1983). Variations of the DAST have been utilized in not only in the U.S and UK but even there were limited studies reporting the image of the scientist from other countries; such as Korea (e.g., Song & Kim, 1999), Taiwan (e.g., Chiang, & Guo, 1996; She, 1995-1998), Hong Kong (e.g., Fung, 2002), Turkey (e.g., Turkmen, 2008), Finland (e.g., Raty, 1997), Ireland (e.g., Maoldomhnaigh & Hunt, 1990), Israel (e.g., Rubin, & Cohen, 2003; Koren & Bar, 2009), those studies agreed that stereotypical images of the scientist seemed to be common worldwide.

Analyzing students’ images of scientists has crucial implications for understanding students’ perceptions of scientists and their role in society. This research perspective may affect students’ attitudes and interest in learning science, and may even affect whether or not they continue to study science and select jobs related science. According to Oakes (1990), students must choose the science “pipeline” early in their educational careers in order to achieve the training necessary for science careers. For that purpose they need to have consistent role models using proper teaching methods in science lessons. If a student cannot picture herself as a scientist or/and has stereotypical image of a scientist, s/he will not probably enter science careers (Monhardt, 2003; Finson, 2003).

Many western countries started to modify or reform their science education curriculum and program in the 1990’s, such as the US, UK, Turkey, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Greece, because the international research studies, such as TIMSS and PISA, showed that many modern country are not on the top list, even worse they are under the average and/or around average. In the Table 1 some countries TIMSS and PISA scores are the indicator to understand why these countries need to make revision their education system. These results pushed most of countries to evaluate their education system and reform it. Of course these types of international results do not definitively show that education system of one is better than other, but these results give us a clue to assume there is a problem in education system. Countries must think why our students could not succeed in these international research studies. In this obligation, the European Union (EU) and the US have influenced on many countries education policies not only in terms of resources but in enhancing the quality of countries education.

Table 1. TIMSS and PISA 8^th grade science results of participants

Country	1999 TIMSS (38participants)	2003 TIMSS (49participants)	2007 TIMSS (49participants)	2000 PISA (43participants)	2003 PISA(41participants)	2006 PISA (57participants)
Turkey	33. rank	-	31. rank	-	35. rank	46. rank
US	18. rank	10. rank	11. rank	15. rank	22. rank	36. rank
Belgium	12. rank	17. rank	-	18. rank	14. rank	24. rank
Netherland	6. rank	9. rank	-	-	8. rank	11. rank
Greece	-	-	-	26. rank	30. rank	35. rank
Czech Republic	8. rank	-	7. rank	12. rank	9. rank	17. rank
Bulgaria	17. rank	25. rank	24. rank	31. rank	-	43. rank
Poland	-	-	-	22. rank	19. rank	23. rank
Latvia	20. rank	19. rank	-	28. rank	25. rank	25. rank
Hungary	3. rank	8. rank	6. rank	16. rank	17. rank	14. rank
Austria	-	-	-	9. rank	23. rank	19. rank
Spain	-	-	-	20. rank	26. rank	27. rank
Malta	-	-	30. rank	-	-	-

EU Commission declared the Socrates and Erasmus education programs in the field of higher education end of the 1980’s. These programs aimed at higher education institutions and their students and staff in all members and candidates of EU to promote a European dimension of education and to improve its quality by encouraging co-operation between the participating countries, encourage access to education for everybody, and help people acquire recognized qualifications and skills. Moreover, the Bologna Process in 1998 (European Commission, 2000) aimed to reform countries higher education systems in order to create the European higher education area by making academic degree standards and quality assurance standards more comparable and compatible throughout Europe by 2010 for Europeans and for students and scholars from other continents. This process provides the framework and the motivation for all members of EU to adopt their courses to European structure.

The US National Science Education Standards (NSES), one of the more important reforms in science education, declared that science is for everyone and its purpose is to prepare students to be scientifically literate citizens (National Research Council, 1996). NSES presented content standards related to students’ understanding of the global interconnectedness between science, technology, and social perspectives. The standards indicated that science education programs preparing science teachers should be able to establish that their teacher candidates (pre-service teachers) should know, understand, and be able to demonstrate their ability to teach science in a way that prepares children to make decisions and take action on contemporary science- and technology-related issues of interest to the general society. Toward this objective, science instruction should value the students’ respective cultures, experiences, and circumstances in an effort to prepare them for citizenship in our global community (Pedersen, Turkmen, 2005).

The summary of reform efforts is students should be able to use scientific facts in their daily life and to achieve knowledge on the nature of scientific thinking and processes, the nature of science and technology, and science-technology-society interactions in the light of constructivist perspective.

This study is a cross cultural comparative analysis involving Turkish, the Americans, and some European countries’ elementary pre-service teachers. The purpose of this study is to identify elementary pre-service teachers’ image of scientist, where they receive and the most frequent way they learn about scientist, and investigated the similarities and differences between groups at images and sources of images. It is crucial to see whether elementary pre-service teachers held still stereotypic views of image of scientists and determine the possible reasons of that. Meanwhile, it will contribute to literature of stereotypic images problem of scientists for last three decades.