Nurturing students’ career interest in STEM and recruiting talents into STEM fields is a major goal in STEM education. To achieve this, it is important to know how students perceive STEM careers. Existing studies show that students hold inadequate and stereotypical understanding of scientists and engineers (Fralick, Kearn, Thompson, & Lyons, 2009; Karaçam, 2016; Lachapelle, Phadnis, Hertel, & Cunningham, 2012) and that the stereotypes are culture-related (Farland-Smith, 2009). This study has two goals: 1) to examine students’ understanding of scientists, engineers and technologists, including perception of the diversity of these careers and use of STEM in their work. 2) to explore whether students can relate their experience in a STEM project with their understanding of STEM careers. Surveys were collected from participants (4th to 6th graders) in an informal STEM project exhibition and another sample of ordinary students of 4th to 6th graders in Hong Kong. Survey used in this study was made up of drawing tasks and open-ended questions regarding scientists, engineers and technologists. The conducted follow-up interviews further examined whether students could relate their experiences in the STEM projects to the work of STEM careers.

 

Ms. Luo Tian received her B.Sc. in Bioscience and M.Ed. Biological Education in Beijing Normal University. She is now a Ph.D. student in the Department of Science and Environmental Studies at The Education University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include STEM education and teaching and learning in biology.