Chapter 6: Using Visual Data to Investigate Influences on Preservice Teachers’ Attitudes About Scientists

Sometimes, knowing something about the experiences people have had serves to help us more clearly understand their present state of thinking and conceptual development. This translates logically to assume that preservice teachers’ prior science experiences (including high school, university, and informal science experiences) should have some impact on their perceptions of scientists. The attitudes about science and scientists that teachers bring with them to the classroom impact their students’ perceptions of science. The way science is portrayed by the general public and in the media is often stereotypical and rather limited. In particular, scientists are often represented as having a restricted set of characteristics, a caricature which distorts and limits the boundaries of what might be envisioned as a person engaged in science. This caricature can also be extended to the activities that scientists are pictured to employ. Adopting a more realistic image of both scientists and the activities that comprise the science that scientists engage in is an important goal for science education. National, state, and provincial curriculum documents frequently identify scientific literacy (i.e., science related knowledge, skills, and attitudes) and an understanding of the processes that are involved in science as major goals (e.g., BC Ministry of Education, 2005; National Research Council, 1996).