Children Lose Confidence in Their Potential to “Be Scientists”, but not in Their Capacity to “Do Science”

• In Event: 1-080 - Do People Like Me Belong in STEM? Social Cognitive Influences on Children’s STEM Motivation

Integrative Statement

Over the course of middle childhood, children’s interest and beliefs about their own capacities for success in science often decline. This pernicious decline is especially evident among underrepresented groups, including girls, members of some racial and ethnic minorities, and children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. The present research (N = 306 ages 6-11) examined whether subtle linguistic cues can buffer against these problematic declines.

We considered that children are likely to interpret the use of category labels (e.g., “Come be a scientist!”) and generic descriptions (e.g., “Scientists discover new things about the world”)—forms of language that are commonly used in conversations with children about science (Rhodes & Leslie, 2017)—as meaning that scientists are a distinct kind of person, and that some people inherently have the potential to become scientists and some do not. Such language could be problematic by suggesting that only certain kinds of people can succeed in science. Instead, we hypothesized that describing science in terms of actions (“Let’s do science! Doing science means exploring the world!”) would have beneficial consequences for the development of children’s attitudes and beliefs about science.

Longitudinal analyses (N = 212, drawn from racially, ethnically, and economically diverse public schools, M age at time 1 = 7.9 years; tested three times across the course of a school year) revealed that children asked to “do science” were more interested in science across time than children asked to “be scientists” (see Figure 1), and that science self-efficacy declined across the course of the year for children in the identity-focused condition, but not for children in the action condition (see Figure 2). We also replicated these findings in a cross-sectional comparison with older children (including an additional 94 children tested at wave 2 only, M age = 10.26). These effects were partially mediated by the inclusivity of children’s science representations. Implications for educational practice and for addressing disparities related to gender, race, ethnicity, and economic status will be discussed.

Authors

• Marjorie Rhodes, New York University
  Presenting Author

• Ryan Lei, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Emily Green, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sarah-Jane Leslie, Princeton University
  Non-Presenting Author