How Linguistic and Visual Cues Presented in a Science Storybook Impact Children’s Science Outcomes

• In Event: Tracing the Source of Gender Disparities in STEM: Children’s Macro- and Micro-level Sociocultural Contexts

Abstract

There continues to be a higher percentage of white men than any other group in STEM fields (NSF, 2021). One way to understand the roots of the gender gap in STEM is to consider messages that children receive about who belongs in STEM and who does not. Prior work has shown that five- to seven-year-old children’s persistence on a science task, science interest, and science self-efficacy increased when exposed to “action-based” language (e.g., “Let’s do science”) than when exposed to “identity-based” language (e.g., “Let’s be scientists”; Rhodes et al., 2019; Lei et al., 2019). One reason that children, and especially girls, may be impacted by subtle differences in how a science activity is presented is because they lack a sense of belonging in STEM. Indeed, research has shown that merely belonging to a task-relevant social group can increase motivation and persistence on a task (Master et al., 2017; Master, 2021).

In the current study, we exposed five- to seven-year-old children (N = 135, 70 female, Mage = 77 months) to one of four science storybook that differed based on language type (action-based versus identity-based) and image type (racially and gender diverse or homogeneous characters). After reading the storybook, the experimenter asked children related questions, including their science interest (“How much would you want to be a scientist/do science”) and self-efficacy (“How good do you think you would be as a scientist/at doing science”) on a Likert-type scale. Finally, children were asked to play a science game in which they guessed whether objects would sink or float in water. The game was rigged such that all children failed on the first trial; we measured how many trials children persisted after this failure.

Findings indicate that children’s science interest did not differ by language type, image type, age, or gender. Children’s feelings of science self-efficacy were significantly greater in the action-based language conditions than in the identity-based language conditions (β = 1.18, SE = 0.49, p = 0.02). For the persistence task, we found no differences by language type, image type, or age. However, survival analysis showed that girls were marginally significantly more likely to persist at the science task than boys and that the more accurate children were at the task, the fewer trials they persisted (β = 0.38, SE = 0.20, p = 0.055; β = -1.20, SE = 0.44, p < 0.01). There were no interaction effects between language type and image type across these measures (β = -0.81, SE = 0.66; p > 0.05; β = 1.00, SE = 0.68; p > 0.05; β = 0.04, SE = 0.37; p > 0.05).

Taken together, these findings provide support for the idea that a subtle shift in language, moving from the use of action-based to identity-based language in a storybook, can increase five- to seven-year-old children’s feelings of science self-efficacy. A follow up study is in progress investigating the possibility that merely reading a science storybook increased girls’ sense of belonging in STEM, leading to increased persistence.

Authors

• Sona Kumar, Boston University
  Presenting Author

• Cerelia Liu

• Kathleen H. Corriveau, Boston University