School News
David Archer. BSCB Schools Liason Officer
ASE Meeting 2001
The BSCB will
be supporting a lecture at the Centenary Annual Meeting of The Association
for Science Education to be held at the University of Surrey from 4 —6
January 2001. The BSCB lecture will be presented at 2.00 pm on Friday
5 January in the Griffiths
Lecture Theatre.
Paul Martin has
kindly agreed to give a lecture entitled ‘Wound Healing: Lessons
from Embryos’. Synopsis: Embryos heal wounds very rapidly and efficiently
and without leaving a scar. Studying how they do this can tell us as much
about the natural tissue movements of embryogenesis as well as suggesting
ways in which we might make adult tissues repair more efficiently. We
are using various animal models (chick, mouse, fish and fly) in order
to dissect out the signals that activate wound repair mechanisms and to
analyse the cell behaviours that underlie closure of a wound.
Notes from
the school bag
Teachers attending
the Association for Science Education Annual Meeting in January were told
that studying biology at A-level had a dramatic input with regard to their
attitude to genetic engineering with the students being much more supportive
of genetic engineering than students taking other subjects. The study
by John Raffen of the School of Education, University of Cambridge also
found that more than 66% of male British students but only 30% of British
female students supported transferring cancer genes to mice in order to
study disease.
A Department for
Education and Employment analysis of GCSE and A level results for 1997/98
indicated that high scoring GCSE students who chose to take science subjects
were likely to obtain better grades than high scoring students who studied
arts subjects. Interestingly the high-flyers who studied a combination
of science and arts subjects at ‘A’ level obtained half a grade
less in each A level than those high-flyers who studied either all sciences
or all arts subjects.
Drawn to
a male concept
Despite the age
of ‘girl power’ - and I apologise if you dislike this term -
it seems that most girls over the age of six associate the concept of
‘scientist’ with a male figure. This is one of several findings
from research carried out by L and D Newton of the Department of Education,
University of Newcastle. In a ‘Draw-a-Scientist’ test they gave
to 1143 pupils between ages of 4+ to 11+ from 80 schools in England, they
found that up to the age of six girls drew scientists as predominately
as female figures. After about the age of six, girls switched their concept
to male figures.
Boys of all ages
drew predominately male figures. By 11 years of age, over 80% of scientists
drawn by both girls and boys were shown as male figures. As children became
older, they increasingly gave their scientists beards and, by eleven,
about one-third of boys and two-thirds of girls depicted their scientists
as bald or balding. Over half the 11 year olds of both sexes drew their
scientists wearing white coats and many wearing spectacles (hopefully
safety specs!). Results from a ‘Draw-a-Person’ test with a sample
size of 200 showed that boys draw predominately male figures and girls
female figures.
Many pupils put
backgrounds in their drawings. Seventy-five percent of these were ‘chemical’
in style, with more girls depicting chemical scenes than boys — who
depicted ideas from space, force, energy and the Earth.
Various attempts
have been made to change the image of science and scientists in older
children. These have included visits to laboratories and scientists visiting
schools. In general such activities are thought to have met with little
success from the point of view of altering the concept of scientist.
In a study of
teenagers and role models researchers Bromwick and Swallow at the University
of Lincolnshire and Humberside found that 75% of boys in their sample
and 52% of the girls admired famous males. Ten percent of the sample of
boys held females in high standing. Interestingly the researchers noted
that a significant number of both boys and girls in the sample refused
to be associated with hero worship.
In
a quick and completely uncontrolled test one of the membership secretary’s
daughters was asked to draw a scientist. The result was two scientists,
though interestingly the one with a microscope was female. Maybe a step
in the right direction? Thanks to Tania for the picture. |
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BSCB Organization 
