Greater participation of women and other underrepresented groups in science, engineering, and technology (SET) is needed to ensure a diverse and abundant workforce in these areas in the future. Developing the SET workforce will be increasingly more important in the next decade in the United States as advances in research and technology create additional demands for professionals in these areas and as more scientists and engineers retire from the SET workforce (National Science Board 2006).
Despite increases in the number of women receiving degrees in SET, the percentage of women in the SET workforce remains below their proportion in the U.S. population; women are still particularly underrepresented in several SET disciplines including physics, engineering, and computer science (Congressional Commission on the Advancement of Women and Minorities in Science Engineering and Technology Development, 2000; National Science Board, 2003, 2006). In addition, developing girls’ interest in SET is essential for promoting scientific literacy and knowledge among all in order to increase public understanding of important social issues related to SET such as global warming, AIDS, nanotechnology, cancer, biotechnology, and renewal energy.
Increasing the representation of women in SET requires substantial efforts to cultivate and support girls’ interest in science and engineering during their childhood and adolescent years in order to develop a desire to pursue SET careers in the future. Research indicates that by the age of 12 many girls have already lost interest in SET (American Association of University Women, 1998, 2000), and during the middle and high school years both girls’ and boys’ attitudes toward science decline (George, 2000). Promoting girls’ interest in science is important not only for strengthening the SET workforce, but also for promoting equity in society to ensure that all children have opportunities to fully develop their abilities in SET.
Media images of science and scientists in U.S. popular culture influence public attitudes toward science and scientists (National Science Board 2006). For many adults and children, television is the primary source of information about science and a purveyor of both fictional and real-life images of scientists. Research shows that adults are most likely to obtain information about science and scientists from television (National Science Board 2006). Research also indicates that television is a major source of information about scientists for middle school-aged children (Steinke et al., 2007), and adolescent girls report spending most of their leisure time watching television, an average of 1.67 hours a day (Cherney & London, 2006). In addition, middle-school students have reported that television programs are among the factors that have positively influenced their attitudes toward and interest in science (Gibson & Chase, 2002). The influence of popular television images of scientists on children’s perceptions of scientists may also then have a considerable impact on their future interest in SET careers.
While some studies have documented positive effects of media images of scientists on children’s attitudes toward science, other studies have noted negative effects of these images. One study found that although images from a popular science fiction film were more memorable to middle school students than hands on science experiences, the information provided by these popular images was a source of students’ misconceptions of scientific concepts (Barnett et al., 2006).
Another study found that images of scientists on popular children’s television programs promoted gender stereotypes of scientists and reinforced the view of science as a masculine domain (Steinke & Long, 1996). Another study found that middle school-aged boys who reported the media as being important in their lives had more negative views towards women in science (Steinke et al., 2007). As these studies suggest, research on the portrayals of scientist characters on television merits closer examination because it can help researchers better understand how these images may shape children’s and adolescents’ attitudes toward science and interest in science careers.
