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IMPACT OF TEXTBOOK IMAGES: New research suggests that using more images of female scientists in textbooks may boost school girls' performance in science classes. (Photos.com)
Much has been written about the power that images, such as those seen on television and in films, can have on shaping behavior and perceptions in children. Little is known, however, about how the proportion of male and female images in science textbooks can affect school children’s performance.
A small exploratory study led by doctoral student Jessica Good of Rutgers University found that part of the reason boys tend to do better than girls in science classes may be because the majority of textbooks used in our nation’s schools show mostly images of male scientists. Boosting girls’ motivation and achievement in science could involve steps as simple as putting more images of female role models in science textbooks, the researchers suggest.
The study was published this spring in the Journal of Social Psychology.
In conducting their study, Good and her team gave a short chemistry exam to 81 local ninth and tenth graders. After reading three pages of a chemistry text, students took the test on the material. All the texts were the same, but they were illustrated differently.
One-third of the test-takers saw pictures in which every scientist was a man. Another group of students saw only women scientists in the illustrations, while a third group had text with pictures of both male and female chemists.
The researchers found that not only did girls who read the text containing all-women scientists score better than their female student counterparts who got other versions, but they also scored higher than boys in the study.
Equally interesting, the study found that the usual gaps in test scores between girls and boys reappeared when male-only scientists’ images were used. And when text showed equal numbers of men and women images, Good and colleagues found that this had no significant impact on the usual gender gap in science test scores.
Because of the study’s small sample size and other factors, Good and colleagues caution that more research is needed and that it is unrealistic to think the gender gap in science can be remedied merely through the choice of textbook images. However, they conclude “providing students with diverse role models within textbook images” may be a step in the right direction.
The common and predominant appearance of male scientist images in textbooks is an example of a phenomenon that has come to be known among researchers in social psychology and education as “stereotype threat.” It was first described by researchers at Stanford University in California in the mid-1990s, and can adversely affect ethnic minorities as well as females.
Stereotype threat occurs when a test-taker, from information on or about the test, is freshly reminded of a stereotype that reflects negatively on his or her abilities in the subject matter at hand. Studies have found that stereotype threats push down the test-taker’s score, in the same direction the stereotype would predict.
As such, a predominance of male scientist images in science textbooks may reinforce traditional notions that girls are not as good as boys in science, which then lead to results in line with those ideas, say Good and colleagues.
However, as the Good study suggests, past research—such as work conducted by D.M. Marx and P.A. Goff of the University of Groningen, The Netherlands—confirms that the negative effects of stereotype threat can be dramatically mitigated when positive role models (such as exposure to persons from a like-gender or ethnic background) are introduced.
Good and colleagues conclude: “Research should investigate the influence of diverse role models presented in textbooks as a way of improving performance of multiple stereotyped groups, not just women.”
They add that “although eliminating gender bias in textbooks will most likely not eradicate the gender gap in science interest and achievement, it will begin to chip away at an ever crumbling foundation.”
Michael Dabney, a former bioscience communicator at the University of California, San Diego, is a freelance writer based in Chula Vista, Calif., specializing in science and education.
