THE SCIENCE COUNCIL7 FEBRUARY 2012

Gender and Science Aspirations: evidence from the ASPIRES ProjectProf. Louise Archer, King’s College London

WHY STUDY CHILDREN’S SCIENCE ASPIRATIONS?

• Age 10-14 as ‘critical period’ for forming views of science and science aspirations

• Importance of science aspirations for predicting future participation (Tai et al 2006)

TREATMENT OF ASPIRATIONS

• Not predictive but socially indicative• Aspirations as socially embedded• Aspirations and ‘identity work’• Study of aspirations can illuminate inequalities

METHODOLOGY

• 5 year, longitudinal ESRC funded project, part of TISME• Mixed methods• 3 tracking phases

• Y6: age 10/11• Y8: age 12/13• Y9: age 13/14

• Phase 1 Survey• 9,319 Y6 pupils, 279 primary schools, England

• Phase 1 interviews• 170 interviews (92 children, 78 parents, 11 schools)

• Intervention

COMPLEXITY OF ASPIRATIONS

• Complex relationship between enjoyment, achievement, engagement and participation

• Identities and inequalities are key

LIKING, VALUING & ‘DOING’ DOES NOT EQUAL ‘BEING’

Phase 1 survey: 10/11 year old children

0102030405060708090

I learn interesting things in science

Parents think science is important

Scientists make a

difference in world

Science activities

outside school

Would like to become a scientist

% Strongly/ agree

SCIENCE ASPIRATIONS AGE 10/11

• From 9,000+ survey responses:• Majority are ‘interested, but ...’• 648 ‘uninterested in science’ (no gender

difference)• 251 ‘science keen’ (63% boys, 37% girls)• ‘Science keen’ are predominantly middle-class,

white and/or South Asian (esp. among girls)

GENDER: WHICH GIRLS ASPIRE TO SCIENCE CAREERS AGED 10/11?

• Survey (N=9,319)• 251 ‘science keen’ children

• 92 girls, 159 boys

• Interviewees (N=92)• 55 girls (17 science/ 13* science-related; 25 not

science)• 37 boys (11 science keen)

• Predominantly middle-class, White and/or South Asian

WHY ARE SCIENCE ASPIRATIONS LARGELY ONLY ‘THINKABLE’ FOR CERTAIN GIRLS?

• Science careers as ‘middle-class’• Uneven distribution of science capital

• Science careers as ‘masculine’• Science as not caring/ nurturing• Science as not girly/ feminine• Interplay of ‘science as clever’ and gender

• Science careers as ‘White’• Science as unthinkable for some ME groups• Pragmatic cultural discourses (medicine)

SCIENCE AS MIDDLE-CLASS: ‘SCIENCE CAPITAL’

• Science capital: science-related qualifications, knowledge, interest, literacy and contacts

• Link between family science capital and child science aspirations

• Socially uneven spread of science capital -disproportionate middle-class possession

• Capital as important for growth and nurturing of science aspirations (visible/ practical/ valuing)

SCIENCE AS MIDDLE-CLASS: SCIENCE CAPITAL

• Lack of awareness of diversity of careers from science: “Scientist, Science Teacher, Doctor”

INTERACTION OF FAMILY HABITUS AND SCIENCE CAPITAL

• Middle-class better at generating capital and compensating where lack of science capital

• Absent/ peripheral in many w/c and ME families“I’ve never asked them about science” (Lucy) “I don’t think they really like

subjects” (Louise), white working-class girls“I suppose in everyday life you don’t really get that much to do with

science” (Jane2, white working-class mother)

SCIENCE AS MASCULINE: ‘FOR BOYS’

SCIENCE AS MASCULINE

• Science careers popularly recognised as masculine (parents and children)• ‘It’s always seen as men, isn’t it? But geeky men –

sorry!” (Shelley, mother)

• Science as ‘unthinkable’ for many working-class and some ME girls• “Its not very girly …. Its not a very sexy job, its not

glamorous’ (Ella, mother)• “I don’t know if a lab coat would suit her” (SallyAnn,

mother

GIRLS’ ASPIRATIONS

• Science/related aspirations (17+5):• ‘Science Femininity’ (n=6)• ‘Bluestocking Femininity’ (n=16)

• Non-science related aspirations (25 girls):• ‘Nurturing’ jobs (29%)• Glamour / girly jobs (29%)• Active/ physical jobs (23%)• Other professional (10%)• Business (4%)

SCIENCE AS MASCULINE: ‘NOT CARING’• Girls’ preference for nurturing/ ‘caring’ jobs (n=15)

• “I like it [teaching] because you’re teaching someone else education and that’s a good thing and when someone needs help you’re teaching them what they need for when they grow up” (Mary, Pakistani, working-class)

• “Because I love animals and I don’t want to harm them” (Flower, Eastern European, working-class)

• Fit with dominant discourses of femininity• Family role models and reinforcement/support

• “My mum and dad ... They go ‘oh you’re so good with babies” (Charlie)

• “They think I’d be great with children because I help my sister when she’s sad and I like play with her a lot” (Celina)

SCIENCE AS MASCULINE: ‘NOT GIRLY’

• Girls’ preference for ‘girly’/‘glamour’ jobs (n=14)• 65% of survey agree ‘being famous’ is very/ fairly

important• Fit with constructions of desirable femininity/

‘girling’• “Actually I don’t know what I’d like to be if I didn’t get into

show business. I’d have to like figure it out ... I’m obsessed with Cheryl Cole at the moment” (Louise)

• “I’d like to be either a hairdresser or, um, like someone who works with children, you know like a teacher. I just really like making people’s hair and I enjoy doing my own hair and I like to do my mum’s” (Danielle)

SCIENCE VS. GIRLING: AN EXAMPLE CASE

Danielle (white, lower m/c, Midlands school)• Mother, supportive of science. Father, mechanical engineer• Academically ‘middling’:

“I think she’s more of a middle of the range child. There’s nothing really that she excels in” (Sandra, mother)

• Danielle enjoys science:“I’m not being a kiss-up but my favourite lesson is actually science “ (Danielle)

EXAMPLE CASE: DANIELLE (CONT’D)

“Girls are more interested in fashion usually and things with peers. You know and it seems to be a bit geeky to be into science” I said [to Danielle] so how do you feel about science? And she said it’s really interesting, I love it, but don’t only geeks do it? ... and this is why I wanted to get away a bit from her thinking that science is only for people I don’t know who ... because she’s got this impression that only people who don’t have a life do science, which is terrible. ... She said oh, you have to be really clever [to study science], you have to be a geek... She says I’m not clever enough to be good at science”.

“I said why can’t you do science? She [Danielle] said well, oh no it’s a boy thing. And I said it’s not. They had [science club] at school. It’s an after school club on Monday and she said I’m not going because it’s all boys. You can see what I mean when you’re fighting against it aren’t you? I said well you should at least go along and see if you enjoy it. It’s all these experiments and she said oh, it’s fun, we did all this ... She went twice and then she stopped going because it was all boys and she had no girls to talk to” (Sandra, mother of Danielle)

SCIENCE AS MIDDLE-CLASS: ‘CLEVER’

• Science as linked to ‘cleverness’• E.g. Over 81% survey strongly/ agree that ‘scientists are brainy’

• Science keen girls and boys are high achievers• Peers who are ‘really into science’ also seen as

clever• Those who see self as ‘not brainy’ learn that

science careers are ‘not for me’• ‘Cleverness’ as classed, gendered, racialised

discourse

SCIENCE AS MIDDLE-CLASS: ‘CLEVER’

“Well the clever ones are [into science]. Like the ones that are going to grammar school” (Louise, white, working-class girl)

“My dad, especially, he thinks Science is cool cos he used to study Science .... [but] most scientists wear glasses and I don’t want to wear glasses and they’re a bit brainy and I don’t want to be brainy” (Victoria2, white, working-class, Eastern European girl)

MAKING SCIENCE ASPIRATIONS ‘THINKABLE’

• The Feminine Scientist (6/22 girls)• Doing science through ‘balancing’ with middle-class

girling• Attractiveness, fashion, sport, popular music

“They’re all into music and pop stars and things like that – sort of girlie stuff” Eva, mother)

THE IMPORTANCE OF BALANCE

“Hailey’s got quite a strong creative streak, so its not just sort of scientific. That’s a thing that I’ve encouraged ... I think she seems very happy, quite outgoing, very chatty. So not at all sciencey nerdy .. Very interested in fashion and those sorts of things, which seems a little bit perhaps more balanced than I was... I just think that its quite nice that she’s quite normal as well ... I’m really pleased that she likes clothes and can put together a good outfit” (Elizabeth, mother).

BUT - PRECARIOUS IDENTITIES?

• Managing femininity and cleverness• ‘Being an acceptable girl is not in harmony with being a

successful academic achiever’ (Skelton et al., 2010)

• Threats from the ‘chilly climate’ in post-16 science• “If she can stick with it and not get a really bad

experience ...I hope that will stand her in good stead to go into perhaps a more male dominated kind of area” (Elizabeth, mother)

• “She [female scientist friend] did tell me its all male and geeky though and she had to get out” (Jane1, mother)

THE BLUESTOCKING SCIENTIST

• 16/22 girls (see also Renold’s (2005) square girls)• Emphasis on cleverness/ academic and ‘not girly’

• “I like studying” (PJ)• “I’m very interested in science and science lessons at

school and I get high grades in my science test” (Preeti)• “We get together to do homework” (Chloe)• “Nice girls”, “good girls” (parents)

• More ‘precise’ science aspirations• Interplay with South Asian family cultural

discourses

BLUESTOCKING IDENTITY RISKS

• Threatened slippage into ‘geek’• Davina (‘clever’ but ‘not so popular’)

• Limits of intelligibility for middle-class femininity• “I would be concerned about one, potentially the income side of it

and secondly, what sort of person you become and what sort of people you meet and mix with if you’re stuck in a laboratory a lot” (Dawkins, father)

• Lack of known women in science, little diversity of representations of femininity• Girls cite looking up to: Einstein, Galileo, Bill Oddie,

David Attenborough

KEY MESSAGES

• Even though most children age 10/11 like science, very few aspire to science careers

• ‘Science keen’ are more likely to be boys than girls• Interplays of class, gender and ‘race’ mean science careers are

‘unthinkable’ for many girls (not conceivable or achievable)• Science careers tend to be seen as unusual, exclusive (white, male,

middle-class: ‘masculine’ and ‘clever’ associations particularly problematic for many girls)

• Science aspirations require considerable identity work for girls –narrow discursive spaces, precarious

• Challenges for science education and wider STEM cultures to open up vision of ‘science for all’

• Work across the ‘triangle’ of teachers, children and families to redistribute capital