ABSTRACT

The shortage of students in STEM (Science-Technology-Engineering-Mathematics) areas is a global concern and one of the reasons why students do not want to pursue STEM careers is the unenthusiastic image that they have about STEM areas. This study aims to examine the images that 135 Portuguese elementary students (7-12 years old) have about STEM professionals. Data collection was performed using a draw-and-write instrument: the students were asked to draw someone that works in each STEM area, and to answer two questions: ‘Where does that person work?’ and ‘What does that person do?’. Checklists, based on instruments previously described in the literature, were developed for each STEM discipline. A descriptive analysis of the results was made, and the statistically significant differences between male and female students’ drawings were evaluated. The results show that students still retain stereotypical images of STEM professionals and have a lack of perception about the appearance and work that STEM professionals do. In conclusion, there is a demand for changes in teaching practices to change the erroneous and unrealistic impressions that students may have about STEM areas.

摘要

STEM（科学-技术-工程-数学）领域的学生短缺是全球关注的问题，学生不想从事 STEM 职业的原因之一是他们对 STEM 领域的印象不热。本研究旨在检验 135 名葡萄牙小学生（7-12 岁）对 STEM 专业人士的印象。数据收集是使用绘图和书写工具进行的：学生们被要求画出在每个 STEM 领域工作的人，并回答两个问题：“那个人在哪里工作？” 和“那个人做什么？”。为每个 STEM 学科开发了基于文献中先前描述的工具的清单。对结果进行了描述性分析，并评估了男女学生绘画之间的统计显着差异。结果表明，学生仍然保留着对 STEM 专业人士的刻板印象，并且对 STEM 专业人士的外表和工作缺乏认知。总之，需要改变教学实践，以改变学生对 STEM 领域可能存在的错误和不切实际的印象。