TITLE The Importance of Context in Creating Change: The Case of a Reform-Minded Biology Department.

This study explored how science and scientists were produced and reproduced within the setting of a university biology department. Building upon recent work in anthropology of education and feminist science studies, the study examined the reflexive questions of whether increased women's representation in science changes science practice and whether changing science practice increases women's representation in science. The methodology was designed to examine both the contextual values and the constitutive values of science in the training of scientists. Results showed some ways in which these values were shifting as more women assumed places of leadership within the department. At the same time, in other ways, the presence of women did not seem to cause the types of changes that feminist science studies have hypothesized. In terms of changing practices leading to changing representation, some evidence was found to support this assertion and other evidence that this might not always be the case. These findings can be interpreted through the anthropological perspective of practice theory in which individuals are seen as exerting agency both within and against institutional structures. (Contains 47 references.) (.PVD) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document