Representations of scientists in high school biology textbooks.

ABSTRACT: High school students’ images of scientists are reported as being stereotypic and narrow. We investigated in this study the potential of science textbooks to mediate the emergence of such images. We selected evidence for how ten noted scientists are represented in four widely used high school biology textbooks providing us with 96 texts and 106 inscriptions. Drawing on semiotic and cultural-historical activity theoretical frameworks, we conducted two analyses. A coarse-grained, quantitative analysis of the prevalence and structure of these representations exhibited a strong bias towards particular scientists’ representations and particular types of texts and inscriptions therein, suggesting a domain- specific rhetorical structure. A fine-grained, qualitative analysis of scientists’ representations revealed that high school biology textbooks represent: (a) objects of scientific practice as projected or anticipated independently from human activity; (b) scientists’ individual actions aiming at the creation of nontangible tools and rules by means of observation, modification, or manipulation of given, tangible objects; (c) scientific practice as isolated due to which the simultaneous belonging to different practices hardly determines the goals of scientists’ actions; and (d) scientists as part of a small community of mainly other scientists who subsequently determine each other’s individual actions. The implications of these outcomes are discussed