Written by Abigail Calimaran
Representation in Biology Textbooks: Who is Represented in Our Schools’ Curricula and Why Representation in STEM Fields Should Be Taught
Most of my science teachers in high school didn’t go into much detail about the history behind the theories we studied in class. There would be a name drop or two, especially if a scientist had someone named after him or her, but otherwise, we wouldn’t be told to memorize histories. I was relieved. I’ve never been much of a history person, preferring instead to focus on the theories that affect the word today rather than the people in the past who discovered them.
However, I had a biology teacher in tenth grade when I was fifteen years old, and she taught me about Rosalind Franklin. For those unfamiliar with her story, her work was the foundation of Watson and Crick’s discovery of the structure of DNA. It was a photo taken by her that led to the final step. Watson and Crick get the Nobel Prize. Franklin gets forgotten.
I was lucky to have teachers who taught me that a scientist can be anyone, even if some face more hardships about it than others. Others, I know, are not so lucky.
Textbooks are important because they introduce scientific discoveries and the scientists behind them, who are potential role models to any student considering a career in science. Their influence in education creates an “opportunity to shape students’ existing stereotypes of who scientists are, have been, and can be.” A lack of representation has been linked to a decline in the self-esteem of marginalized students and can even lead to imposter syndrome.
In this study, the researchers sought to examine the proportionality of representation in scientists’ citations in introductory biology textbooks and tenured professors. From seven textbooks, 1107 citations of scientists were pulled and analyzed for binary gender and ethnicity. These results were compared to the number of tenured professors from 1973 to 2010.
In the 21st century, the number of citations from female scientists increased from 10% to 20%. The increase in mentions of scientists of color was less, rising from 3% to 8%. White women and Asian men saw the greatest increase in citations whereas the number of mentions of Asian and Black women and all Hispanics saw little to no change. According to the study, it will take hundreds of years for those numbers to match the demographic makeup of the biology student body and over a thousand years to match the demographic of the world’s population.
While these increases in representation are encouraging, it is not enough. Teachers out to consciously introduce students to scientists who are female, people of color, or otherwise marginalized.
Source:
Wood, Sara et al. “A scientist like me: demographic analysis of biology textbooks reveals both progress and long-term lags.” Proceedings. Biological sciences vol. 287,1929 (2020): 20200877. doi:10.1098/rspb.2020.0877