The evolution of the analysis of the draw-a-scientist test: What children’s illustrations of scientists tell us and why educators should listen

Abstract

Asking students to “draw a picture of a scientist” has been a popular method for those wishing to engage in Draw-A-Scientist Test research (Chambers, 1983; Chiang & Guo, 1996; Fung, 2002; Maoldomhnaigh & Hunt, 1988; Newton & Newton, 1992, 1998; Song, Pak, & Jang; 1992; She, 1998). While the majority of DAST research concentrated on students’ stereotypical images and their perceptions of scientists, the manner in which data derived from these studies have been analyzed has often been limited to such things as the reporting of frequencies and the computation of simple t-tests.