Empathetic Science
Come as you are and let’s build scientific knowledge together.
Hello! My name is Amanda Montague. Ever since I was a little girl, I have wanted to be a physicist but the culture I grew up in taught me that women should be stay-at-home moms. When I was in high school, I asked to take physics, but my counselor refused to enroll me in the class. Even though I met the requirements he told me physics was too hard and made me pick an easier class. I didn’t dare take physics again until my 3rd year of college, then 4 years later I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in physics. At the time of my graduation, pressure from my culture was weighing heavily on me and I felt compelled to walk away from my dream of being a physicist in order to become a stay-at-home mom.
The roadblocks I experienced in science due to the culture I grew up in were too much for me to overcome. I hope my work creates a pathway to science that doesn’t require women, or people from other diverse groups, to overcome their cultural heritage in order to do science. We need different cultural perspectives in science.
This work is dedicated to my younger self. The happy little girl with pigtails who wanted to be a physicist when she grew up.
You can read my thesis at https://cdm.weber.edu/digital/collection/SMT/id/450/rec/1
Empathetic Science is about recognizing scientific behavior in everyday life.
Recognition beliefs, such as how one's identity is accepted or rejected by others, had the largest influence on the formation of a STEM identity because it produces inequalities related to access, privilege, and resources.
Motivational factors like self-efficacy were found to have a profound impact on persistence towards earning a science degree. This suggests that perception of one’s ability to succeed in something had more weight in persistence than preparation.
Some individuals believe that they do not have control over how competent they are or can become in science. However, if they develop a reflective practice, it can establish them as a professional capable of mastering their own evolution. A reflective practices supports building new skills and knowledge to extend those that have been previously acquired.
My goal is to teach students to identify themselves as a person who does science by teaching them to recognize the behaviors of scientists so they can recognize those character traits in themselves.
The Framework
Introductory lessons introduce the character traits of scientists.
The character traits describe the behaviors scientists exhibit when engaging in the science and engineering practices. Each lesson teaches one character trait and is aligned with the correlating science and engineering practice. This program is designed to be an entry level curriculum and easy enough for a 12 year old babysitter to facilitate a learning experience with a child as young as three. The objective is to learn about and recognize the scientific behavior in yourself and others, as you engage in a science activity.
The educational game builds an informal science practice.
After participants understand and can recognized the character traits of scientists this game challenges them to recognize the character traits in every day activities. The game consists of an 8 sided dice and a symbol legend. Each side of the dice has a symbol that corresponds to a scientific character trait. The legend connects the symbol with the character trait and gives the definition of the character traits. Participants will roll the dice to learn the character trait they should practice and then they will practice recognizing that character trait while they are doing an activity of their choosing.
Build personally relevant knowledge through the cumulative project challenge.
The cumulative project challenges participants to use each of the character traits on a single topic that is important to them.