CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Currently popular biographies of famous scientists may demotivate — rather than inspire — children's desire to study or pursue careers in science, according to researchers who studied the messages in 422 bestselling children's books. Study leader Jessica Gladstone , a professor of educational psychology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, said that while parents and educators often use these books to try to spark children's interest in science through exposure to role models, their narratives tend not to support this goal.
"The books often portray scientists and their paths to success in ways that risk alienating young readers, particularly girls, racial/ethnic minority children and those who do not view themselves as interested in science," Gladstone said.
Gabrielle Applebaum, a research assistant at the time of the study, and psychology professor Andrei Cimpian , both of New York University, were co-authors of the study. The team published its findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"Biographies of scientists are an enormously popular genre — millions of children are reading these books or having them read to them," Cimpian said. "They're typically written to inspire, but what counts as inspirational has been left up to each author's intuitions. What actually are these books suggesting to kids about success in science? That's what we wanted to find out."
Gladstone said the analysis was based on mindset theory, which posits that beliefs about one's own abilities shape one's motivation, learning and behavior. According to this theory, people operate under either of two frameworks: a fixed mindset — beliefs that intelligence and talent are innate, unchangeable traits — or a growth mindset, believing that one's skills and intelligence are malleable and can be honed through mentorship, effective strategies and hard work.
Since the general public perceives success in certain science disciplines — such as computer science, engineering and physics — as being the result of fixed, innate abilities, the team also examined whether there were discrepancies among the fields in these books' messaging. Fields perceived this way also happen to have the greatest gender and racial/ethnic disparities in representation, they wrote.
The study sample contained 422 of the top 500 bestselling children's biographies on Amazon. Focusing on bestsellers ensured that the analysis captured the messages children are most likely to encounter — the books that reach the widest audiences in homes, classrooms and libraries. These books featured 655 individual scientists, when duplicate mentions were not counted. With regard to gender, 59% were male and 41% were female. The racial/ethnic representation was 76% white and 24% other races/ethnicities.
A significant number of the books in the sample did not address the protagonists' scientific interest or ability at all, the team found — which they said were missed opportunities to convey motivationally helpful messages.
In the biographies that did explore these factors, the authors were equally likely to portray scientists' abilities as inborn, or fixed, as they were to portray them as developing over time. However, the protagonists' scientific interest was overwhelmingly described as an innate or as an early developing characteristic, the team found.
"Physics, engineering and computer science are some of the fields where people tend to believe that in order to be successful, you must have an innate talent — and that's actually what we found reflected in these children's stories," Gladstone said. "Stories suggesting that these abilities are innate and unchangeable cultivate perceptions that only a select few people are 'born to do science,' conveying a sense of exclusivity that can undermine children's motivation, while growth portrayals may make these figures relatable and their paths accessible."
Stereotypes were also found in the biographies of female scientists, which disproportionately focused on women's levels of effort compared with those about male scientists — a disparity that emerged despite adjusting for scientific domain (e.g., physics, engineering and computer science versus all other fields). This is a problem because framing women's success as the byproduct of hard work implies that their success in science comes at a higher cost compared with their male peers, the researchers wrote. No links were found between scientists' race/ethnicity and effort narratives, however.
To explore whether biographers may have chosen this type of framing to emphasize that women scientists encountered more barriers, the team identified three types of obstacles — failure-related (for example, failed experiments), social (such as unsupportive family members or teachers) and structural (for example, sexism) — and these obstacles' relationship with effort narratives. In addition, the researchers examined whether effort portrayals were associated with the authors' gender. While all three types of obstacles were associated with effort narratives, the gender disparity in writers' use of these stereotypes remained significant even after adjusting for these obstacles and for the writers' gender, according to the study.
Gladstone suggested that biographers explore methods for telling scientists' personal stories that are truthful as well as inspirational for children. "Motivation science would say that the scientists should be described in ways that feel relatable to kids, in ways that make their achievements feel like others can reach that level of success and that it is not so far out of the realm of possibility that they could get there. Books should frame messages around the idea that you can get better at math and science by practicing it, that failure is okay and expected and that you can build by learning from those mistakes."
"Books' portrayals of success as a matter of fixed ability in high-demand fields that already have significant gender and racial/ethnic disparities may be demotivating for some students — particularly girls and children of color — and reinforce the very inequities that we are trying to combat," she said.
As an example, Gladstone referred to a book about the English mathematician and writer Ada Lovelace that described her as filling her journal with mathematical equations at age 3. "Children are coloring and learning about numbers at age 3. They are not doing what Ada Lovelace was allegedly doing, but that doesn't mean they can't become excellent scientists," Gladstone said. "By contrast, a biography of astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson mentioned his interests in ballet and boxing. This author showed a scientist who tried out other things and gradually developed an interest in science rather than being born with an interest in it."
This research was supported in part by a seed grant from New York University's Institute of Human Development and Social Change and by funds from the National Science Foundation and the Institute of Education Sciences.
