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Don Barrie  

What new insight did you get from the resources on science identity?

I really liked the geoscientist spotlight resources provided as part of this week’s activity. These spotlights were helpful, since it’s clear that geoscience as a discipline is not as diverse as it could be:

https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/how-can-we-fix-the-lack-of-dive...

An insight I gained from reviewing the geoscientist profiles is that it wouldn’t be too difficult to highlight some of these profiles in my physical geology course. Unfortunately, most modern geology textbooks do a poor job of this, so I’m gratified to learn that someone has taken the trouble to highlight the diversity that does exist among geoscientists. I also appreciated that in this activity, we learned that communicating diversity is important, not as an end in itself, but as a recruitment and engagement tool. I was interested to learn that the ability to see oneself as a scientist is one of the most important predictors of whether someone will work in a scientific field after finishing school.

The resources on science identity also reminded me that self-disclosure can be an important tool in helping my students to see themselves as practitioners of science. For example, lately I’ve started sharing with my students how much I struggled with math, chemistry, and physics during my undergraduate years. I’ve had more than one student thank me for sharing this. They tell me it’s encouraging for them to learn that even professors struggle, academically, sometimes. My hope is that such self -disclosure might help my students avoid the misguided stereotype of scientists as super smart, gifted people who don’t struggle, academically.

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Some of the resources on grit and fixed vs. growth mindset might also help with helping students see that being a scientist is something you become through effort and growth. Carol Ormand wrote a nice blog post on this which has many great resources: https://serc.carleton.edu/sage2yc/musings/mindset.html . Also, Bryn Bedford at Lone Star, one of the peer leaders has done a good bit of work with this and it might be helpful to reach out to her and see what she does in her classes to work on this.

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