Powerpoint
Title: GIRLS AND STEM? IT MIGHT BE VALUES…
Who: Helen Haste, Visiting Professor of Education, Harvard University Graduate School of Education
Where: Lamont Library, Forum Room

GIRLS AND STEM? IT MIGHT BE VALUES…
What factors affect girls’ beliefs about, and interest in, science and technology? We know that at 10 years of age, girls and boys are equally interested in school science, but the gap widens. Drawing on two different studies, Helen Haste will look first at what appears to be the difference between age 10 and age 14, in a study of six nations, and second, at how ethical beliefs and values around science differentiate girls and boys in secondary school – with some surprising findings.

Helen Haste is Visiting Professor in Education at Harvard Graduate School of Education, Emeritus professor of Psychology at the University of Bath, UK, and a Visiting Professor at the University of Exeter, UK. She has written extensively on the intersection of cultural discourses and narratives, the negotiation and social construction of meaning, and how the individual’s thinking is generated in interaction with these. She has explored these ideas in relation to science and society. Her work on science, society and gender has explored the cultural images of science, how they reflect dominant models of rationalism, how these are associated with conceptions of gender and how they influence motivation to take up science interests.   Her recent involvement with the six nation EU-funded project on Science Education and Diversity explores these issues internationally.

Haste is Fellow of the British Psychological Society and the Royal Society of Arts and an Academician of the British Academy of Social Sciences.   For many years she was closely associated with the British Association for the Advancement of Science, serving as a Vice-President from 2002-8 and as Chair of Council from 2002-4.