Dr Farhat Ara, Prof Sugra Chunawala And Prof Chitra .

Investigating Indian Elementary and Middle School Students'Images of DesignersDr Farhat Ara, Prof Sugra Chunawala and Prof Chitra Natarajan, Homi Bhabha CentreRESEARCHfor Science Education, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, IndiaAbstractThis paper presents an investigation into Indianelementary and middle school students’ images ofdesigners. A ‘Draw a designer at work’ test was used with511 students from Classes 5 to 9 from a school located inMumbai. Findings from the study indicate that Indianelementary and middle school students, who had noexperience in design and technology education (D&T),perceived designers mostly as fashion/ dress designers orartists and designing was associated less with engineeringand technology. These results are consistent with anearlier study on Indian middle school students’ ideasabout design and designers using written responses,where students demonstrated an incompleteunderstanding of design and what designers do andassociated design with art (Authors, 2011). In the presentstudy students, mostly older ones depicted gender andprofessional stereotypes. Design as engineering, making orbuilding were mostly associated with male designers anddepicted more often by boys. Insights from the study haveimplications for curriculum development at the schoollevel in India.Key wordsdesign and technology education, elementary and middleschool students, images of design and designers, IndiaIntroductionImagine a nurse. What images come to mind? Probablythe image of a caring female dressed in white (Glick, Wilkand Perreault, 1995; Carpenter, 1995). According to Glicket al (1995), the images of jobs have more to do with thepeople (their gender, status, life styles, personality traits)doing the jobs, than the tasks involved in those jobs.According to Gottfredson, (in Glick, et al, 1995), longbefore children are able to verbalize which occupationsthey might be interested in, they develop images ofpeople, their personalities and work related to thoseoccupations. Garrett, Ein and Tremaine, (1977) reportedthat children as early as first grade viewed certainoccupations as being appropriate for women or men. In astudy with Indian students, Rampal (1992) found thatalthough many students reported not having seen ascientist personally, they were able to describe their ownimages of scientists’ appearance, personalities and work.These occupational stereotypes or popular images ofdifferent occupations influence the choice of careers bystudents (Knight and Cunningham, 2004). Gottfredson50Design and Technology Education: An International Journal 18.2argues that like adults, children distinguish occupationsprimarily based on two dimensions; prestige (i.e. overallsocial desirability) and gender.Images and drawingsOne way of finding out what images of professionalsstudents hold, is to ask them to draw those professionals.Students' drawings have been used in the perceptionresearch literature to explore their ideas and images aboutvarious people and professions. Drawings are useful, sincethey require little or no language mediation. Henrion (inPicker and Berry, 2001) suggests that imagery can provideuseful insights into students' underlying beliefs,assumptions and expectations. Early research on children’sdrawings focussed mainly on determining the intelligencelevel of a child. In 1926, Florence Goodenough developedthe Draw-A-Man Test (DAMT) to measure intelligence. Inthe 1950’s Mead and Metraux conducted a pilot studywith a sample of thousands of American high schoolstudents, where the data collected was mostly qualitative.The study revealed that high school students describedscientists in stereotypical terms such as elderly or middleaged males wearing white lab-coats and eye-glasses,working in the laboratory, surrounded by test-tubes andflasks. Overall students were found to carry a negativeimage of a scientist (Mead and Metraux, 1957).The Draw-A-Scientist-Test (DAST) focused on the image ofa scientist (Chambers, 1983). Chambers studied a largenumber of students at different age groups and identifiedseven key parts of the stereotypical images produced bystudents: white lab-coat, eye-glasses, facial hair, symbols ofresearch (scientific instruments and equipment), symbolsof knowledge (books), products of science (technology)and relevant captions (formulae, ‘Eureka!’). Chambersasserted that the stereotypic images of scientists held bystudents are powerful and stable and appear to getreinforced with age. Newton and Newton (1998)confirmed that these images about professions remainconstant despite changes in the curriculum.A series of studies have been conducted to learn students'images of scientists with more refined instruments(Finson, Beaver and Cramond, 1995) or including amodification in the instruction such as ‘draw a scientist atwork’ (Huber and Burton, 1995). Variations of the DASThave been adapted in different countries, with mixedresults. Chunawala and Ladage (1998), Turkmen (2008),

Investigating Indian Elementary and Middle School Students'Images of DesignersIn 2004, the DAST was adapted by Knight andCunningham into a test known as the Draw-an-EngineerTest (DAET) to probe students' images of engineers(Knight and Cunningham, 2004). They found that youngerstudents get cued by the word ‘engine’ in engineer andthink that engineers use tools to fix car ‘engines’ and buildbuildings. Older students however, were found to considerthat engineers designed buildings and machines. Similarly,Cunningham, Lachapelle and Lindgren-Streicher (2005)found that students associated fixing, building, andvehicles with engineering. The findings from other studieson students’ perception of engineering confirmed thatstudents tend to associate engineering with fixing, buildingand working on things and depicted engineers as physicallabourers (Oware, Capobianco and Diefes-Dux, 2007;Karatas, Micklos and Bodner, 2011). DAET has also beenadapted to compare students’ images of scientists andengineers (Fralick, Kearn, Thompson and Lyons, 2009).Most of the above studies indicated that students’perceived engineers to be mostly males.It is important to ask why we should be concerned withthe images that students hold about differentprofessionals; where these images come from, and whatthey say about students’ ideas and attitudes towards anyprofession or professionals. With respect to mathematicseducation, Rock and Shaw (2000) argue that if theimages of mathematicians held by students reflect anegative attitude toward mathematics then the process ofteaching mathematics would be challenging, and therewould be fewer enrollments of students in mathematicscourses (Berry and Picker 2000). Similarly only afterinvestigating students’ images of designers can one learntheir perceptions and intervene to make changes in theseperceptions.Rationale of the studyDesign according to Archer (in Cross 2006) and Cross(2006) is the third culture, different from the establishedcultures of the Sciences and the Humanities. According toCross (2006) design is a natural ability possessed tosome degree by all individuals. We consider design to bea discipline, a process and a product. As a discipline itexplores the relationship between the user, the productand the contexts in which the product is used. As aprocess it refers to the intentional, iterative problemsolving process that converts ideas into systems orproducts. As a product it may refer to the outcome of thedesign process such as specifications, sketches, models orshape of the products. Design can thus be considered asa problem solving process employed by professionaldesigners who move through a series of iterative steps tocreate design solutions to meet people's needs. Theyintegrate different kinds of knowledge and skills to solvethese ill-structured problems.As an aspect of technological literacy, Design andTechnology (D&T) education is already a part ofcurriculum across the world for more than a decade. Theimportance of D&T education in the current scenariocannot be underestimated since it offers opportunities forstudents to develop innate abilities to solve real worldproblems, to manipulate images in the mind’s eye and todevelop a wide range of abilities in the non-verbal thoughtand communication (Cross, 2006). Although, in Indiaeducational researchers have been exploring the possibilityof introducing D&T in Indian classrooms (Khunyakari,2008; Mehrotra, 2008; Choksi et al., 2006; Authors,2009; Authors, 2010; Shome, Shastri, Khunyakari andNatarajan, 2011; Shastri, Khunyakari, Chunawala andNatarajan, 2011), Indian school curriculum still lacksdesign or technology education.RESEARCHSjøberg (2002) and Akcay (2011) reported positive viewsof scientists held by students from non-western anddeveloping nations. Several studies also adapted andutilized DAST to understand students’ perceptions aboutother professionals namely mathematicians (Berry andPicker, 2000; Picker and Berry, 2001), accountants,archaeologists (Renoe, 2003).Although design is an integral part of our need to adapt toany situation by creating artefacts and tools, it is variouslyperceived by philosophers and lay people. The possibilityof varied interpretation of design has also led to confusionamong fledgling designers and has propagated amanufactured image of design and designers among thegeneral public. The matter is further complicated sincedesign has been transformed to something banal andinconsequential by the media. According to Heskett(2002) design today is assigned a lightweight anddecorative role for fun and entertainment, and isconsidered useful only for monetary profits.In the Indian context, it is more likely that students’ ideasand images about design and designers are spontaneousand not learnt in school. Their ideas would be influencedby several factors other than schools like media, peers,parents, etc. The documentation of the ideas held bythese non-tutored D&T students has implications forcurriculum development. A recent study on Indianstudents' understanding of design and designers revealedthat although we are surrounded by products of design inour everyday lives, students often do not understand whatdesigners do (Authors, 2011). They often attribute anartistic role to the designer who is seen as moreDesign and Technology Education: An International Journal 18.251