Doctoral Dissertation Research: Crafting the Two Cultures: Identifying and Educating Future Scientists and Non-Scientists in America, 1910-1970

Harvard University, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

Introduction Since the professionalization of scientific disciplines in the late nineteenth century, educators have regarded "scientists" and "non-scientists" as distinct kinds of people with different educational needs and social roles. Throughout the twentieth century, educators launched a succession of projects to identify, sort, and differentially train future professionals and non-professionals in science. Intellectual Merit This historical study will examine published and archival records of educational testing, curriculum, guidance, and research programs to discern how twentieth-century US educators constructed and institutionalized the notions of "future scientist" and "non-scientist" as types of individuals who are distinct in makeup, educability, and civic responsibility. It will consider how the articulation and enactment of efforts by educators are influenced by ideas about who was or could become a scientist, the distinctive skills and knowledge deemed to mark scientific talent and scientific expertise, and the social responsibilities presumed to follow from the different scientific understandings of each group. This analysis will shed light on how educational projects have been used to co-construct both scientific understanding and particular identities related to it, and how designs for such projects have developed in response to changing concerns about the place of science in American society. Potential Broader Impacts Today science educators debate whether particular pathways and curricula open or close doors to students who might otherwise be discouraged from or adverse to further science studies. Yet they rarely question the meaning and function of the embedded conceptualizations of "scientists" and "non-scientists" that underlay the designs of many of those programs. We know little about how these concepts have either created or constrained student opportunity, and how they have shaped our thinking about the role of science in American culture. This dissertation aims to shed light on the development and dynamics of these puzzles in hopes of informing debates involving them so as to bring about their resolution.