|
Themes
The following themes came up by students during their collective interview.
Theme 6: Labels
Respondents made a distinction between science majors (sometimes referred to as science people) and humanities majors (which was a stand in for everyone else). Respondents made a several basic distinctions between science people and non-science people, and these distinctions were used to explain and register complaints about the structure of the Bio 150 classes and to some extent the science curriculum, and science students at Mount Holyoke.
Science majors were described as competitive in class, vying for the attention of the professor and for higher grades. Their competitiveness carried over into the dynamics of the classroom in other ways including their attempts to prove their science credentials, which had the effect of intimidating non-science students. Non-majors, likely to be intimidated by the majors in mixed class settings like bio 150, were therefore at a double disadvantage, lacking the strong science background and unable or afraid to ask questions because of the intimidating influence of the science majors. They were also characterized by not seeming to care as much, and by their tendency to work collaboratively to make it through the class, but not necessarily stand out as a star student. Respondents preferred the latter approach to classroom dynamics, and suggested that perhaps after 150, once the science people were established in their majors and in higher-level classes, the competitiveness subsided, though this was hardly the unanimous opinion.
The assumption that science majors not only are interested in the science they are studying, but also more proficient and capable of the kind of work they do in the sciences prevailed in one of the groups, but was noticeably absent from the other two. For some it seems doing lab reports is easier than writing papers, but this sentiment contradicts two strongly stated perceptions of science majors. First that science majors are simply those who had enough interest and passion for the subject that they were willing to put up with all of the required classes to get to the good stuff, not necessarily possessing any special aptitude or skill. And second, the notion that science majors think they have more work than everyone else. If science majors believe that the work they do is actually easier for them than it is for non-science people and therefore just seems harder to outside observers, that belief stands in contradiction to arguments that they work harder than anyone else.
In one group, there were further distinctions made between different kinds of science people. Premed people were labeled differently than other science majors and environmental science majors were placed somewhere in the middle of science and non-science people. These distinctions were perceived to have an effect on people’s participation in class. Premed people it was explained were only in classes to get to a further goal of medical school and the study of medicine, which is not the focus of most science courses, whereas science majors were said to have more interest in the content of the classes.
|
