Extended Abstract The Ministry of Education has mentioned eight key competences in the science curriculum and has stated that one of them is competence in science and technology. Therefore, the program emphasizes the necessity of students to gain the ability to integrate science and technology in order to increase the capacity of scientific research and technological development, socioeconomic development and competitiveness of our country. Students need not only to understand what science is and how it works, but also to have true perceptions about scientists for gaining this skill. There are many researches about these perceptions in the Turkish and English literature and according to this studies, children generally image scientists as male persons. But why? Although the children have different genders, ages and cultures, why do they generally imagine scientists as male persons? We have to learn grounds of this global stereotype because in the related literature, it is expressed that the negative stereotypes which students have about scientists may form difficulties for students (especially for girls) to see themselves scientists of future. In addition, in the related literature, an opinion has been put forward claiming that the reason girl students have been imaging mostly male scientists is originated from their negative thoughts about being a scientist in the future. But when the related literature was searched, it couldn’t be reached any data about the factors affecting the willingness of girl students to be a scientist in the future.

The aim of this study is to determine the factors affecting the willingness of girl students to be a scientist in the future and their perceptions about the gender of scientist. Therefore, phenomenographic research method, one of the qualitative research methods, was used in the research. Three hundred and seventyseven (377) girl students (5th class=85; 6th class= 109; 7th class= 82; 8th class= 101) from six secondary schools in the central of Konya participated in the study in 2013-2014 academic years. DAST (Draw-aScientist Test), open-ended questions and semi-structured interviews were used as data collecting devices. In the research, purposive sampling was preferred and semi-structured interviews were conducted with 17 (seventeen) volunteers. Interview questions are based on the students’ drawings and their answers to open-ended questions.

In this research, content analysis was used for data analysis. While the answers given by the students to the open-ended questions were analysed, the coding were made according to the conceptions derived from the specific expressions because in the related literature there is not enough conceptual structure to guide the analysing of the collected data. When analysing the data, if the related code is in the document, the value ‘1’ is given for it; if not, the value is zero. These values show the frequency of the related category in the document. After this, the codes were related with each other and the categories were formed. Finally, taking the explored relations into consideration, the categories and their themes were formed and these findings were shown in tables.

Multiple data sources were used to ensure the validity and reliability of the research. Confirmation was obtained from the participants about the findings, and if there were misunderstandings, they were corrected according to the participants’ suggestions. In addition, the analyst triangle was used to check the accuracy of the findings. In order to calculate the internal reliability of the study, the reliability formula proposed by Miles and Huberman was used. There was a disagreement in the code of 61 of the 552 codes related to the gender preference in scientist drawings, and consistency of the codes between researchers was calculated 89%. There was a disagreement in the code of 29 of the 225 codes related to the reasons of girl students who wanted to be scientist, and consistency of the codes between researchers was calculated 87%. There was a disagreement in the code of 18 of the 124 codes related to the reasons of girl students who did not want to be a scientist, and consistency of the codes between researchers was calculated 85%. Consistency calculations over 70% indicate that research can be considered reliable. The aim of the research is not to make statistical generalization but to transfer the results to similar situations.

According to the results, it is seen that male scientist drawings are top (F=302, 80%). Then, female scientist (f=50, 13%), male and female scientist - teamwork (f=13, 6%) and sexless scientist (f=1, 1%) have followed each other. The two most important factors that cause girl students to draw male scientists are visual media (f=206) and written sources (f=194). Then, the effect of the teacher (f=25), the popularity of scientist (f=24), love-respect-admiration (f=10), the traditional gender patterns (f=6), lack of a female scientist in the close environment (f=5) and the similarities with favourite scientist (f=2) have followed each other. According to the results, it is seen that the most basic factor that cause girl students to draw female scientists are the reaction to traditional gender patterns (f=20) and to willingness to become a scientist (f=14).

When the factors affecting the willingness of girl students to be a scientist are examined, it is seen that there are both those who want to be a scientist and those who don’t want among all of the students drawing male, female, male and female (teamwork) scientists. On the other hand, the number of girl students who draw male scientist and want to be a scientist in the future is more than the number of girl students who draw male scientist but don’t want to be a scientist in the future. According to the results, it is seen that the most basic two factors causing the responses of girl students who have drawn male scientist and wanted to be a scientist are interest in science and technology (f=68) and willingness to be beneficial (f=39). Then, the need of respect and recognition (f=34), the positive ego conception (f=15), positive effect of visual media (f=5) and willingness to be like a favourite scientist (f=5) have followed each other. According to the results, it is seen that the most basic two factors causing the responses of girl students who have drawn male scientist and not wanted to be a scientist are different interest areas other than science (f= 42) and negative attitudes (f=30). Then, negative ego conception (f=17), negative examples from visual media (f=15), security concerns (f=4) and the teacher’s way of presenting scientists (f=1) have followed each other. However, ‘the findings obtained from this study disprove’ the claim that the preference of the girls taking place in the literature to draw male scientist has been caused by the apprehension that girl students cannot become scientists and so they do not want to be scientists in the future.

The results of this research are expected to shed light on the literature about this subject. But longitudinal and associational researches are needed in order to examine the source of the opinions of whether or not girl students want to be a scientist in the future and if there has been a relation between these opinions and girl students’ perceptions about the gender of scientist.

Key Words: Scientist perception, DAST, Gender of scientist, Career choice, Girl student