%0 Journal Article %A Steinke, Jocelyn %A Lapinski, Maria %A Long, Marilee %A Van Der Maas, Catherine %A Ryan, Lisa %A Applegate, Brooks %D 2009 %I Begell House %N 4 %P 279-301 %R 10.1615/JWomenMinorScienEng.v15.i4.10 %T SEEING ONESELF AS A SCIENTIST: MEDIA INFLUENCES AND ADOLESCENT GIRLS' SCIENCE CAREER-POSSIBLE SELVES %U https://www.dl.begellhouse.com/journals/00551c876cc2f027,293840bd7415e516,0b5caaa338bc00a0.html %V 15 %X Early adolescence is a critical time for fostering girls' awareness and interest in science, engineering, and technology careers as they actively construct their identities. Possible selves theory describes the factors that influence adolescent girls as they create current and future identities. Research suggests that media models can influence views of possible selves, including views of future careers. This study investigated adolescents' academic self-views related to science and the impact of viewing televised scientist characters on these views. This study also assessed adolescents' future career preferences, in general, and specifically in science. Television images of scientists were selected from programs popular among or likely to have been seen by middle school students. The results of this study found that prior to viewing televised scientist characters, girls had lower views of their current but not future academic science self-views than did boys. Viewing televised scientist characters led to a positive change in both adolescent girls' and adolescent boys' future but not current academic science self-views. Adolescent girls were more than twice as likely as boys to list scientific careers as hoped-for future careers; however, adolescent girls also listed scientific careers as feared future careers. %8 2010-02-26