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Perhaps one reason I introduced the idea of dress code was to talk about the 
topic of culture in scientific disciplines. As Lath describes with icons 
that have taken on meaning independent of the referents, we have some of the 
same type of thing going on in science education. My niece took physics, 
necessary for her degree program and a very important to understand as part 
of physical therapy--her major. At her undergraduate school, with a very 
strong engineering program, physics had traditionally been one of the flunk 
out courses for engineering. It was taught in the engineering school, and 
the team responsible for the course proudly flunked 60 to 70% of 
non-engineering majors each semester. It may be that this idea of flunking 
people out of a lower level course was functional at some point--finding the 
people who could teach themselves the content for more advanced courses and 
prepare only a few to enter the job market--keeping the resource scarce and 
the income level high. But, with more and more fields requiring an 
understanding of physics for people to perform the job, that part of the 
engineering school culture appears to have become dysfunctional. One reason, 
we, as science educators need to keep our eye on the values taught and 
practiced in scientific disciplines is that sometimes a strong culture, 
adapted well in one historical environment, is dysfunctional in another. Any 
career involves initiation and acceptance of some group norms and identity. 
Being aware of those functioning within various scientific disciplines can 
help us communicate in ways that make science more lively and interesting. 
It can also let us question the functionality of some of the values and 
norms which affect the questions being asked in scientific disciplines and 
the boundaries that are there to exclude/include entry into the group.

Carey

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