Identities in/out of physics and the politics of recognition

Framed within intersectionality, this multiple case study explores women's participation in physics through the construct of physics identity and with a focus on recognition. The study is drawn upon an empirical life-history exploration of three women: a native to Northwestern Europe, late-career white woman and two immigrant women to Northwestern Europe, one is an undergraduate student of color, and the other, an early career Muslim woman. The data for this study were collected through multiple, semistructured, interviews in a period of 2 years, which were analyzed using a constant comparative method. Collectively, the three life-histories tell stories of otherness, persistence, hope, and failure and they elucidate the kinds of identities that are deemed “in-place” and “out-of-place” in physics. They showcase how the three women authored multiple identities that simply co-existed for them, while for others were seen as conflicting and caused misrecognition. The findings point to four main insights: (a) recognition is neither linear nor binary and it comes in many different forms that range from explicit encouragement to no opposition; (b) it is drawn upon various sources including ones in the early years of life: family, school teachers, university instructor, students, and social community; (c) it is culture-dependent and as such, it is influenced by factors on multiple levels, including cultural and gender stereotypes, organizational policies, racism, sexism, classicism, and other forms of discrimination. The implications of these findings speak to the need for: (a) systemic programs on how women are recognized by others and which seek to widen and diversify physics environments from the school level to the professional level; (b) research exploration of the politics of recognition and how they perpetuate the underrepresentation of women in physics; and, (c) disrupting monolithic theorizations of recognition and adopting intersectional approaches to exploring physics identity that value women's personal histories, subjectivities, and positionalities

Science is for everyone:Possible futures, possible selves

Who is a scientist? Who aspires to be a scientist? Who can be a scientist? In this inaugural lecture, I invite the audience to think about issues related to diversity and inclusion to science and explore the construct of “science identity”.Science identity becomes valuable when exploring social and cultural aspects of scientific practice and science teaching and it is connected to goals related to equity, especially in terms of access to educational resources and opportunities to engage with science. Why? Because science is or has to be for everyone.The term ‘possible selves’ is used to refer to the possibility of becoming scientifically literate and critically utilise scientific knowledge in our everyday lives. What do we eat? What do we wear? What we do with our bodies? What do we do with animals? What we do with plants? What we do with water? What we do with land?The term ‘possible futures’ is used to refer to more sustainable and socially just futures, affected by developments in science, technology, and society as well as interactions between humans, non-humans, and more-than-humans: people, animals, plants, machines, and robots.In imagining possible futures, healthier and more balanced relationships with our natural habitat as well as social environments are envisioned. Science education in general, and science identity in particular, play a crucial role in both imagining and shaping such futures

Who aspires to be a scientist/who is allowed in science? Science identity as a lens to exploring the political dimension of the nature of science

Our purpose in this paper is to put forward an argument about both the need and the value for understanding how the constructs of science identity and the nature of science (NOS) might intersect and intertwine and offer useful insights about science participation in times of crises. Based on our knowledge and understanding of these two research areas, we maintain that science identity research has not been fully engaged in understanding how perspectives on NOS might be intersecting with the questions of who can be (or not) a scientist and who is allowed (or not) in science. In this paper, we argue that the formation of a disrupting science identity that challenges existing constructed systems of power in science, requires robust understandings of NOS that place emphasis on the socially-produced narratives about science and scientists. In doing so, we engage with the following questions: (a) How have understandings of NOS contributed to conceptualizations of who can be a scientist and who is recognized as a scientist? (b) How have these conceptualizations contributed to producing exclusionary narratives and perpetuating inequalities in science? and, (c) How might an exploration of NOS through the lens of science identity be used to promote goals related to equity and social justice?</p

Life-Experiences of Female Students in Physics: The Outsiders Within

The purpose of this multiple case study was to examine the kinds of experiences that were critical to the physics trajectories of four purposefully selected undergraduate female physics students in central Europe. The data were collected through individual semi-structured interviews and were analyzed following an inductive approach and a combination of open and in-vivo coding. The findings showed that: (a) all participants experienced a lack of sense of belonging in physics because of stereotypes and biases about the role of women in physics, which were evident both in classroom discourses and lack of recognition by their instructors and their male peers; (b) the intersection of gender and physics identity served as a barrier to the participants’ perceived recognition (by others) as competent physics persons as well as their sense of belonging in physics; and, (c) all participants pointed to the lack of role-models and specifically women of color in academia

The use of Artificial intelligence in school science: a systematic literature review

Artificial Intelligence is widely used across contexts and for different purposes, including the field of education. However, a review of the literature showcases that while there exist various review studies on the use of AI in education, missing remains a review focusing on science education. To address this gap, we carried out a systematic literature review between 2010 and 2021, driven by three questions: a) What types of AI applications are used in school science? b) For what teaching content are AI applications in school science used? and, c) What is the impact of AI applications on teaching and learning of school science? The studies reviewed (n = 22) included nine different types of AI applications: automated assessment, automated feedback, learning analytics, adaptive learning systems, intelligent tutoring systems, multilabel text classification, chatbot, expert systems, and mind wandering detection. The majority of the AI applications are used in geoscience or physics and AI applications are used to support either knkowledge construction or skills development. In terms of the impact of AI applications, this is found across the following: learning achievement, argumentation skills, learning experience, and teaching. Missing remains an examination of learners’ and teachers’ experiences with the use of AI in school science, interdisciplinary approaches to AI implementation, as well as an examination of issues related to ethics and biase