What does it mean to become a physicist?

INDsigt ved Anders Johansson, ph.d.-studerende på Uppsala Universitet dels ved Institutionen för fysik och astronomi, Fysikens didaktik, dels ved Centrum för genusvetenskap

Much research in physics education at the university level has focused on the cognitive side of learning, aiming primarily to answer questions such as: “How can we help students understand physics?” or “how can we make students appreciate physics?”. Some research has pointed to the gender inequality of physics and other issues to suggest that this is not enough, and in my PhD project, I have instead drawn from a sociocultural perspective on learning and tried to answer questions about identity: “What does it mean to become a physicist” and the related question “what structures the possibilities for negotiating physics identities”.

In the seminar, I will present some results from my published and ongoing research about these questions. Some of my earlier results points to the narrowing down of available “physics identities” in some of the teaching in undergraduate physics. Especially, I have argued that the traditional way of teaching quantum physics may reinforce a “shut up and calculate”-attitude that can cut many students off and at the same time reproduce both an instrumental and elitist physics culture. I will also talk a little about the discourse analytical approach I have used in this research and my ongoing project about physics master students’ identity negotiations, which we will have the possibility to work with and discuss during the seminar

Deltagelse i seminaret er gratis, men vi beder om en tilmelding senest 21. november 2016.