Physics Education and Gender

This Edited Volume engages with concepts of gender and identity as they are mobilized in research to understand the experiences of learners, teachers and practitioners of physics. The focus of this collection is on extending theoretical understandings of identity as a means to explore the construction of gender in physics education research.This collection expands an understanding of gendered participation in physics from a binary gender deficit model to a more complex understanding of gender as performative and intersectional with other social locations (e.g., race, class, LGBT status, ability, etc). This volume contributes to a growing scholarship using sociocultural frameworks to understand learning and participation in physics, and that seeks to challenge dominant understandings of who does physics and what counts as physics competence. Studying gender in physics education research from a perspective of identity and identity construction allows us to understand participation in physics cultures in new ways. We are able to see how identities shape and are shaped by inclusion and exclusion in physics practices, discourses that dominate physics cultures, and actions that maintain or challenge structures of dominance and subordination in physics education. The chapters offered in this book focus on understanding identity and its usefulness in various contexts with various learner or practitioner populations. This scholarship collectively presents us with a broad picture of the complexity inherent in doing physics and doing gender.

Allison J. Gonsalves is an Assistant Professor of Science Education at McGill University, Canada. She holds a PhD in curriculum studies from McGill University, and completed a post-doctoral fellowship in informal education at the Université de Montréal, Canada. Her research interests are in the area of science identities, with a focus on gender and equity in higher education and out of school science learning contexts.Anna T. Danielsson is Professor of Curriculum Studies at Uppsala University, Sweden. She has a PhD in physics specialising in physics education research, from Uppsala University, and has previously worked at University of Cambridge and King’s College London. Her research interests are centred on issues of gender, identity, and power, in the context of teaching and learning science and technology.