‘I loved exploring a new dimension of reality’ – a case study of middle-school girls encountering Einsteinian physics in the classroom

ABSTRACT

In recent years, the science education research community has become increasingly interested in the learning domain of Einsteinian physics (EP). While the literature has provided accounts of how EP education can impact secondary and undergraduate students’ attitudes and engagement with physics, we still lack such research with younger students. This exploratory case study addresses this need and adds to our knowledge of how middle-school girls’ experience EP in the classroom. We report on an EP programme run with 39 girls (14–15 years) in an independent day and boarding school in Australia. Based on a phenomenographic analysis of focus group interviews and open-ended questionnaires, we document the range of students’ experiences of EP. The analysis revealed three categories of description that correspond to a personal, scientific, and holistic way of experiencing EP. These experiences influence the girls’ perception of and orientation to physics by increasing interest in physics, challenging traditional stereotypes, and showing future possibilities such as career paths in science. Our findings inform a discussion about improving instructional practices in science classrooms to realise the full potential of EP education. Furthermore, our study adds to a growing body of research that aims to foster middle-school girls’ interest in physics.

KEYWORDS:

• Einsteinian physics education
• modern physics education
• phenomenography
• gender
• attitudes

Introduction

In recent years, the science education research community has become increasingly interested in the learning domain of ‘Einsteinian’ physics (Choudhary et al., 2019, 2020; Pitts et al., 2014). Einsteinian physics (EP) is a branch of modern physics that is based on two major theories of physics: the theory of special and general relativity that describes space, time, and gravity at the cosmic scale, and quantum physics that describes the interactions of matter and radiation at scales down to the smallest subatomic particles (Kersting & Blair, 2021). Because of Einstein’s central role in both theories, physics education researchers have coined Einsteinian physics to ‘distinguish these subject matters from classical Newtonian physics’ (Kaur et al., 2020b, p. 2506).

The literature has provided rich accounts of how EP education changes and impacts the way secondary and undergraduate students think about physics and their physics identities (e.g. Johansson, 2018; Johansson et al., 2018; Vetleseter Bøe et al., 2018). However, there is a need for such in-depth research also with younger students. Here, middle-school girls seem to present a particularly interesting student group for two reasons. First, previous research suggested that middle-school girls showed more pronounced gains in conceptual knowledge and attitudes in EP than boys, although the reasons for this gender effect are not yet clear (Choudhary et al., 2020; Kaur et al., 2020b, 2020a). Second, the issue of young girls’ engagement with science and the proportion of girls pursuing careers in science has become a matter of considerable concern among educators and policymakers worldwide (e.g. Archer et al., 2010; Bøe et al., 2011; Dare & Roehrig, 2016).

If we want to advance interest and engagement in physics, it seems promising to explore the potential of EP to influence middle-school girls’ perception of and orientation to physics. Therefore, the overarching aim of our research was to conduct an exploratory case study to investigate middle-school girls’ experiences when they encounter topics of EP in the classroom context. In the following, we present our research questions and situate our study within the existing literature before presenting our methods and research design.

Research questions

This study adds to EP education research by providing detailed descriptions of middle-school girls’ experiences of Einstein’s general theory of relativity in the classroom. By exploring how these experiences might influence middle-school girls’ perception of and orientation to physics, we also expand the discussion of how to engage middle-school girls in the physics classroom from the context of classical to modern physics education. To guide our investigations, we posed two research questions:

1. What are the qualitatively different ways in which middle-school girls experience Einstein’s general theory of relativity in the classroom?

2. How does encountering Einstein’s general theory of relativity in the classroom influence middle-school girls’ perception of and orientation to physics?

Prior research

In parallel to the introduction of EP topics in a growing number of physics curricula worldwide (e.g. Henriksen et al., 2014; Kraus et al., 2018; Krijtenburg-Lewerissa et al., 2017), researchers have emphasised the need to conduct science education research in this learning domain (e.g. Park et al., 2019; Stadermann & Goedhart, 2020; Velentzas & Halkia, 2013). For example, Treagust (n.d.) observed that

when educators introduce a new school curriculum such as Einsteinian physics […] it is important to take a broad perspective and examine new theories and ideas about teaching and learning that have been introduced in education and the ways to measure the success or failure of this introduction using educational research.

To take such a broad perspective on EP instruction and to examine its educational impact, researchers have started to investigate students’ learning of and encounter with EP broadly from two different angles. One body of literature maps students’ conceptual challenges, content knowledge and long-term retention (Baldy, 2007; Choudhary et al., 2020; Dimitriadi & Halkia, 2012; Kamphorst et al., 2019; Kaur et al., 2020b; Kersting et al., 2018; Stadermann & Goedhart, 2020). The other body of literature explores students’ attitudes, motivation, and personal engagement with EP topics (Johansson, 2018; Johansson et al., 2018; Levrini & Fantini, 2013; Vetleseter Bøe et al., 2018). Both sides contribute to new knowledge in science education research, and both have the potential to improve instructional practices in EP education.

This study adds to the latter body of literature and, specifically, what is known about middle-school girls’ interest and engagement with EP. We chose to focus on middle-school girls for two reasons: First, previous research found that girls showed more pronounced gains in conceptual knowledge and attitudes in EP than boys, although the reasons for this gender effect are not yet well understood (Choudhary et al., 2020; Kaur et al., 2020b, 2020a). Synthesising findings from a range of EP interventions lasting between a single day to 20 lessons over ten weeks and over an age range from 11 to 15 years, Kaur et al. (2020a) found pronounced improvement factors in girls’ attitudes towards science. However, the research design did not allow unpacking the reasons for this improvement. Kaur et al. concluded that they could not ‘claim that conceptual learning of modern physics is the cause of the gender equalising effects’ (Kaur et al., 2020a, p. 12). In a similar vein, Choudhary et al. (2020, p. 17) observed that their ‘questions used to evaluate student attitudes had an inadequate resolution’ and were not practical measures to test the change in students’ attitudes. Against the backdrop of these findings, this study seeks to explore middle-school girls nuanced experiences in EP education. Thus, our qualitative case study approach complements and extends the existing EP education research by shedding light on how Einstein’s general theory of relativity can motivate and engage middle-school girls.

Second, the issue of young girls’ engagement with and their career choices in science have been a topic of enduring interest in the science education community for the past decades (e.g. Archer et al., 2010; Bøe et al., 2011; Dare & Roehrig, 2016). A large body of literature exists that girls’ experiences during the middle-school years are the primary determinant of their decisions to pursue the study of science (e.g. Archer et al., 2010; Mujtaba & Reiss, 2013; Reid & Skryabina, 2003). A critical insight of this research is that how students define themselves, including their self-concepts in math and physics, is a sociocultural phenomenon (Koul et al., 2016). This study uses EP education as a new context to shed light on the social and cultural aspects of encountering physics in the classroom and how such encounters influence middle-school girls’ perception of and identification in physics.

Methods

As this research aims to investigate how middle-school girls experience EP in the classroom, we chose an exploratory case study as our overarching method of inquiry (Yin, 2018). Specifically, we adopted a sociocultural view towards learning and used a phenomenographic lens for analysing middle-school girls experiences of an EP programme with a focus on Einstein’s general theory of relativity.

Research approach: phenomenography

Since we are interested in the various ways in which middle-school girls experience EP in the classroom, we need a research approach that allows unpacking variations in student experiences. Phenomenography is such an approach and an established qualitative methodology that aims to describe, analyse, and understand the various ways in which different students experience a particular phenomenon (Ayene et al., 2019; Marton, 1981). These individual ways of experiencing and perceiving a phenomenon are called ‘conceptions’.

Phenomenography builds on the underlying assumption that it is possible to describe the conceptions of a given group of students in a limited number of qualitatively different ways, the so-called ‘categories of description’ (Ayene et al., 2019). The categories of description, and the structural relationships between them, become the ‘outcome space’ that provides an overview of relations between different ways of experiencing one particular phenomenon. There are three criteria for judging the quality of phenomenographic outcome spaces, and it is in this sense that the categories of description are said to be qualitatively different (Åkerlind, 2005):

1. each category of description reveals something distinctive about a way of experiencing the phenomenon

2. the categories are logically related, often as a hierarchy of structurally inclusive relationships

3. the outcome space is parsimonious and consists of as few categories as possible

It is important to note that a single category of description expresses one possible way in which many students, or the same student at different times, might experience a phenomenon (Ireland et al., 2012). The strength of the phenomenographic analysis lies in its ability to look at collective human experiences while staying sensitive to contextual differences in these experiences (Ayene et al., 2011; Taylor & Booth, 2015). The goal is to explore the range of experiences within a given group instead of the range of experiences for each individual within the group (Åkerlind, 2005).

Design and implementation of the Einsteinian physics programme

This study conducted an EP programme with two classes of year-9 students (39 students, 14–15 years) in an independent day and boarding school for girls in Western Australia. For each class, the programme lasted eight lessons (à 45 min) and took place during the students’ regular science lessons over two weeks. Both teachers, who co-authored this study, had previously attended a professional development workshop on EP education held by the first author. We retrieved informed consent to participate in the research from all students and their parents. Moreover, the Human Research Ethics Office at the University of Western Australia approved the research as part of the project ‘Measuring the effectiveness of specialist science enrichment programs – Einsteinian Physics’ in which the first author was a co-investigator.

In line with the observation that gravity seems to be an essential yet challenging concept for middle-school students (Baldy, 2007; Pitts et al., 2014), the programme’s focus was on general relativity, Einstein’s theory of gravity. The design of the programme pooled and combined learning resources and instructional approaches from the Norwegian project ReleQuant and Australian project Einstein-First as part of joint activities of the international Einsteinian Physics Education Research (EPER) collaboration (Choudhary et al., 2019).

A sociocultural stance towards learning informed the learning activities, which fostered collaboration in groups and invited students to ‘talk physics’ (Henriksen & Angell, 2010; Lemke, 1990). The first session invited the whole class to discuss concepts of EP and the nature of science. Students then worked in small groups to design a learning object that would help others learn about one concept of the EP programme. The learning objects should have some audio/visual component and be no more than three minutes long (e.g. video, filmed presentation, website, online quiz).

To facilitate group work, the students received guiding questions and a set of suggested resources, including digital learning resources¹ that intentionally fostered collaborative physics talk (Kersting et al., 2018). The EP programme also linked with a day excursion to the Gravity Discovery Centre², a science centre with a focus on gravity and astrophysics (Venville et al., 2012). At the end of the project, each group presented their learning object in front of their peers. There was, however, no official assessment of these learning objects to allow students to explore concepts of EP without the pressure to perform well. Table 1 presents the EP concepts and guiding questions of the programme.

Table 1. Overview of the Einsteinian physics concepts and the guiding questions of the Einsteinian physics programme.

Guiding questions: What is gravity? How does gravity make things fall? What is space? What is time? How does Einstein describe space and time? Are you moving in spacetime right now?	Concept spacetime: We live in a four-dimensional universe with three space and one time dimensions. This four-dimensional structure is called spacetime. General relativity is a theory that relates space, time, and gravity. Free objects follow the straightest possible paths in curved spacetime.
Concept gravity: General relativity interprets gravity not as a force but as a geometric phenomenon. Matter tells spacetime how to curve. Spacetime tells matter how to move. We experience gravity because spacetime around the Earth is warped.	Concept time: Even when standing still, we move constantly along the time-dimension. Gravity affects time: deep down in a gravitational field, time passes more slowly than further up. The warping of time causes gravity on Earth.

Data collection

Talk and language are essential features in phenomenographic research, not least, because language allows students to express their perceptions of the world and their relation towards scientific phenomena (Säljö, 1997). Therefore, we drew on multiple sources of evidence that captured students’ oral and written language during the programme. Primary data consisted of questionnaire responses and focus group interviews. Secondary data consists of field notes and the students’ learning objects. The groups produced six short videos, one animation video, two infographics, five interactive classroom quizzes, three interactive presentations, and one homepage.

During the last lesson of the programme, the students completed an open-ended questionnaire that focused on EP topics, their experiences of the programme, and the students’ motivations in physics. We invited the students to fill in the questionnaire in small groups and discuss their responses to further build on the collective and collaborative nature of the programme. The total number of collected responses (25) was smaller than the total number of participating students (39) because some groups chose to submit a joint group response instead of submitting single responses.

To gain further insights into the students’ experiences, the first author conducted two semi-structured focus group interviews, one in each class, with 19 girls in total. The two teachers suggested which students to interview to allow for a balance of stronger and weaker students. We based the interviews on an interview guide focusing on students’ experiences of the EP programme and their perception of and motivation for science.³

Data analysis

A phenomenographic analysis aims to find categories of description for a specific phenomenon. Therefore, we chose to carry out two separate analyses resulting in one outcome space for each research question. The first author transcribed audio recordings from the focus group interviews and transcribed the learning objects’ contents. These files, the field notes, and the responses from the questionnaire were then imported into the Atlas.ti software for qualitative data analysis. Since the strength of the phenomenographic analysis lies in its ability to look at collective human experiences rather than single out individual experiences for every student in the group, we treated the group and individual responses from the questionnaire in the same way.

In the first step, we read and coded the data inductively to arrive at broad and descriptive codes that were strongly linked to the semantic content of the data. To find categories of description for both outcome spaces, we then carefully re-read the data to search for qualitative similarities and differences between possible categories. For example, many tentative codes described the students’ initial impressions when encountering EP concepts, such as enjoyment, fascination, confusion, or frustration. These codes were distinct from those that coded statements about the nature of scientific models or the applicability of Newton and Einstein’s model of gravity. While we grouped the first set of codes into one category of description that we called the personal view, the second set of codes was collected in the scientific view (Table 2). A close dialogue between the first author and the two co-authors, who were teachers of the students, ensured that the analysis produced credible findings that provided authentic insights into the students’ experiences and their social and cultural environment. This close dialogue, both during the implementation of the EP programme and at later stages of the data analysis and the writing of this article, helped to establish the trustworthiness and authenticity of the findings. We return to questions of trustworthiness and authenticity in the discussion, where we critically reflect on the limitations of our research design.

In a phenomenographic analysis, we expect that the ‘different ways of experiencing will be logically related through the common phenomenon being experienced’ (Åkerlind, 2005, p. 322). Consequently, we supplemented the search for categories of descriptions by searching for structural relationships between the categories. We aimed to arrive at a logically inclusive structure related to different experiences through this second layer of analysis. Tables 2 and 3 present the outcome spaces of our analyses and describe how each category of description is distinct from one another and how different categories are structurally related. The tables also provide example statements from the students that illustrate each category of description. We present and discuss these outcome spaces in more detail in the next section.

Table 2. The outcome space of middle-school girls’ experiences of Einsteinian physics.

Structural representation of the outcome space
Category 1 – personal view: Students experience EP as providing interesting, stimulating, and enjoyable experiences. Students link concepts of EP to their lived experiences and learning.	Category 2 – scientific view: Students experience EP as an extension of classical physics. Students link concepts of EP to their scientific knowledge.	Category 3 – world view: Students experience EP as providing a new frame through which they can understand the world. Students link concepts of EP to their world view.
Example statement: ‘I thoroughly enjoyed working with the learning resource and gaining knowledge about modern physics.’	Example statement: ‘I think that Einstein’s theory of relativity provides a better explanation of the interrelation between space and time than previous theories.’	Example statement: ‘I think that it [general relativity] is a pretty cool theory that allows us to have a deeper understanding of the world we live in.’

Table 3. The outcome space of middle-school girls’ perception of and orientation to physics after the Einsteinian physics programme.

Structural representation of the outcome space
Category 1 – status quo Students do not experience any influence of the EP programme on their views of physics.	Category 2 – increased interest Students experience an increased interest and express the wish to learn more about physics.	Category 3 – challenged stereotypes Students experience the EP programme as challenging stereotypes of physics.	Category 4 – future possibilities Students experience physics as being relevant for their futures.
Example statement: ‘It [the EP programme] hasn’t increased or decreased my motivation for science.’	Example statement: ‘I used to really not like physics, but this topic has actually made me more excited to learn more about physics and spacetime.’	Example statement: ‘(…) there is a stereotype as scientists or mathematicians not being creative people. It [the EP programme] has taught me […] Einstein would have been one of the most creative people.’	Example statement: ‘It [the EP programme] has made me consider pursuing my career in physics more so than before.’

Findings

This section presents the two outcome spaces of our phenomenographic analysis that correspond to our two research questions. Each outcome space distils the range of the students’ experiences of Einstein’s theory of relativity to a few distinct categories of description, which we discuss and contextualise in light of existing research in the next section.

What are the qualitatively different ways in which middle-school girls experience Einstein’s general theory of relativity in the classroom?

Our analysis revealed three qualitatively different ways in which the students experienced Einstein’s general theory of relativity in the classroom (Table 2). The personal view (category 1) describes the personal level of interest, enjoyment, or frustration experienced when learning about Einstein’s theory. In this category, students linked EP concepts to their lived experiences and described their learning of these concepts. The scientific view (category 2) describes experiences related to the nature of science and the awareness that EP extends the scope of classical physics. In this category, students linked EP concepts to their scientific knowledge. The world view (category 3) describes how students experienced EP holistically and as providing a new frame through which they could understand the world. In this category, students linked concepts of EP to their world view.

We chose a pyramid to represent the structural hierarchy of this outcome space: the scope of experience increases with increasing categories while the frequency in how often students expressed such experiences decreases. The personal view is the most fundamental category of the outcome space, and experiences in this category were often mentioned. The world view builds on and extends the previous two categories; yet, it was mentioned the least often. Since the outcome space represents a hierarchical structure of experiences, students who expressed experiences in the second or third category did at times also describe experiences in the first category.

Personal view (category 1)

The students experienced Einstein’s general theory of relativity from a personal view when they talked about their immediate reactions upon their first encounter with EP concepts or related these concepts to their learning and lived experiences. The majority of the students expressed surprise, interest, and confusion, and these experiences were not mutually exclusive but often intertwined. The perceived novelty and complexity of the topic were the main reason for experiencing Einstein’s theory both as interesting and confusing. In this category, the students linked the novelty and complexity of Einsteinian physic to positive experiences of enjoyment and fun or, more seldomly, to an experience of frustration. At the same time, students acknowledged that learning about these concepts took time and that they needed to get used to Einstein’s ideas:

Questionnaire response:

I think that Einstein’s theory of describing space and time to be interrelated in a four-dimensional universe as well as describing gravity as being geometry really interesting. I think that this approach to such complicated topics and ideas is very fascinating and I’ve enjoyed learning and trying to wrap my head around these theories really fun.

Interview excerpt:

Student 1: ‘You definitely got the hang of what it [general relativity] was after the time. I guess cause we’ve always been told that gravity is a force it was adjusting to the idea that it’s not.’

Student 2: ‘I think the first lesson on gravity was a bit confusing but the second and third was much better and made more sense after a while because things were explained a bit later on, explained in greater detail which allowed us to understand.’

Another feature of personal-view experiences is a close link between Einsteinian concepts and students’ lived experiences. For example, students illustrated movement in spacetime through the beating of their hearts or their aging:

Excerpt from a learning object:

We are always moving in spacetime as even when we are still, our heart is still beating, the Earth is still rotating, and time is still passing.

Scientific view (category 2)

The scientific view enlarges the personal view to encompass experiences and perceptions that relate to scientific aspects of EP. In this category, students experienced EP as an extension of classical physics, and they linked concepts of general relativity to their scientific knowledge. This knowledge included an awareness of the scope and limitations of scientific models and the nature of science. Specifically, the students’ attention shifted away from the merely personal (category 1) to include an acknowledgement of the way scientists work and reason:

Questionnaire responses:

I think that it [general relativity] was a revolutionary way to look at Newton’s law, it not only described what we experience as a pulling force but explained it through working with geometry and new analogies.

I believe that Einstein was very intelligent and considered his theory with caution and a non-biased point of view. This resulted in a successful theory of relativity.

Another feature of scientific-view experiences is an awareness that science is an ongoing endeavour and that there are many open questions in EP:

Questionnaire response:

There is not really a definite answer for what time is. It is one of the four spacetime dimensions. It can be described as a relative concept that can be warped by gravity.

The open nature of Einsteinian concepts both engaged and frustrated students. For example, some students found it interesting to encounter and discuss open questions in physics, while others expressed frustration because of the lack of definite answers. Thus, we can see how the first two categories of description are logically related through a structurally inclusive relationship: scientific-view experiences emphasise scientific aspects of Einstein’s ideas or aspects of the nature of science. At the same time, these experiences can encompass personal-view experiences of enjoyment or frustration. In the following interview excerpt, students discussed our scientific understanding of time. While the conversation centred on aspects of the nature of science, the students repeatedly related their understanding of the concept to their personal experiences:

Interview excerpt:

Student 1: ‘I liked how it brought up philosophical questions. So, it wasn’t just sound and light where everything is exact. But it brought up stuff like ‘what is time?’. It didn’t have an exact answer, so we kind of had to think about it more. And a lot of it was stuff we hadn’t learned before like Einstein’s theory. Previously, I thought that time and space were different, and I didn’t know they were interrelated. So, I thought that was cool: learning about new stuff that we previously thought different things about.’

(…)

Student 2: ‘You really try to define time and you don’t know what it is, but then you learn about time-related concepts and you do understand those. That’s kind of interesting.’

Student 3: ‘I felt like the whole time thing, cause there was no specific answer, so the whole time thing. I don’t really like that cause there is no answer. But it’s sort of cool: ‘what is time?’ But if we might also feel like: ‘what if it’s all wrong?’ Cause there’s no right, we don’t know for sure.

Student 4: ‘I liked how we were able to learn about a different theory and how that gave different possibilities and stuff. I just find it interesting that what we believe might be wrong.’

In the previous section, we saw one example of how a student linked the lived experience of her beating heart to the concepts of time and spacetime. In category 2, descriptions of EP concepts are more sophisticated. For example, the following response shows an awareness that scientific concepts are human-made and that it is the process of measurement that allows operationalising these concepts:

Questionnaire responses:

Time is the concept which humans created to give an infinite continuum a means of measurement and counting.

World view (category 3)

The world view (category 3) describes holistic experiences of how Einstein’s theory of relativity provides a new frame through which one can understand the world. In this category, students linked concepts of EP to their world view and their fundamental orientation to the world. For example, when describing world-view experiences, students explained how Einstein’s ideas offered a completely different perspective on the universe. Being able to explore a ‘new dimension of reality´ and learning more about big picture ideas was a critical factor in this category, as was the appreciation of thinking outside of the box and becoming more open-minded:

Questionnaire responses:

[…] I do now know a lot about physics which has helped me to understand the world around me much better.

It [the EP programme] has made me more open minded […]

I loved exploring a new dimension of reality and learning about the true cause of phenomena such as gravity […] I think it [general relativity] is a different perspective of gravity, space and time.

What distinguishes category 3-experiences from the first two categories is the focus on big picture ideas that extend the personal lived experiences and the scientific view to encompass all of reality. Thus, experiences in this category have the broadest scope. Again, we see that the three categories of description are related through a logically inclusive structure: each category extends the previous one’s scope. Besides, by stimulating a holistic view of how physics relates to the broader world, many experiences in category 3 already point to the following research question and how EP might have influenced the students’ perception of and orientation to physics.

How does encountering Einstein’s general theory of relativity in the classroom influence middle-school girls’ perception of and orientation to physics?

The phenomenographic outcome space that corresponds to our second research question has four distinct categories of description and a hierarchical structure that resembles a diamond (Table 3). The status quo (category 1) is the most basic category in which the students did not perceive any influence of the EP programme on their physics views. Increased interest (category 2) encompasses experiences that describe an awakened interest and the wish to learn more about physics; challenged stereotypes (category 3) contains perceptions of physics that challenge traditional stereotypes. Experiences of future possibilities (category 4) have a more dynamic nature than categories 2 and 3 since they point towards possible future actions: in category 4, the students described physics as being relevant for their futures, for example, as a subject to choose for further studies or as a possible career path.

We chose a diamond to represent the structural hierarchy of this outcome space: the level of activity increases with increasing categories while the frequency in how often students expressed such experiences decreases towards category 1 (the bottom of the diamond) and category 4 (the top). Categories 2 and 3 reside at the same hierarchical level and correspond to the programme’s two most common influences on the students’ overall perception of physics. Structurally, categories 2 and 3 are closely related because they prepare for category 4 of future possibilities.

The students mentioned category-4 experiences less frequently than those of categories 2 and 3. However, the students always drew on category-2 and category-3 experiences to explain why they considered physics relevant for their future. Thus, we have an inclusive structure of experiences where category-4 experiences build on the previous ones.

Status quo (category 1)

Status quo corresponds to the most basic category of description in which the students did not experience any influence of the EP programme on their perception of or orientation to physics. This category only made up a small part of the outcome space in our study, with only three students expressing this experience.

Increased interest (category 2)

Increased interest summarises experiences of improved or renewed interest in physics or science. In this category, students expressed the wish to learn more about physics or explained that they now held a more positive orientation towards physics. The majority of students expressed experiences in this category:

Questionnaire responses:

Normally, I don’t find science that interesting, but I was surprised at how interested I was during the programme.

The programme has changed my motivation for science as it has given me a newfound interest in physics as I now want to learn more about these theories and the universe.

I have developed a new interest in space sciences and physics and makes me realise how much we actually don’t know about the universe.

The EP programme presented the students with exciting topics that they previously had not considered to be part of physics. This observation also relates to category-3 experiences that capture how the programme challenged traditional stereotypes of physics. By capturing an increased interest in physics, experiences in category 2 point towards future possibilities of action (category 4). Thus, the structural composition of the outcome space reflects the increasing level of activity in the students’ experiences as they move from lower to higher categories.

Challenged stereotypes (category 3)

Many students reported that the EP programme challenged traditional stereotypes of physics. These stereotypes concerned physics as a field and the perception of physicists. For example, students appreciated learning that physics was not dry or dull but an active field covering topics of astronomy, space science, and even philosophy. Similar to category-2 experiences, we see how category-3 experiences lay the ground for perceiving physics as relevant for their futures:

Questionnaire response:

I have always liked subjects such as chemistry and human bio more and have found physics dry in the past. However, the topic of space as seen through Einstein really fascinates me and could be something I see myself exploring in the future.

Another stereotype that the EP programme challenged concerned the type of person whom the students considered a physicist. For example, the students expressed the insight that it takes creativity to be a scientist:

Questionnaire response:

I believe that school can sometimes encage your creativity and that there is a stereotype as scientists or mathematicians not being creative people. It [the EP programme] has taught me that in order to come up with the incredible ideas he did […] Einstein would have been one of the most creative people to grace the Earth.

In the questionnaire, several students thanked the first author personally for having run the EP programme, which suggests that the researcher might have acted as a potential role model:

Questionnaire responses:

Thank you very much. I have really enjoyed this unit and personally, I was never very much into physics, but this unit has helped me develop a keen interest in space sciences and physics. So, thank you very much for helping me discover something very fun that I have a keen interest in:) You have been an amazing mentor and I have learnt a lot from you.

I really liked this topic and loved having you here to teach us and give us a new insight into what general relativity is.

We return to the influence of the researcher when addressing the limitations of this research in the discussion.

Future possibilities (category 4)

The fourth category in the outcome space builds on the last two categories to capture the students’ perception of physics as being relevant for their futures. While being mentioned less frequently than categories 2 or 3, experiences in category 4 expanded the EP programme’s influence from merely impacting the students’ interests in and perception of physics to encompassing a course of action for the future. These future possibilities had a vast scope ranging from the immediate school context to career choices and the students’ general approach to life.

For example, the students acknowledged that EP could be helpful for their academic performance in future school years, and they expressed an interest to choose physics in their future course work:

Questionnaire responses:

This class has changed my thinking of physics, as I only knew about Newtons theories. This will be helpful for future years in school.

I previously didn’t want to do physics for ATAR⁴, but this new side of physics has made me potentially consider it.

Some students also related the influence of the EP programme to their future career paths and even stated that EP had changed their general prospect to lifelong learning:

Questionnaire responses:

I wasn’t aware that space and time are related and how they are connected to form our universe. I found this interesting and wish to further my knowledge in this area. It has made me consider pursuing my career in physics more so than before.

I hope that our school continues to give us chances to learn without limits, to read as much as we like in order to understand, not to be marked. This learning programme has enforced for me, that there is a lot to learn and that that is a powerful lesson and tool that I can take with me in life, whether or not that will be in space, among the stars.

Discussion

This study aimed to investigate middle-school girls’ experiences upon encountering topics of EP in the classroom. We asked about (1) the qualitatively different ways in which middle-school girls experienced Einstein’s general theory of relativity, and (2) how the encounter with Einstein’s ideas might influence middle-school girls’ perception of and orientation to physics. In this section, we want to discuss the significance of our findings in light of existing research. Additionally, we address methodological issues and limitations of our research design.

Our findings add to EP education research by offering detailed descriptions of how middle-school girls’ experienced EP education in the classroom. Our analyses revealed three categories of description that captured these experiences: the personal, the scientific, and the world view. Importantly, our findings add a more nuanced understanding of how these experiences, in turn, influenced the students’ perception of and orientation to physics by increasing interest in physics, challenging traditional stereotypes, and showing future possibilities such as career paths in science. By exploring the links between students’ experiences during an EP programme and their perceptions of physics afterwards, our study provides potential explanations for the surprising observation that middle-school girls exhibit higher gains in interest and attitude through EP than boys (Choudhary et al., 2020; Kaur et al., 2020a, 2020b).

Broadly, we found that the EP programme combined several factors that, individually, have been shown to foster motivation and interest among middle-school girls. First, EP features popular topics of astronomy, applications of physics in space, and unsolved fundamental problems. Our analysis revealed a clear link between topics of EP and experiences of an increased interest in physics. This observation corroborates findings from the international ROSE (Relevance Of Science Education) project (Sjøberg & Schreiner, 2005). ROSE researchers found physics applications in space and physics phenomena that scientists cannot yet explain popular among girls and boys aged 15; in fact, these topics showed the smallest gender differences (Jidesjö et al., 2012). An important implication of this observation is that teachers can increase students’ interest by bringing EP topics from popular culture such as black holes, gravitational waves, or dark matter into their classrooms (Woithe & Kersting, 2021).

Second, EP features stories of scientists who demonstrated remarkable acts of creativity and imagination. Our analysis showed that students experienced EP as challenging stereotypes of physics and physicists. Previous research found that middle-school girls perceived traditional stereotypes of scientists as less attractive than boys (Bøe et al., 2011; Sjaastad, 2012). Besides, girls were more likely than boys not to choose science because they could not picture themselves as scientists (Lyons & Quinn, 2010). Considering this research, our findings suggest that EP education can increase the potential for students to identify with physics if instructional practices focus on the creative and imaginative aspects of the scientific process.

Third, EP challenges students’ world view and invites them to think about their place in the world. Our analysis unpacked how the EP programme provided a sense of personal relevance to students and how students perceived future possibilities in physics afterwards. We observed, for example, that students questioned aspects of the nature of science and related EP to broader aspects of their lives. In the context of EP education at the upper secondary school level, Levrini and Fantini (2013) noted that the complexities of modern physics ‘do not put students off, but instead, provide an interesting ground for personal engagement and perspective’ (p. 1907). Our research corroborates this observation and shows that it holds in the context of middle-school education, as well.

This observation carries particular significance in view of recent efforts to resolve the tension between science as it is often taught to and experienced by students in school and students’ sense of benefit, value, and meaningfulness in what they learn (Kapon et al., 2018). Our findings suggests that EP education can help resolve the tension between personal relevance and common school science for middle-school girls in the physics classroom. Therefore, our study contributes to expanding the discussion of how to engage middle-school girls in the physics classroom from the context of classical to modern physics education.

Lastly, our findings allow us to put earlier speculations about girls’ engagement in EP into perspective: Kaur et al. (2020a) speculated that the gender effect in EP education might be due to the format of delivery of many EP interventions. Specifically, the authors wondered whether combining activity-based learning with hands-on models had created a favourable learning environment for girls. Since our EP programme did not rely on hands-on activities or physical models, our analysis sheds light on motivating factors in EP education beyond activity-based instruction.

Limitations

We now turn to a discussion of the limitations of our study given its research design and methodology. Since qualitative research aims to give rich accounts of students’ experiences in a certain sociocultural context, we use the quality standards of trustworthiness and authenticity to structure our discussion (Taylor, 2014).

To produce findings with a high degree of trustworthiness, we chose a research design that allowed constructing rich and credible insights into the students’ experiences based on immersion in the students’ social environment and context. This immersion was twofold: first, data collection took place during the science lessons, or in the case of focus group interviews, during lunch breaks in the familiar classroom setting. Second, prolonged conversations with the two teachers before, during, and after implementing the EP programme helped verify our interpretations and findings through ‘member checking’ (Taylor, 2014, p. 45).

Our data was guided by a particular focus on collaboration, never separating the students from each other. We acknowledge that this approach has both advantages and disadvantages. Regarding the focus group interviews, we chose rather big groups of nine and ten students respectively to allow for a large range of experiences. Fewer students would have had fewer experiences with which to construct the outcome space of the phenomenographic analysis. However, the large number of students also limited each student’s opportunity to share their experiences. Besides, the group dynamic in a larger group may have intimidated some students to share their experiences openly.

Regarding the open-ended questionnaire, we invited the students to discuss their responses in their project groups. These group discussions were meant to bring forth a greater variety of responses because the students would have had the chance to explore their ideas orally before writing them down. However, some of the groups decided to submit a joint response instead of submitting individual responses. Therefore, the total number of submissions was smaller than the total number of participating students, limiting the number of responses.

Finally, while our phenomenographic analysis aimed to unpack the students’ qualitatively different ways of experiencing EP in the classroom, it is important to acknowledge that different students in different contexts will experience and perceive the same phenomena differently. Hence, any outcome space is inevitably partial, compared to the hypothetically complete range of ways of experiencing this phenomenon (Åkerlind, 2005). In this sense, we do not claim that the outcome spaces in this study are complete and that our findings are transferable per se. Nevertheless, we believe that we have made a substantial contribution to understanding middle-school girls’ experiences of EP. By documenting the range of students’ experiences of EP, our findings illustrate how EP topics can have a positive impact on middle-school girls’ perception of and orientation to physics. We hope that future research might build on our findings to take this understanding further.

To produce findings with a high degree of authenticity, we involved the two teachers and co-authors of this study in every research step. The teachers attended a professional development workshop about EP education, they helped design and run the EP programme, and they provided continuous feedback both during the implementation of the programme, during data collection and analysis, and when the manuscript of this article took shape. This close dialogue between the researcher and teachers established relationships of mutual understanding that allowed us better to explore the context of students’ social worlds.

When addressing authenticity issues, we also need to reflect critically on the involvement of the first author, a female researcher in her early thirties, and her continued role in the implementation of the EP programme. At the beginning of the programme, the first author presented herself as a science education researcher with a background in EP. The experience of having studied physics helped establish authentic relationships with the participating students in the classrooms. At the same time, the first author might have played a role in influencing the experiences and perceptions of the students positively. Bøe et al. (2011) emphasised the crucial function of role models for girls’ physics motivations. By presenting herself as a physicist with an interest in EP, the first author might have acted as a role model for some of the students. The first author’s situatedness in the research is an important contextual factor relevant to implementing the EP programme and obtaining the findings. We anticipate future research that will further investigate the different factors that impact students’ experiences and attitudes in EP education.

Conclusion and instructional implications

This study complements and extends previous research in EP education and makes two significant contributions. First, by adopting a phenomenographic lens, this study provides a rich account of how middle-school girls’ experienced Einstein’s general theory of relativity in the classroom. Second, by illustrating how EP education impacted middle-school girls’ interest in and perception of physics, a valuable contribution of this study is the reinforcement of the middle-school science classroom as a critical place to foster positive attitudes in physics and prepare for future career choices.

Crucially, our findings help tailor instructional practices to the experiences of middle-school girls in the physics classroom. We suggest two strategies to improve instructional practices in EP education that can influence middle-school girls’ perception of and orientation to physics. Both strategies aim to increase the personal relevance of EP topics and empower students to see future possibilities in science.

First, we suggest that teachers can progressively expand students’ conceptions of EP according to the three different ways of experiencing Einsteinian topics. Knowledge of the personal, scientific, and world view can help teachers facilitate holistic experiences of EP that also retain personal relevance for students. For example, asking students to think about measuring and operationalising the concepts of time, space, and gravity after discussing these concepts in line with their everyday experiences can help students progress from the personal to the scientific view. Likewise, emphasising how scientific theories entail implications for our general understanding of the world and our place in the world can guide students to a broader world view.

Second, we suggest that teachers can use EP to significantly increase the potential for middle-school girls to see future possibilities in science. Knowledge of the social and cultural aspects of encountering EP in the classroom can help teachers instil a sense of personal relevance and meaningfulness in their students. For example, teachers can challenge stereotypes and help middle-school girls identify with physics by emphasising how Einstein and other physicists relied on creativity and imagination to make significant discoveries. Likewise, by showing how physics continues to present modern-day scientists with open questions and unsolved problems and by sharing their excitement for the scientific process, teachers can build on middle-school girls’ increased interest to inspire and motivate physics choices in the future.

In a pioneering study on EP education with year-6 students (10-11 years), Pitts et al. (2014, p. 383) asked if ‘early exposure to Einstein’s ideas capture students’ interest and challenge their thinking enough to open their minds to new possibilities for their futures?’. We conclude that EP, indeed, offers excellent opportunities to inspire middle-school girls to see future possibilities in physics and science.

Acknowledgements

The Research Council of Norway funded this work through project number 246723 and a FINNUT (Research and Innovation in the Educational Sector) mobility grant. Parts of this research were conducted by the Australian Research Council Linkage Project entitled, ‘Einsteinian physics: A new paradigm for school science’, through project number LP140100694. This work was supported by ESERA through an early career travel award and by the Olav Thon Foundation. The authors would like to thank the Einstein-First team for organising the teacher professional development workshop that led to the Einsteinian physics project addressed in this study. Moreover, the first author would like to thank Perth College Anglican School for Girls, Mount Lawley, Western Australia, Australia, and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav) at the University of Western Australia for having provided a very inspiring research environment. Thanks to the wonderfully smart and curious Perth College students who participated in the Einsteinian physics project. Thanks to Marjan Zadnik for his encouragement and feedback on the first draft and Shon Boublil for his careful reading of a second draft. Thanks to the anonymous reviewers for their excellent suggestions and for helping us improve the quality of the manuscript significantly.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The Research Council of Norway funded this work through project number 246723 and a FINNUT (Research and Innovation in the Educational Sector) mobility grant. Parts of this research were conducted by the Australian Research Council Linkage Project entitled, ‘Einsteinian physics: A new paradigm for school science’, through project number LP140100694. This work was supported by the European Science Education Research Association (ESERA) through an early career travel award and by the Olav Thon Foundation.

Notes

1 www.viten.no/relativity.

2 https://gravitycentre.com.au.

3 The interview guide is available online as supplementary material.

4 The Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) is the primary criterion for entry into undergraduate courses in universities in Australia.