Learning in physics by doing laboratory work: towards a new conceptual framework

Abstract

Drawing on a study that explores university students’ experiences of doing laboratory work in physics, this article outlines a proposed conceptual framework for extending the exploration of the gendered experience of learning. In this framework situated cognition and post‐structural gender theory are merged together. By drawing on data that aim at exploring the gendered experience of learning in physics in the laboratory setting, a case is made for the proposed conceptual framework to facilitate an analysis of gender as an active process that relates the dynamics of this process to the emerging physicist identities of the students. In other words, this framework allows for an analysis of the gendered learning experiences in a context such as physics education that goes well beyond the usual ‘women‐friendly’ teaching approaches.

Keywords:

• physics
• education
• identity
• situated cognition
• post‐structural gender theory
• laboratory

Notes

1. Over the past ten years or so this research has broadened to include student and teacher epistemology (Linder 1992; Hammer 1995; Lising and Elby 2005) as well as fields such as metacognition (Koch 2001).

2. Such studies are more common in educational research in mathematics (Herzig 2004; Mendick 2005; Rodd and Bartholomew 2006) and engineering (Henwood 1998; Tonso 1998; Walker 2001; Stonyer 2002) than in educational research in physics and our study has thus been inspired by studies dealing with students’ learning experiences in relation to the cultural norms of other scientific and technological disciplines.

3. In contrast to viewing learning as an acquisition of knowledge. For a discussion on these two metaphors of learning, see, for example, Sfard (1998).

4. ‘Masculinities and femininities’ and ‘gender manifestations’ will hereafter be used interchangeably.

5. Further developed in Danielsson (2007).

6. The interview was conducted in Swedish; the English translation is formulated with the intention to capture the meaning of the Swedish original rather than being a literal translation.

7. For a lengthier discussion on this issue, see our conference paper (Danielsson and Linder 2007), which is available from http://www.fysik.uu.se/didaktik.