Science Identities: Theory, method and research

370 Pages·2023·4.372 MB·English

by  Henriette Tolstrup Holmegaard, Louise Archer

Contributions from Science Education Research 12
Henriette Tolstrup Holmegaard
Louise Archer   Editors
Science
Identities
Theory, method and research
Contributions from Science Education Research
Volume 12
Editor-in-Chief
Manuela Welzel-Breuer, Heidelberg University of Education, Heidelberg,
Baden-Württemberg, Germany
Editorial Board Members
Costas K. Constantinou, University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus
Niklas Gericke, University of Karlstad, Karlstad, Sweden
Olivia Levrini, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
Isabel Martins, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Sonya Martin, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea (Republic of)
Robin Millar, University of York, York, UK
Iva Stuchlíková, University of South Bohemia, České Budějovice, Czech Republic
Veli-Matti Vesterinen, University of Turku, Turku, Finland
Albert Zeyer , Science Teacher Education, University of Teacher Education
Lucerne, Lucerne, Switzerland
Contributions from Science Education Research is the international, multi-
disciplinary book series of the European Science Education Research Association
(ESERA). The aim of the series is to synthesize, for the benefit of the scholarly
community, the findings of high quality, theoretically-framed research in the domain
of science education as well as comprehensive explorations of specific
methodological strands in science education research. The series aims to publish
books that are innovative in attempting to forge new ways of representing emergent
knowledge in the field. The series includes edited collections of chapters,
monographs and handbooks that are evaluated on the basis of originality, scientific
rigor and significance for science education research. The book series is intended to
focus mainly on work carried out in Europe. However, contributions from researchers
affiliated with non-European institutions and non-members of the European Science
Education Research Association are welcomed. The series is designed to appeal to
a wide audience of researchers and post-graduate students in science education.
Book proposals for this series may be submitted to the Publishing Editor: Claudia
Acuna E-mail: [email protected]
Henriette Tolstrup Holmegaard • Louise Archer
Editors
Science Identities
Theory, method and research
Editors
Henriette Tolstrup Holmegaard Louise Archer
Department of Science Education Institute of Education
University of Copenhagen University College London
Copenhagen, Denmark London, UK
ISSN 2213-3623 ISSN 2213-3631 (electronic)
Contributions from Science Education Research
ISBN 978-3-031-17641-8 ISBN 978-3-031-17642-5 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17642-5
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Preface
This edited collection brings together current research and thinking around the topic
of science identities.
The origins of the idea for the collection emerged during the inaugural meeting
of the new Science Identities Special Interest Group (SIG) at the 2017 European
Science Education Research Association (ESERA) Annual Conference in Dublin,
Ireland. As the funders and coordinators of the new SIG, we were not sure what
appetite there might be for such a collective. Although we felt there was a clear
value and need to bring together and support what we perceived to be a steadily
growing field of innovative work using the concept of science identity. On arrival at
the designated lecture room, we were a little anxious to see how many conference
attendees would actually take up our invitation to attend the meeting and join the
new group. We were delighted—and not a little relieved—to find a room full of
around 40 excited, lively researchers, representing a range of career stages, drawn
from universities across Europe and North America. The discussion and ideas
flowed, and by the end of the meeting, we had agreed to put together a proposal for
this collection.
It is not uncommon for such stories to end with the popular saying that “the rest
is history,” but in our case, this history was somewhat prolonged and challenging
due to the arrival of the global COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. We are indebted and
wish to celebrate the immense efforts of all the chapter authors and reviewers who
rose to this challenge and worked so hard in such difficult circumstances for so long
to produce the final collection. We wish to thank each and every one of you for your
dedication, patience, and generosity in unprecedented times. Thanks also to all the
staff at Springer who have supported and helped produce the book.
So why a collection of work on science identities? Why not science identity? Or
STEM identities? And what value or purpose do we hope this collection will serve?
On the first point, our use of the plural (science identities) reflects the dynamic,
ongoing and processual aspects of identities. But it also illustrate our commitment
to a book that values, showcases, and espouses diverse scholarship. Hence, we have
tried to encourage submissions from authors across different international contexts,
career stages, and who use a range of different interdisciplinary conceptual,
v
vi Preface
analytic, and methodological approaches to understand issues related to science
identity across different formal and informal educational settings with a range of
actors, including both students and teachers. To a fair extent, many of these aims
have been met; however, we are very aware that despite an international spread of
contributors, the collection reflects only researchers working within the Global
North. This is a limitation and inequality that we hope can be substantially addressed
in future works. It is our hope that we with this piece are reaching out to the growing
community of researchers who are applying the lenses of science identities in a
variety of countries and settings and that it can inspire new applications and ideas of
how science identities can be further developed to meet the future challenges of sci-
ence education.
The book title foregrounds science, rather than STEM, largely because we
wanted the book to explore the rich variety of experiences and issues within and
between science disciplines and contexts. Hence chapters explore relationships with
science not only at a general level but also in relation to specific disciplines, sub-
disciplines, and areas such as physics, molecular biomedicine, and geology.
However, as keen-eyed readers will notice, our plural approach also includes a
chapter that focuses on the context of engineering, expanding and testing the bound-
aries of the framing around “science,” adding richness to the collection that we hope
will also signal to future work spanning across the fields of STEM, to draw out new
synergies and differences.
Our intention is that this collection offers readers a rich and stimulating smorgas-
bord of ways of thinking about, understanding and researching topics of identity in
relation to science and STEM. It aims to provide both a grounding/foundation and
a jumping-off point for further work. In particular, we hope that the theme exploring
the link between identities, injustices, and science that runs through the core of the
book will help sustain and nourish work on these important issues. Since the ideas
of the book were proposed at ESERA in Dublin in 2017 and later at the National
Association of Research in Science Teaching (NARST) conference in Atlanta in
2018, the science identity community has increased substantially. As a field which
is deeply ingrained with intersectional injustices and implicated in the ongoing
reproduction of inequity, there is much work still to do in science identity research,
scholarship, and activism.
We hope you will enjoy the breadth and depth of the collection and will love
reading it as much as we do, and that it will be the platform for discussions, ideas,
and dialogue. In particular, we hope that the work showcased within this book will
help sustain and move forward the exciting range of research being conducted
within the field.
Copenhagen, Denmark Henriette Tolstrup Holmegaard

London, UK Louise Archer
Contents
Part I Introduction
1 Understanding and Contextualizing the Field
of Science Identity Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Heidi B. Carlone
Part II Student Science Identities Outside and Inside School
2 “My Love for It Just Wasn’t Enough to Get Me Through”:
A Longitudinal Case Study of Factors Supporting
and Denying Black British Working-Class Young Women’s
Science Identities and Trajectories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Louise Archer, Spela Godec, and Julie Moote
3 “It Was Always About Relationships and It Was Awesome”:
Girls Performing Gender and Identity in an Out-Of-School-Time
Science Conversation Club . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Allison J. Gonsalves and Jrene Rahm
4 Young Women’s Identity Work in Relation to Physics
at the Transition from School to Further Educational Pathways . . . . 67
Thorid Rabe and Freja Kressdorf
5 Student Identity, Aspiration and the Exchange-Value of Physics. . . . 95
Billy Wong
Part III Student Science Identities in Higher Education
6 Science Talent and Unlimited Devotion: An Investigation
of the Dynamics of University Students’ Science Identities
Through the Lens of Gendered Conceptualisations of Talent . . . . . . 113
Henriette Tolstrup Holmegaard and Bjørn Friis Johannsen
vii
viii Contents
7 Doing Geoscience: Negotiations of Science Identity
Among University Students When Learning in the Field . . . . . . . . . . 141
Lene Møller Madsen and Rie Hjørnegaard Malm
8 Identity Perspectives in Research on University
Physics Education: What Is the Problem Represented to Be? . . . . . . 163
Anders Johansson and Johanna Larsson
Part IV Science Teachers’ Identities and Practices
9 Exploring the Connections Between Student-Teacher-
Administration Science Identities in Urban Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Rachel Askew and Katie Wade-Jaimes
10 Science Teacher Identity Work in Colonized
and Racialized Spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
Gale Seiler and Hildah Kwamboka
11 Understanding Science Teacher Identity Development
within the Figured Worlds of Schools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
Gail Richmond and Kraig A. Wray
12 Identities in Action: Opportunities and Risks of Identity
Work in Community and Citizen Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
Colin G. Dixon, Emily M. Harris, and Heidi Ballard
Part V Multi-layered Methodological Approaches to Science Identities
13 Using Qualitative Metasynthesis to Understand the Factors
That Contribute to Science Identity Development Across
Contexts in Secondary and Post-Secondary Students
from Underrepresented Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
Sylvia M. James Butterfield and Karen Benn Marshall
14 Representing STEM Identities as Pragmatic Configurations . . . . . . . 299
Ruurd Taconis
15 How Activity Frames Shape Situated Identity Negotiation:
Theoretical and Practical Insights from an Informal
Engineering Education Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
Smirla Ramos-Montañez and Scott Pattison
Part VI Conclusion
16 Working Towards Justice: Critical Next Steps in Identity
Studies in Science Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361
Angela Calabrese Barton and Edna Tan
Part I
Introduction