Paper short abstract:

This presentation explores how characteristics of the practice of physics are articulated by higher education physics students, with a particular emphasize on how these characteristics can be understood as gendered.

Paper long abstract:

Physics is considered a ‘hard’ science; hard both as in difficult and as in providing hard, objective knowledge claims. It is strongly aligned with cleverness, and also with masculinity. But what other stories can be told about this discipline? This presentation explores how characteristics of the practice of physics are articulated by higher education physics students, with a particular emphasize on how these characteristics can be understood as gendered. The intention is to distinguish both hegemonic and unexpected articulations of physics. The empirical data consists of 21 life-history interviews with first- and second-year university students in physics. The analysis is inspired by Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse analysis and looks for signs that physics is articulated together with (such as, difficult, dazzling, beautiful, prestigious). In a second stage of analysis the signs these first level of signs are articulated with are identified, to establish how chains of equivalence are thereby produced. In doing so, it is possible to identify how different meanings of physics are produced, by how signs are articulated in relation to other signs (for example, that ‘difficult’ is articulated with ‘challenging’, ‘absorbing’ and ‘mental well-being’, and ‘beauty’ is articulated with fascination).