Speaker
Description
Insights from Physics Identity Research for Educational Practice
The underrepresentation of different social groups in physics has been the subject of research for decades. Yet, the questions Who decides to engage in physics? and Which factors shape these decisions? remain highly relevant.
Within physics education research, physics identity theory (PIT) has become an established framework for conceptualising this multilevel problem. Bringing together different strands of research, PIT holistically approaches participation in physics as a complex interplay between individual factors (such as interest) and the societal and social contexts (e.g. recognition by teachers) in which engagement with physics takes place.
This contribution seeks to provide an introduction to the physics identity framework and resulting insights on how and why students do (not) engage with physics. In fact, an implementation gap seems to limit the translation of what research tells us about the development of physics identities into educational practice. Interventions designed to broaden participation in physics—such as project weeks, outreach activities, or programs in schools—are often only loosely grounded in theoretical and empirical evidence and are rarely evaluated systematically. We therefore present current research projects that aim to further understand physics identity development and explore how to make these findings usable for practice.
