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[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Gender in Physics.] This article analyzes masculinity and experimental practices within three different physics communities. This work is premised on the understanding that the discipline of physics is not only dominated by men, but also is laden with masculine connotations on a symbolical level, and that this limited and limiting construction of physics has made it difficult for many women to find a place in the discipline. Consequently, we argue that in order to further the understanding of gender dynamics within physics communities and enrich the current understandings about the lack of women in physics, perspectives from masculinity studies are crucial. The article draws on three different ethnographic case studies dealing with undergraduate students, graduate students, and research scientists.

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Grounded in sociocultural theory, this study explores how the figured world of science is reworked through a series of multi‐media activities that were introduced into a girls‐only conversation club in an after school program for Teens. The study is part of a multi‐sited ethnography in which we explored youths' engagement with science within three sites. In this paper, we focus on a qualitative case study of one site. We present an analysis of the kinds of resources and cultural models of science that youth mobilized as they re‐figured science together over time, and in a space usually reserved for talk about girls' issues. Our study revealed that a meaningful introduction of science into an out‐of‐school‐time (OST) space that values youths' prior experiences seemed to depend on a two‐way exchange: re‐figuring their experiences as science‐experiences; and the re‐figuring of science to include their every‐day experiences. The study was successful in helping the girls re‐figure the world of science in ways that went beyond the mobilization of cultural models tied to school science only. Through collage, video production, formal and informal dialogue, youth mobilized resources from youth culture to position themselves as insiders to science and to refigure science to include resources from their everyday experiences. Yet, that figuring was also heavily marked by time and space. Follow‐up interviews point to a limited shifting of what counts as “real science” or how the youth consider themselves in relation to science. We conclude with a discussion of the gap between youth interest driven science experiences and science experiences driven by disciplinary practices detached from the world of youth. We discuss the implications of such a tension for introducing science into OST settings with program goals that extend beyond science learning. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 50: 1068–1097, 2013

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Background: Research in engineering education has pointed to the need for new engineers to develop a broader skillset with an emphasis on "softer" social skills. However, there remains strong tensions in the identity work that engineers must engage in to balance the technical demands of the discipline with the new emphasis on heterogeneous skills (Faulkner, Social Studies of Science 37:331-356, 2007). This study explores how three unconventional students experience these tensions in the final year of their construction engineering program, and as they move in and out of workplace field experiences. Results: Using a figured worlds framework (Holland et al., Identity and agency in cultural worlds, 1998), we explore the dominant subject positions for students in construction engineering classroom and workplaces in a 3-year Swedish engineering program. Results demonstrate that dominant subject positions for construction engineers can trouble students' identity work as they move across classroom and workplace settings.Conclusions: This study expands our knowledge of the complexity of students' identity work across classroom and workplace settings. The emergence of classroom and workplace masculinities that shape the dominant subject positions available to students are shown to trouble the identity work that students engage in as they move across these learning spaces. We examine students' identity strategies that contribute to their persistence through the field. Finally, we discuss implications for teaching and research in light of students' movements across these educational contexts.

This article reports on research investigating the experiences and resources that make science thinkable for undergraduate science majors as they engage in postsecondary science contexts. We regard these experiences and resources as contributing to science majors' science capital, and we suggest that science capital accumulates over time across identity trajectories. Using a multiple case study approach, we characterize seven undergraduate science majors' identity trajectories that they narrate through their stories of experiences with science in school, out of school and into postsecondary education. We examine how they navigate sources of science capital (e.g., families, science outreach), and the value they attribute to their science capital once they enter science programs in university. We also consider how their access to science capital influences their reasons for engaging in science outreach. To characterize students' movements into postsecondary education, and their experiences in postsecondary science, we crafted three identity trajectories: the “expected trajectory,” “persistent trajectory” and the “new directions trajectory.” These trajectories helped us to examine how science majors' identities mediate their perceptions of the use and exchange values of their science capital and the doxa of science that they legitimate. This study contributes to our understanding of how science capital operates along identity trajectories into postsecondary science, and demonstrates that simply having access to resources that contribute to students' accumulation of science capital is not sufficient for sustained engagement in science.