“…Our approach to exploring students' engagement with science is grounded in notions of identity—an understanding that sees the lack of interest in school science as a product of the mismatch between popular representations of science, the manner in which it is taught, and the aspirations, ideals, and developing identities of young adolescents. Indeed there is a large body of work that would indicate that students' sense of self‐identity is a major factor in how they respond to school subjects (Head, 1985; Schreiner & Sjøberg, 2007) and research has drawn attention to the ways in which identities (and inequalities) of gender, social class, and ethnicity can impact on students' engagement with science (e.g., Brickhouse & Potter, 2001; Calabrese Barton & Brickhouse, 2006; Carlone, 2004; Carlone & Johnson, 2007; Mickelson, 1990; Springate, Atkinson, Straw, Lamont, & Grayson, 2008). Our theoretical approach draws on feminist poststructuralist (e.g., Butler, 1990; Francis, 2008), critical sociological (e.g., Bourdieu, 1990) and postcolonial (e.g., Bhabha, 1990; Hall, 1992) theorizations of identities and inequalities of gender, social class, and ethnicity.…”