Swimming against the Tide: Five Assumptions about Physics Teacher Education Sustained by the Culture of Physics Departments

Abstract

This study explores the culture of physics departments in Sweden in relation to physics teacher education. The commitment of physics departments to teacher education is crucial for the quality of physics teacher education and the way in which physics lecturers talk about teacher education is significant, since it can affect trainees' physics learning and the choice to become a physics teacher. We analyzed interviews with eleven physicists at four Swedish universities, looking for assumptions in relation to teacher training that are expressed in their talk. We found five tacit assumptions about physics teacher training, that together paint a picture of trainee physics teachers moving in the "wrong" direction, against the tide of physics. These are the Physics Expert Assumption: the purpose of all undergraduate physics teaching is to create physics experts. The Content Assumption: the appropriate physics content for future school physics teachers is the same as that for future physicists. The Goal Assumption: the role of a school physics teacher is to create new physicists. The Student Assumption: students who become physics teachers do not have the ability to make it as successful physicists. The Teaching Assumption: If you know physics then it's not difficult to teach it. We suggest that these five assumptions, if perpetuated without reflection, risk working against high quality physics teacher education. For physics teacher educators, our results can be used as a lens to reflect on the local departmental culture and its effect on teacher education.

Chilean physics teacher educators' hybrid identities and border crossings as opportunities for agency within school and university

“…Hierarchies, also, such as the tension between being a scientist or a physics teacher (Aydeniz & Hodge, 2011) may be challenged by taking hybrid positions such as Andrés's and Carla's. In this point, this study resonates with Larsson et al (2021) regarding the assumption they identified in their context as “if you know physics, it's not difficult to teach” (p. 16), which may be similar to the narrow views of pedagogy as a series of techniques that some educators in physics departments hold. These practices reproduce an epistemic hierarchy and are dangerous for future teachers' identity development because, as Wallace (2018) argues, they are also products of a process that in neoliberal settings reproduces hierarchies among types of knowledge, and as a result, among people.…”

“…The same logic could also be seen between types of knowledges and professions, such as disciplinary and pedagogical knowledge. For example, in a study conducted by Larsson et al (2021), five assumptions within physics teacher education held by physics lecturers were noted. Those assumptions have to do with a shared view of the participants in their study, such that students in physics departments are seen as future physicists who need to be primarily taught physics content.…”

“I try to encourage my students to think, read, and talk science” intelligible identities in university teachers' figured worlds of higher education biology

“…However, positioning research on a pedestal as a phenomenon is not unique to higher education biology. It has also been discussed in other higher education natural science contexts such as physics and engineering (e.g., Larsson, 2021) and to be related to dominant masculine norms in higher science education (e.g., Ottemo et al, 2021). One approach to discuss this phenomenon is from the perspective of power, research being collectively valued, research identities being hegemonically recognized as masculine and dominant (e.g., Chen, 2015; Chen et al, 2015) and hence competence assigned to certain bodies.…”

“…Rooted in feminist and critical pedagogies, research employing the concept of science identity has generated crucial insights and understandings of processes influencing participation in science practices (e.g., Adams & Gupta, 2017;Avraamidou, 2020b;Beijaard et al, 2004;Carlone & Johnson, 2007;Gonsalves et al, 2019;Hazari et al, 2013Hazari et al, , 2020Jackson & Seiler, 2013;Moore, 2008;Ong et al, 2018;Rahm & Moore, 2016). Simultaneously, science identity research has diversified in terms of both education environment and level such as out of school (e.g., Archer et al, 2016), primary (e.g., Archer et al, 2013), middle (e.g., Tan et al, 2013), and secondary school education (e.g., Archer et al, 2017;Carlone, 2003;Hazari et al, 2010;Holmegaard et al, 2014) and has furthermore shaped understandings of tertiary science (e.g., Avraamidou, 2020b;Jackson & Seiler, 2013;Johansson, 2018) and science teacher education (e.g., Avraamidou, 2016;Larsson, 2019Larsson, , 2021. Despite generating valuable insights in diverse educational contexts, qualitative work on possible and impossible science identities in higher education biology is rather scarce.…”

On the periphery of university physics: trainee physics teachers’ experiences of learning undergraduate physics

“…This argument also has bearing on the need to attract students to physics teaching despite higher status and salary in other careers (Watt and Richardson 2008), as well as the belief that trainee teachers are less capable than other physics students (Larsson et al 2021). It has been suggested that the most talented and ambitious students should be recruited to teacher training in order to create highly skilled physics teachers (T-TEP 2012), but there have been few suggestions about how this may be achieved.…”