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

Abstract

Higher education biology is often imagined, perceived, and described as having reached gender equality in terms of who gets to participate in disciplinary practices. However, like any other natural science discipline, higher education biology is a world whose landscapes are shaped by (re)productions of historical, cultural, and social norms. We explore these norms through the lens of identity, asking what identities are recognized by university biology teachers at a large Swedish university, analyzing 94 teaching statements written when applying for faculty positions in biology. We argue that in and through teaching statements, university biology teachers negotiate and perform overarching academic and disciplinary norms and discourses with the goal to present themselves as intelligible candidates. As statements of value, they thereby display implicit and explicit identities recognized in worlds of higher education biology. Using a discourse analytical framework, we identified two university teacher identities imagined as intelligible: Research Science Teachers and Facilitating Science Teachers.Research Science Teachers position research and associated masculine-coded competences as anchor points

Masculinized discourses of STEM interest, performance, and competence that shape university STEM students' recognition of a “STEM person”

“…While empowering students as agents of change offers underexplored opportunities, we also recognize that STEM Discourses are primarily driven by those in power, more central to the academic STEM community: university STEM faculty. We point to research like Günter et al (2023), whose discourse analysis of university science faculty applications revealed ways in which applicants positioned "researchers" as having unique access to knowledge and therefore its transfer-reproducing notions of STEM faculty as unquestionable holders of knowledge. This work points to the importance and need for additional studies of how faculty communicate gendered STEM Discourses, while highlighting systemic structures that invite their reproduction.…”

“We need to step it up—We are basically the future”: Latinx young women co‐construct science storylines in high school chemistry

“…Since figured worlds outline what it means to participate, local definitions of science, and who is considered as a contributor in the classroom (Calabrese Barton et al, 2013;Gonsalves et al, 2013;Harper & Kayumova, 2022;Varelas et al, 2020), the framework has been used extensively to understand the authoring of science identities (Danielsson et al, 2023;Urrieta, 2007;Varelas, 2012). Researchers have applied the figured worlds framework across diverse science contexts and age groups, exploring elementary students' imaginary worlds (Kane, 2012), illuminating resources in afterschool clubs for adolescents (Gonsalves et al, 2013), mapping out science identity trajectories for nontraditional "latecomer" college students (Jackson & Seiler, 2013), and interpreting values from teaching statements of biology faculty (Günter et al, 2021(Günter et al, , 2023.…”

Teacher Education Becoming Elsewhere : An Affirmative Critique of Student Experiences through Intersectional Corpomaterial Perspectives

“…Today, research on Swedish higher education related to student experiences of discrimination, power structures and exclusionary processes, shows for example how sexism and racism are still prevalent in medical education (Kristoffersson 2021); how biology students in higher education must negotiate masculine norms of science, even though the programme is dominated by female students, proportionally (Günter 2022); how students struggle when it comes to norms related to age and class, and how these norms are making students feel like outsiders (Thunborg, Bron and Edström 2012). Other studies show how students and university staff with immigrant backgrounds must negotiate processes of Othering, Swedish and white norms, as well as western ethnocentric perspectives and a homogenic faculty of 'Swedish men' at universities (de los Reyes 2007;Fazlhashemi 2002).…”