“Shut up and calculate”: the available discursive positions in quantum physics courses

Abstract

Educating new generations of physicists is often seen as a matter of attracting good students, teaching them physics and making sure that they stay at the university. Sometimes, questions are also raised about what could be done to increase diversity in recruitment. Using a discursive perspective, in this study of three introductory quantum physics courses at two Swedish universities, we instead ask what it means to become a physicist, and whether certain ways of becoming a physicist and doing physics is privileged in this process. Asking the question of what discursive positions are made accessible to students, we use observations of lectures and problem solving sessions together with interviews with students to characterize the discourse in the courses. Many students seem to have high expectations for the quantum physics course and generally express that they appreciate the course more than other courses. Nevertheless, our analysis shows that the ways of being a ''good quantum physics student'' are limited by the dominating focus on calculating quantum physics in the courses. We argue that this could have negative consequences both for the education of future physicists and the discipline of physics itself, in that it may reproduce an instrumental ''shut up and calculate''-culture of physics, as well as an elitist physics education. Additionally, many students who take the courses are not future physicists, and the limitation of discursive positions may also affect these students significantly.

Analyzing discourse and identity in physics education: Methodological considerations

“…In the second study, I and my co-authors take a similar discursive approach to undergraduate quantum physics [6]. In this ethnographically inspired study of three courses in quantum physics at Swedish universities, we found that many different views of what quantum physics is about were expressed in the discourse of courses, teachers and students.…”

“…In particular, I will discuss the poststructuralist notion of discourse as a social structure for interpretation that shapes what can be said, done or understood in a certain context. Drawing on two studies from my PhD-project [5,6] and other studies of identity in physics education [4,[7][8][9][10], I will argue that using a discursive perspective of identity enables us to answer important questions about students' various relationships to physics without taking the norms of the discipline for granted. For example, in the projects reported here, I and my co-authors have seen how students' negotiations of learning practice in an electromagnetism course can be affected by cultural norms around physics and how the teaching and learning practice in quantum physics classrooms can limit the ways of identifying as a physicist for students.…”

Secondary school students’ views of nature of science in quantum physics

“…Our research could also encourage teachers to address different QP interpretations in their lessons because many interviewees mentioned that the idea of the 'unsolved problem' of QP makes the subject more attractive than the 'facts' physicists agreed on long ago. By including philosophical aspects in QP lessons, teachers could not only broaden students' views on the subject but also involve and attract a larger variety of students (Johansson et al, 2018).…”

A Metalinguistic Study on the Photon Interpretation Present in Physics Textbooks Approved in PNLDEM 2015: Elements for a Symmetric Sociology of Science Education

“…While forming a physicist demands for him to learn to substitute values in equations whose meaning, construction, and implications mean anything to him (an issue that must be addressed) (Johansson, Andersson, Salminen-Karlsson, & Elmgren, 2016), forming a citizen takes much more than that. We cannot simply copy the baccalaureate model for high school simply by deleting the derivatives and integrals.…”