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Girls and Physics
- 1. Girls and physics: the role of culture and pedagogies in widening participation for girls in the physical sciences Why is it I can do hours of physics revision and still not know a thing, but when I read heat I memorise everything? You couldnt print a story about radiation or electromagnetic waves, could you? Lucy, Staffordshire (Heat magazine, 27 March 2010, p 56) The eye that directs a needle in the delicate meshes of embroidery will equally well bisect a star with the spider web of the micrometer Maria Mitchell (1818 - 1889) Astronomer and mathematician Introduction In this essay I set out to discuss the relationship between women and physics. Women are notoriously underrepresented in physics (and science as a whole) Murphy and Whitelegg (2006). Out of all the sciences, physics has the lowest participation rate for women and in addition, those that do participate often leave (Barbosa, 2003). Hazari and Potvin (2005) reproduce a graph which shows a decline in the percentage of women participating in physics in the United States, from just above 45% at high school to around 20% at undergraduate level and then around 5% at full professor level. In Sweden, 6% of professors of physics in are women and parti cipation rates by women in physics at undergraduate level ranges from between 20 to 35% (Danielsson and Linder, 2009). I was curious about the low participation rates and wanted to investigate the reasons for them. I was also curious about feminism and the nature of science as both had been issues that I had wondered about if I should think and more know more about. In fact, until I started writing this essay and studying SEH806 I had not even considered the difference between biological sex and gender, to me the two were the same. I did not understand that gender was a social construct and that by some gender could be considered a culture with its own sets of practices (Danielsson and Linder, 2009). Hazari and Potvin (2005) mention three viewpoints that could account for low participation rates for girls/females in physics. These were: Inherent differences there are biological differences between males and females that make females less likely to study physics Socialised differences girls learn not to want to study physics. Cultural bias which brings the two above together because it focuses on problems in the community of physics that causes females to lose interest or opt out This essay chose to focus on the last and in particular considers: how might the culture of physics dissuade women from participating in physics?
- 2. The two quotes at the head of the essay, although separated by over 100 years, perhaps hint at the issue of culture as being one of the reasons why girls/women are underrepresented in physics. Lucy is obviously what we might call a normal teenage girl. She reads Heat magazine. Heat is a weekly publication whose main preoccupations are celebrity gossip and fashion, both subjects we would expect many teenage girls and women to be interested in. Both subjects are firmly embedded into what we might call female/teenage culture. Lucy realises, however, that she finds it more difficult to remember physics information than what is or is not in vogue and tongue in cheek asks the magazine to include some physics information that might help her revision. Maria Mitchell also speaks about a subject that was part of female culture in the 1800s that being needlework and also what was not part of a female culture, astronomy. Her quote tries to bridge the gap between what is female and what is not by emphasising that the skills required in both are of equal importance, the same or very transferable. Many things contribute to the establishment and maintenance of a culture, including traditions, members of the culture and their practices, so I attempted to look at how to determine what the gender of a physics culture was by drawing on writings about gender and science both in the past and in the present. There was very little material dealing with the culture of physics and given that there was more material about gender and science I have used a good deal of that to support my discussions. Does science have a gender? And if so, does physics? How does this gender influence the nature of science practice? Is there an impact of gender, either in terms of taking a feminist viewpoint or being female, on the type of investigations that are performed in science? Does that then impact on knowledge? The perceptions of scientists by the public were also discussed in order to explore the idea that a cultures membership may also affect whether outsiders feel that they would be able to participate in that culture. Do the perceived members of the science culture dissuade women from participating in it? The culture of physics many women will be exposed to that will determine their future participation in the subject will be that presented to them in educational contexts. Therefore, how physics is taught to them is particularly important and in that context I discuss two disparate learning theories and pedagogies. Do girls/women learn in a different way to men and if so how? What is the dominant learning theory in operation at present? Does it encourage women to participate in physics? The readings and discussions that comprised Block Two of SEH806 were particularly important in this regard. The two learning theories I looked were; the transmission model of learning and situated cognition. The former is sometimes identified as being a masculine pedagogy and the latter has been identified by several writers (e.g. Brickhouse, (2001), Murphy and Whitelegg (2006), Danielsson and Linder,(2009)), as being an appropriate feminist pedagogy. Situated cognition was particularly interesting because it potentially united the two themes explored in the essay: culture and pedagogy, as well as involving the concept of identity in relation to memberships of cultures which I discuss briefly. I have used the term culture rather than community because I wanted to discuss historical influences that might influence the knowledge and practices of science, and I felt that culture
- 3. better represented this holistic view. However it is fair to say that community as it is understood in the social sciences could be used interchangeably with culture in many contexts. It should also be recognised that the members of the female gender are themselves extremely diverse. I realise I have taken a very general view of my own gender and this should be borne i n mind when reading the essay. (Introduction:997 words) Approach This essay has taken the form of a literature review and I used a variety of methods to track down information. I had decided that I wanted to write an essay on girls and physics, so I started by entering girls and physics into the Google search engine. This identified Murphy and Whiteleggs (2006) very thorough review of literature and I understood that it would be an excellent source for references - even though the review itself presented challenges to me. It was so thorough itself that I was worried that I would merely write an essay that would paraphrase that review. However, as I undertook my reading I found that I could construct an essay that was my own voice because I had become interested in cultures and pedagogy and I chose to pursue that line of enquiry rather than produce an essay that merely detailed why females did not participate in physics. I also find the Google search engine a very good source for more generic information, it was through Google that I came across Fox-Kellers and Barr and Birkes books. By also entering What is a Physics culture into Google I came across Danielsson and Linder (2009) and their very recent work which also linked back to Brickhouses work on situated cognition. I took the view that I wanted to explore what was interesting to me, so I did not consciously decide that I would concentrate on using course material, although the course material was also very useful for finding references of interest and several references were useful when I was discussing the nature of science. I probably rely far too much on Google as a way of finding information. However, I was very strict about what sources of information I used in the essay. I avoided information that was presented in websites I was not familiar with and I preferred to track down information when it came from an established academic journal, particularly if a subscription for the journal was held by the Open University library. I also used personal correspondence in one instance as I was having trouble tracking down a definition of a male pedagogy. My source was very credible, having substantial experience in the scholarship of teaching and learning and also being a science teacher in a University herself. I also relied on personal observation for the claim that the transmission method is the predominate method of teaching and learning in action. Although I have not made a systematic study of the use of the transmission model, every academic (around 20) I have asked in the past year has confirmed its dominance in our Universities. As I come into contact with senior academics who have strategic responsibility for teaching and learning in Universities I consider them a good source. The heat reference I found while taking a break from writing the essay and sitting down with a cup of coffee and some chocolate. It was a serendipitous moment, it bridged two cultures and I make no apologies for using it.
- 4. (Approach: 507 words) Discussion The gender of science Science has a culture of its own that any individual have to join, live in and contribute to and as such has its own defining features. As the subject of this essay is women and physics I focused on the attributes of science culture that are connected with gender and I have focused on (i) the nature of science and how scientific knowledge is perceived to be constructed including discussion about how objectivity and subjectivity are perceived as being related to science, (ii) how gender may have altered the reality of scientific knowledge and (iii) views of the membership of those in science culture. (i) Gender and the nature of science and how scientific knowledge is constructed: objectivity and subjectivity The nature of science was explored in the SEH806 reading What is science?: Teaching Science in Secondary Schools (Reiss, 2002). Reiss is concerned with science as taught at school and he argues that in that context, science is often presented as immutable, universal and acultural. Science then is seen by many people, including scientists, as being about scientists discovering eternal truths that exist independently of them and of the cultural context in which these discoveries are made. (p.4). Science is then objective and not subjective; that is, removed from the individual and not subject to social or cultural factors. Fox-Keller (1996 p.6-7) also notes that there is a "deeply rooted popular mythology that casts objectivity, reason, and mind as male, and subjectivity, feeling, and nature as female." Fox-Keller writes very detailed accounts about the history of gender in science in her book Reflections on Gender and Science most of which is too detailed to explore in this essay, but she postulates that that a division between male/female, objectivity/subjectivity, reason/emotion in culture in general seemed to happen at the time of the Enlightenment (Chapter 3) with the rational/male/objective attributes identified firmly within science and the emotional/female/subjective located outside science. Brick house (2001) also lays the blame for these dualistic definitions of science and not -science firmly at the door of the Enlightenment. Both Brickhouse and Fox-Keller argue convincingly that objective and subjective as understood in this context, as part of the definition of the nature of science, should be re-merged. As a model for achieving this, Brickhouse (2001) cites Harding's (1991) 'theory' of strong objectivity which states 'we need an objectivity that is understood as part of the natural and social worlds and therefore also accountable to them'. I.e. science is neither objective or subjective, there is no split between the two and that good science would involve both in a strong objectivity. In other words, when considering the nature of science knowledge one should realise that it is partly objective (situated in the natural world) and partly subjective (situated in the social world) i.e. there is no science knowledge that transcends culture and gender. Hodson, (1998) explores the need for a more personalised science, one in which scientific knowledge is built as part of social enterprise, through a community and therefore links objectivity and subjectivity: If one takes the view that science is a communal activity, and that the ideas of
- 5. particular scientists only become accepted as scientific knowledge when they achieve consensus within the community of scientists, it follows that many of the sociological, psychological, political and economic issues that influence individuals could, and sometimes will, influence the decisions that the community makes. (p.16) This historical separation of objective and subjective also has had consequences for how scientific knowledge has become situated in science education. The knowledge itself is removed from any kind of human or social context and presented almost as a self -contained package it is made abstract. Barr and Birke (1998) speak about the rise of abstraction in science education in their book "Common Science? Women, Science and Knowledge" on page 28 and suggest "It taught a particular kind of science, divorced from people's needs and minds." Bruner (1996) also argues that there has been a divorce between human narratives and science which has meant logical-scientific thinking has permeated science education. Bruner states ...it is no secret that for many of the young now in school, science has come to seem inhuman and uncaring and off-putting He goes onto to say The image of science as a human and cultural undertaking might be improved if it were also conceived as a history of human beings overcoming received ideas- whether Lavosier overcoming the dogma of phlogiston, Darwin rethinking respectable creationism, or Freud daring to look under the smug surface of our self-satisfaction. We may have erred in divorcing science from the narrative of culture. (Bruner, 1996, p.42) . (ii) Gender effects and the reality of scientific knowledge In addition, to the separation of knowledge from context, there have also been studies that have looked at how the reality of scientific knowledge may have been changed as result of feminist or female interventions. Fox-Keller (2004) ponders the impact feminism may have had on science knowledge. She notes that in terms of participation in science in North America, that there had been increases in the percentage of doctorates awarded to women in the natural sciences over the previous 30 years. An increase had also been reflected in the numbers of profe ssorships now held by women in the natural sciences (page 7). However, in the rest of the paper she describes cultural feminist shifts in biological knowledge that were realised because a different perspective was used to investigate particular subjects in reproductive and evolutionary biology, i.e. the researchers discovered new findings about science because they went looking for them" page 8. These involved the importance of females or objects attributed to females i.e. ova in fertilisation, the sexual behaviour of female animals. Fox-Keller suggests that the very accuracy of science knowledge may have been compromised in the past by an overly masculine viewpoint which had been cultured out of historical tradition and transmitted to scientists in the present. Similarly, Fox-Keller (1986) page 139 chapter 7, speculates whether quantum mechanics can adequately describe the nature of reality and that it may suffer from the same gender constraints as exhibited around the role of the ova in fertilisation. This illustrates how practice influenced by culture and historical tradition can influence the nature of knowledge. This knowledge then percolates back into the culture and reinforces its cultural traditions. If the knowledge created by the culture is not "female friendly" then why would females be attracted to it? As Fox-Keller(1996 p. 11) says about Boyles Law, but equally relevant here Judgement about which phenomena are worth studying, which kinds of data are significant -as well
- 6. as which descriptions (or theories) of those phenomena and most adequate, satisfying, useful, and even reliable - depend critically on the social, linguistic, unscientific practices of those making the judgement in question and this will include their gender. (iii) Views of scientists: the members of the science culture Members of a culture are as important to culture as historical traditions. It is also through the actions of its members that cultures are defined. It follows then that the perceptions of what kinds of people are members of that culture may influence whether those outside will wish to join it. What do women think of scientists and how might that impact on their perception of science culture? In order to investigate the images of scientists that women might hold, Barr and Birke (1998 p. 29) asked 120 women about their images of scientists. The responses they received could be matched to six stereotypes of scientists previously identified by another researcher plus one extra that had been identified by Barr and Birke. These were: The mad scientist pursuing their work obsessively with no care for social consequences The absent minded professor with little or no social skills The emotionless scientist who values reason over emotion The adventurer scientist pursuing glory and exploration The helpless (and therefore inadequate) scientist whose experiments go out of control The idealist scientist in search of a scientific utopia The elitist scientist motivated to maintain his/her place in social hierarchies and speaks in a language that those outside the elite cannot understand. Barr and Birke stress that although these are stereotypes that did not matter. What did matter was ...the persistence of these images and their general negativity. (p.30) Even those stereotypes with more positive connotations, the adventurer and the idealist were identified by relativity few women who took part in the study. More recently in 2003, Sir Christopher Frayling undertook an exercise with schoolchildren to draw a scientist. This was a similar exercise that had been undertaken almost 40 years before by the educationalist Dwain Chambers. The results were as Frayling put it depressing , he says ...more than half of the results featured buttoned lab coats with pockets containing pencils, pens or test tubes; spectacles, mouth open and uneven teeth; frizzy, spiky/tufty hair or bald head; arms wide open with each hand clutching a bubbling or smoking test tube, or in some cases a syringe. At least girls ... drew smiling scientists more often than the boys, and Frayling notes that the numbers of girls drawing female scientists had risen from 1.4% in the earlier to approximately 50%. (Frayling, 2006). A trend can be seen from both these studies. This that scientists are seen as removed from society, different and eccentric. Pedagogy The culture of physics many women will be exposed to that will determine their future participation in the subject will be that presented to them in educational contexts. Therefore, how physics is
- 7. taught to them is particularly important and in that context I discuss two disparate learning theories and pedagogies. Do girls/women learn in a different way to men and if so how? What is the dominant learning theory in operation at present? Does it encourage women to participate in physics? Hazari and Potvin (2005) argue that any cultural bias of physics will be transmitted through three routes, one of these being via pedagogy. They say The cultural bias of physics is transmitted in three ways: pedagogically, by transmitting a narrow message about what it means to do physics rather than allowing for individuals to define it for themselves; academically by defining what is acceptable physics research and what is not and socially, through the structure, interactions and treatment in the field. I have dealt with some aspects of the last two in the previous section where I discussed that physics culture is partly presented in terms of: the nature of the physics knowledge and the views women will have of members of the physics cultures, physicists themselves. In this section I will attempt to illustrate how the pedagogical treatment of physics, influenced by its culture, may have impeded female participation in physics. Gender and learning styles Head (1996) investigated differences in learning styles between males and females and summarised what he thought these were as oppositional pairs: Males extract information (i.e. remove it from context) and females embed information (i.e. relate it to other knowledge) Males are more impulsive and willing to take risks, females are more cautious and reflective. This is also reflected in the work of Danielsson and Linder (2009) who noted that male students tend to launch themselves into experiments and tinker with equipment whereas females tend to read the instructions and take more care before they start experimental work (Danielsson and Linder, 2009) Self-value males tend to blame failure on external factors but attribute success to themselves, girls do the opposite Males tend to compete whereas females tend to co-operate. These differences have implications for how physics could be taught and assessed. For example, it is thought that multiple choice questions (MCQs) favour males because the tests use the extraction of information model. This can be circumvented by devising MCQs that are complex and more than straight forward identification of the correct answer. Classroom activities could be designed to avoid competitive activities and encourage co-operation. (Head, 1996). Stadler et al (2000) investigated the different learning styles of boys and girls who were studying physics. They found that boys were more likely to find meaning and understanding of physics within the bounds of the subject, whereas girls were more likely to seek understanding of physics by attempting to relate the knowledge in a wider context. In other words ..boys appear to be more interested in the internal coherence of physics (and technology) whereas the girls tend to look for an external coherence... (p.420). Murphy and Whitelegg (2006 p.4) also noted that, girls tended to need to see the relevance of physics to themselves and the things that concern them more than boys did. It should be noted that both these studies describe tendencies and indeed Murphy and Whitelegg (2006 p. 14) do specify that for some boys the abstraction of knowledge is not seen as an
- 8. issue and in some cases is considered as a challenge. However, it would seem that abstraction of knowledge from context in course material would appear in general to favour the learning styles of boys rather than that of girls. How does this relate to the way physics is taught and learnt and is this gendered? Male and female pedagogies An attempt was made to find a definition of a male pedagogy with little success. When one undertakes a search using Google very little useful information emerges about a male pedagogy, although feminist pedagogies abound. After such a search, this one quote was found in the College English journal, in a paper which was detailing an academic discourse in relation to another paper. The quote says Let's identify a masculine pedagogy as any strategy which positions the teacher as the center of authority in the classroom. At this center, the teacher knows the "truth" in a positivistic sense. Her duty is to some-how give her students this "truth." In this framework, lectures are an ideal way of transmitting large bodies of information to the awaiting students. Ewald (1992) p.354. In addition, a science lecturer colleague in correspondence came up with the following definition Male pedagogy relies on the notion that the lecturer is central to a teaching experience and the students are (a) peripheral to the experience and (b) subordinate to the experience. (Tierney, 2010, personal correspondence). Murphy et al (2008 p.16) offer a set of characteristics of a transmission model of teaching and learning, which connect the transmission model to the masculine pedagogies above. These characteristics include the teacher being the authority that transmits knowledge with the student being the passive receiver. The knowledge that is transmitted is entirely objective and therefore outside and independent of the social, cultural and gender context of the learner. These characteristics are also clearly resonant with the historical definitions of the cultures of science and physics described in the previous section. In my previous section, I argue that the separation of objectivity/subjectivity has resulted in the separation of knowledge from context, i.e. science knowledge has become increasingly abstracted. Barr and Birke (1998) also directly attribute abstraction to the transmission model of learning where the learner is "a passive recipient of knowledge" (p.28). Coupled with the observat ions above regarding males tending to extract knowledge (and therefore being able to cope with the abstract) it would seem reasonable to assume that the transmission model may favour males over females. Unfortunately, in many aspects of education (particularly higher education) the transmission model is still the pre-dominant model of teaching (personal experience) and it can be considered a masculine pedagogy. Brickhouse (2001) sets out a strong argument for taking up situated cognition as a suitable fe minist pedagogy. She states that there are commonalities between feminist epistemologies and situated cognition as both counteract the dualistic schism of knowledge and context encouraged by the Enlightenment. Situated cognition does not assign special contexts for learning, learning happens all the time in many different contexts. Learning is happening all the time whenever a person engages in activity in the world. Learning is unavoidable. It is what is required in the process of becoming a person (p.286). Just by existing and interacting with the world, the person learns. More importantly in terms of knowledge, situated cognition argues that knowledge is not abstracted from the learner but constructed by the learner locally, individually and socially - Knowledge,
- 9. including scientific knowledge is not merely influenced by its context, it is co-constitutive of context. (Brickhouse, p 285). This would seem to be the antithesis of the abstract and objective way knowledge is presented in the transmission model. The learner is situated at the centre of their own learning; if learning happens all the time the emphasis on the teacher as being the source and authority for knowledge is diminished. This is consistent with the pedagogies that feminis ts have sought to develop (Brickhouse, p. 283). Another important characteristic of the situated cognition theory is its emphasis on learner identity and how identity can be transformed by learning. Additionally, situated cognitists believe that Learning is not merely a matter of acquiring knowledge, it is a matter of deciding what kind of person you are and want to be and engaging in those activities that make one part of the relevant communities (Brickhouse, 2009 emphasis mine). In other words, joining a new community (or culture) might require a change in personal identity or at least, might require that a comparison be made between self and the community in question to ascertain the degree of fit. If so, this would have consequences for women who may find the masculine culture of physics offputting. Brickhouses article is fundamentally a theoretical one and how the integration of situated cognition and gender theory can actually be achieved in practice is not developed by her. However, Danielsson and Linder (2009) suggests a way of doing this by merging situated cognition and post -structural gender identity into a conceptual framework. This framework uses data obtained from student undergoing physics laboratory work to theorise that gender identity is an active process that changes as the student develops their emerging physicist identity. Danielsson and Linder treat both genders, masculine and feminine as being communities of practice in similar ways as physics can be considered a community of practice. When students start to learn physics they in effect join a community (or culture) and in order to succeed in that community (or even just become a member), they must learn the community's rules and adapt themselves to them, perhaps develop a physics identity. Danielsson and Linder (2009) went on to explore the idea of women having a physics identity they found the women they interviewed often saw themselves as not participating in "traditional femininity". They often saw themselves as one of the boys or as tomboys. This could be seen as a sacrifice between the conflicting demands of two cultures traditional feminine on one hand and physics on the other. Danielsson says This positioning as a non--participation in a traditional femininity is common to many women within science and technology; they tend to explain their presence in such a masculine subject by constructing themselves as different from other women, i.e., as "being one of the boys -- as participating in a masculinity". In other words, participation in physics may require some a kind of femininity that has masculine aspects. (Discussion: 3,220 words) Conclusion This essay has sought to examine the role of culture and pedagogy as reasons for the low participation rate of women in physics. I have looked at culture from a variety of viewpoints; these being the nature of science and knowledge, perceptions of the members of the physics culture and pedagogy. For me there is one uniting theme through all of these viewpoints; that is physics seems to attract a process that acts to exclude it and those that participate from what are perceived to be
- 10. the main human cultures and activities. Physics (and indeed science) itself in the nature in which it is constructed, practiced and taught is exclusive. It is through this process that I believe women are particularly marginalised from physics, although I would also argue that this process also acts to marginalise some men from physics as well. There is a serious message underpinning the potential for schoolchildren to cause hilarity in their depictions of scientists (Frayling 2006). Scientists are still being perceived as outsiders to mainstream culture, as being different, removed, non-social and sometimes not even human or showing humanity. In a way, we see a mirror process with images of scientists that we do with science knowledge, it is almost like there is a view there that society has been removed from scientists and science (or vica versa), and that scientists are also not people, not normal, warm, compassionate human beings. Pehaps it is time we put people back into science (Hodson, 1998 p.20). Hodson argues passionately I want the curriculum to show students that these people (scientists) can be warm, sensitive, humorous and passionate. More importantly, I want them to realize that people who are warm, sensitive, humorous and passionate can still become scientists, though they are required to conduct their work in accordance with codes of practice established, scrutinized and maintained by the community of scientists. Hodson (1998) p. 20. As noted above the nature of science has long been projected as being objective and somehow removed from experience. This emphasis on objectivity, the removal of knowledge from context suggest that physics as it is presently practiced has what would be termed in sociological circles as having a masculine gender. The dominant pedagogy in operation at the moment, the transmission model, treats the learner as relatively unimportant in the learning process as well as encouraging the abstraction of knowledge from context. This method seems to suit some males (but not all) and does not particularly support female learning processes either. Social cognition learning theories, aim to situate knowledge in the context of the learner, because it places the learner at the centre of their own learning process and therefore encourages the learner to make their own meaning of knowledge. As observations show (Head (1996), Murphy and Whitelegg (2006)) this pedagogy may better suit women because it might allow them to value their own experiences and make sense of what they are learning through their own processes. It could also be argued that situated cognition may also benefit those male students who may struggle with abstracted knowledge. It is easy to see, that women might not relate themselves as being potential members of the physics culture, not only is it taught in a manner that they tend not to relate to, it has also expressed scientific knowledge in ways that do not appear to value females from any species or those things in science that are attributed to the feminine i.e. ova and female role in sexual activity (Fox-Keller, 2004).It is also a culture that has a high percentage of male participation and that also values male characteristics such as objectivity, competiveness over so-called female characteristics such as subjectivity and collaboration. There is also some evidence that women experience discrimina tion in the physics workplace and negative attitudes about their presence (Ivie and Guo (2006)). Women who do participate in physics may have to undergo some reconciliation between their female cultural identities with the cultural identity they perceive exists for physics, e.g., the women perceive themselves as not being like other women, they are tomboys or one of the boys. (Danielsson
- 11. (2009)) It may then follow is the case then that those women who see themselves as belonging to traditional feminine communities cannot reconcile enough to take part in the physics community. I approached this essay with a fairly neutral attitude about feminism and in many ways I have had to re-position my own thoughts as I read deeper into the subjects of gender, feminism and culture. However, it seems to me on reading much of this material that the notions of feminising cultures or a feminist culture are just more realistic views or perceptions of how humans as a whole learn and participate in the various cultures in their lives. I wonder if labelling these ideas as "feminist" creations alienates many people in the science community from embracing these ideas in a similar way to how science may alienate women. The situation is a serious one, the culture of physics will not change if those responsible for setting research agendas, designing curricula, devising pedagogic strategies, teaching future physicists and hiring academics feel threatened by the feminist agenda. Perhaps there is also a potential for feminist cultures to re-situate themselves in the context of physics which might include refining language and messages. (Discussion: 888 words) Total word count: 5623) References Barbosa, M. (2003) Equity for women in physics, Physics World July 2003 pp.14-15 Barr, J. and Birke, L. (1998), Common Science? Women, Science and Knowledge, Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis. Brickhouse, N.W (2001) Embodying Science: a feminist perspective on learning Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 38(3), pp. 282 95. Bruner, J., (1996) The Culture of Education, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England Danielsson, A.T., and Linder, C. (2009) Learning in physics by doing laboratory work: towards a new conceptual framework, Gender and Education, 21(4), pp. 129-144 Ewald, H.R. (1992), in Four More Comments on "Pedagogy of the Distressed" Author(s): Donald Wolff, Helen Rothschild Ewald, Robert M. Martin, Patrick McGann Source: College English, Vol. 54, No. 3 (Mar., 1992), pp. 352-360). Frayling, C., (2006), All Boffins are Bonkers, Daily Telegraph. Found at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/3345834/All -boffins-are-bonkers.html, accessed 10 April 2010 Hazari, Z. And Potvin, G. (2005) Views on Female Under-Representation in Physics: Retraining Women or Reinventing Physics? Electronic Journal of Science Education, 10 (1) Head, J. (1996) Gender Identity and Cognitive Style. Equity in the Classroom: Towards Effective Pedagogy for Girls and Boys. P.F. Murphy and C.V. Gipps (eds.) London, Falmer Press 286. Letter to heat magazine, heat, 27 March 2010, p 56)
- 12. Hodson, D, (1998). Towards a personalized science. Teaching and Learning Science: Towards a Personalized Approach, Buckingham, Open University Press Ivie, R., and Guo, S., (2006). Women physicists speak again. American Institute of Physics Report. Available: http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/gendertrends.html (accessed 10 April 2010) Keller, E.F., (1995),Reflections on Science and Gender, Yale University Press, New Haven and London. Keller, E.F., (2004). What impact, if any, has feminism had on science? Journal of Biosciences, 29(1), pp. 7-13 Murphy, P and Whitelegg, E. (2006) Girls in the Physics Classroom: A Review of the Research on the Participation of Girls in Physics, London, Institute of Physics Murphy, P., Scanlon, E. & Lunn, S., 2009. Learning and Understanding Science: Issues and Debates. In SEH806 Contemporary issues in science learning. Milton Keynes: Open University Reiss, M. (2002) What is Science? Teaching Science in Secondary Schools, edited version from Amos, S. and Boohan, R (eds) Teaching Science in Secondary Schools, pp. 40-54, Routledge-Falmer Rolin, K. (2008) Gender and physics: feminist philosophy and science education Science and Education 17, pp. 1111-1125 Stadler, H., Duit, R., and Benke, G. (2000). Do boys and girls understand physics differently? Physics Education, 35(6), pp. 417-422 Tierney, A., (2010), personal correspondence