Learning in physics by doing laboratory work: towards a new conceptual framework

Drawing on a study that explores university students’ experiences of doing laboratory work in physics, this article outlines a proposed conceptual framework for extending the exploration of the gendered experience of learning. In this framework situated cognition and post‐structural gender theory are merged together. By drawing on data that aim at exploring the gendered experience of learning in physics in the laboratory setting, a case is made for the proposed conceptual framework to facilitate an analysis of gender as an active process that relates the dynamics of this process to the emerging physicist identities of the students. In other words, this framework allows for an analysis of the gendered learning experiences in a context such as physics education that goes well beyond the usual ‘women‐friendly’ teaching approaches.

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