| 1. |
- Günter, Katerina Pia, 1989-, et al.
(author)
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“Biology is not an education one chooses by coincidence” : Students Identity Work in the Figured World of Higher Biology Education
- 2020
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Science identity has been shown to be a central aspect influencing students’ trajectories and persistence in science (Carlone and Johnson 2007). Identity research has accelerated particularly in science disciplines such as physics, providing novel insights into students’ challenges when studying physics, and more attention needs to be paid to the specific challenges at play in other disciplines. In this study, we aim to unfold the identity work of biology students. We use Holland et al.'s (1998) concept of figured worlds to explore how students at the beginning of their biology program at a Swedish university imagine and figure the World of Higher Biology Education. What kind of discourses can be found in the students’ narratives and how do the students author themselves within the imagined world? Considering scientific knowledge to be situated and science, including biology, to be culturally shaped (Harding 1986), we identify broader cultural models and resources that the students employ in their identity work and when figuring the World of Higher Biology Education.Embedded in a figured worlds framework, we use Gee's Discourse Analysis Toolkit (2010) to analyse 55 student motivation texts that were written during the first course of the biology program. By combining Gee’s Figured World with the Identities Building Tool, we identify dominant discourses such as the straight path natural science discourse. This dominant discourse is challenged by interdisciplinary approaches to biology, where environmental matters are valued impetus for students’ motivation and aspiration. These discourses could be linked to cultural models of science that for example emphasized the “alwaysness” of being a science person that transitions from a naïve broad interest in nature to a narrow interest when starting higher education. The students recognized, accepted and used or rejected resources from those models such as interest of the child-self to author themselves in recognized or alternative ways.Our findings show that dominant cultural models of science can already be found in early undergraduate students’ narratives. The students display shared conceptions of who is and what is valued particularly within higher biology education. They thereby manifest themselves as legitimate participants in higher biology education. However, more than a third of the students in this study display knowledge about the dominant cultural models but reject drawing on all or a part of them. They thereby author alternative ways of participating in the World of Higher Biology Education and expand the boundaries of biology as a discipline.
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| 2. |
- Günter, Katerina Pia, 1989-, et al.
(author)
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‘Biology must become better at seeing the human beings behind it’ : University students’ identity work across European contexts
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Other publication (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Higher education biology, numerically female-biased at undergraduate level across national contexts, has been given little attention in exploring norms of scientific practice. This study brings into focus how university biology students negotiate identities in relation to figured worlds of higher education biology. Empirically grounded in 27 timeline interviews with students from a Swedish, a German, and a British university and using an eclectic theoretical framework of feminist science critique, science identity, and figured worlds, we identified three hegemonic imaginaries in students’ narratives: showing dedication through sacrifice, being forced to "fake it to make it", and survival of/as the fittest. We then demonstrate how these imaginaries are negotiated by three female biology students who consider themselves successful and who want to pursue a PhD in their future. We thereby make visible how the three students successfully negotiate these norms, yet disavow and challenge them. This conflict suggests that they consider themselves successful despite the pressure to engage in the “typical” practices they contest. Our findings provoke discussions on how the above-mentioned imaginaries risk contributing to a decrease of female participation in higher education biology across academic ranks.
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| 3. |
- Günter, Katerina Pia, 1989-
(author)
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Enthusiasms, passions, and interests: Comparing students’ and university teachers’ meaning making of emotions in higher education biology
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Other publication (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This study explores and compares how university biology students and university teachers make meaning of enthusiasm, passion, and interest while negotiating participation in communities of biology practice. Biology is often assumed to be a gender-neutral practice and though previous work has found emotions to be part of university biology students’ and teachers’ identities, there appears to be assumptions about enthusiasm, passion, and interest being homogenous and understood collectively across science contexts. Here, I problematize taken-for-granted understandings of emotions in the supposedly gender-neutral context of higher education biology. Using a discursive analytical framework made it possible to identify a variety of ways in which meanings of emotions are made and directed, displaying overlaps and tensions between students’ and teachers’ understandings. Science and research-related makings of meaning are challenged by broader meanings that reach beyond science and research enthusiasm, passion, and interest. Female students tend to have broader understandings of higher biology education and risk not being recognized and reinforced in interactions with research-focused teachers. A lack of reinforcement hinders students in developing a sense of belonging to the community of biology practice and hence jeopardizes their participation. Exploring meanings of enthusiasm, passion, and interest shows how students’ identity work is influenced by gendered imaginaries of participation and thereby provides further evidence for biology not being a gender-neutral discipline.
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| 4. |
- Günter, Katerina Pia, 1989-
(author)
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Figuring Worlds; Imagining Paths : A Feminist Exploration of Identities in Higher Education Biology
- 2022
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Higher education biology is a natural science discipline that is numerically female biased on undergraduate level across most international contexts. In Sweden, Germany, and the UK, for example, more than 60% of all undergraduate students are women. However, equally prominent in these European contexts and beyond is the progressive decrease in the percentage of women along the academic career ladder, resulting in fewer than 30% of women among full professors in biology. This numerical decline contradicts unproblematised understandings of biology practices as gender-neutral, where biology as a female-coded and “soft” natural science discipline is perceived as free from gendered processes of in- and exclusion. As pointed out by feminist critics of science and science education researchers, gender-neutral discourses hide gendered processes; they unmark, neutralize, and normalize masculinity in natural science practices. Gendered norms in relation to issues of identity and participation in higher education science have been addressed rather extensively in male-dominated natural science disciplines such as physics. However, only a few studies focus these lenses on higher education biology. In this thesis, I explore how university students and teachers negotiate identities, make meaning of emotions, and figure worlds of higher education biology. As a trained biologist and a becoming gender scholar and science educator, I explore biology cultures from in- and outside perspectives. Working from within and between disciplines also provides me with theoretical and methodological tools to understand processes of enculturation in higher education biology, building on an eclectic theoretical framework, combining feminist, social constructivist, and cultural perspectives. I analyse students’ study motivation texts and teachers’ teaching statements from a Swedish context, as well as interviews with university biology students from three European universities in Sweden, Germany, and the UK. Across the four papers included in this thesis, narrow masculine norms of science, and particularly research, emerge in students’ and teachers’ identity work. These norms are challenged through alternative and broader imaginaries of biology practice and interpretations of participation within. On the one hand, recognizing broader identities has the potential to widen the practice of higher education biology. On the other hand, students negotiating alternatives to the norm risk not being recognized in interactions with research-focused teachers and hence being hindered in developing a sense of belonging to biology communities. Female students showed a tendency to imagine participation in broader ways, and the clash of this with the normative cultural imaginaries within higher education biology risks contributing to the progressive decrease of the percentage of women in biology at universities. Taken together, this thesis provides further evidence for how higher education biology is far from a gender-neutral natural science discipline. While hegemonic and masculine norms of doing science and research are visible in university biology students’ and teachers’ identity work, alternative imaginaries provide possibilities for change towards a more diverse field of biology.
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| 5. |
- Günter, Katerina Pia, 1989-, et al.
(author)
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Intelligible identities in university teachers’ figured worlds of higher education biology
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Other publication (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Higher education biology has often been imagined, perceived, and described as having reached gender equality in terms of who gets to participate in the disciplinary practices. Despite a numerical female bias in undergraduate enrolment, higher education biology, like any other natural science discipline, is a world whose landscapes are shaped by (re)productions of historical, cultural, and social norms. In order to understand what identities, what ways of being, are recognized by university biology teachers in these worlds, we analysed 94 teaching statements written when applying for faculty positions in biology at a large Swedish university. In and through teaching statements, university biology teachers negotiate and perform overarching disciplinary norms and discourses with the goal to present themselves as intelligible candidates. The texts are statements of value, which display implicit and explicit identities teachers consider to be recognized in the world of higher education biology. These identities are at the centre of this article. Using an eclectic discourse analytical framework, we could identify two imagined intelligible identities: the Research Science Teacher and the Facilitating Science Teacher. Research Science Teachers position research and associated masculine-coded competences as the ultimate anchor point for themselves and students. They consider (good) researchers to be ultimate knowers and consequently to be best suitable for university teaching with the goal to recruit students into research. Facilitating Science Teachers, even though aware of the hegemonic position of research, disentangle imaginaries of what makes a (good) researcher from what makes a good university teacher. They thereby allow themselves to transgress dominant imaginaries of research as the ultimate competence for themselves and for students, and create spaces for alternative ways of being and doing. Identifying university biology teachers to position masculine-coded research norms at the centre of biology practice, this study provides further evidence that higher education biology is not a gender-neutral educational space. It furthermore contributes to a more nuanced understanding of reproductive processes in science education, providing perspectives to together overcome intergenerational (re)productions of hegemonic norms of doing science.
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| 6. |
- Günter, Katerina Pia, 1989-
(author)
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Nothing more than that : Students' Motivations Entering Higher Biology Education
- 2019
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Why study biology at university? Students’ motivation texts do not only yield answers to this question, but information about their understanding of participation in higher biology education. What are their explicit and especially implicit concepts of what it needs to participate and how do they create a sense of belonging? Situated in a larger project on identity work of students in higher biology education, this study analyses 55 first year undergraduate biology students’ motivation texts using discourse analysis in a framework of figured worlds. The aim is to identify socially and culturally constructed realms of what is recognized; which ways of talking and which ways of doing are taken for granted and are valued over others – beyond the explicit. Drawing on figured worlds acknowledges the contemporaneity of activity, discourse and performance taking place in a complex socioculturally constructed space of higher science education. Reflections on who it is that has access to resources such as language needed to enter and participate successfully in higher science education communities are made possible. First results of this study show three main figured worlds present in the texts: the figured world of interest, the figured world of biology as a discipline and the figured world of the academic career. Presence and absence of those figured worlds are points of departure for discussions on accessibility and (in)equalities in higher biology and science education.
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| 7. |
- Günter, Katerina Pia, 1989-
(author)
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You, a Biologist?! : Exploring Students’ Identity Formation in Higher Biology Education
- 2019
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Educational spaces in natural sciences and biology are considered spaces for progression and (in)dependent knowledge (re)production, spaces in which change is discussed and in themselves constituting spaces for change, spaces that are strictly separated from perspectives from social sciences or humanities. However, spaces and practices within higher science education are subject to feminist critique, which I follow in this project exploring identity formations of undergraduate biology students at universities with Scandinavian, Continental and Anglo-Saxon education systems. The main question is how the boarder point of education, student-teacher interactions and discourses in teaching situations alter the becoming “a biologist” of students in a community of “doing” and learning biology. Instead for staying within national boarders and binary perspectives on students/teachers, knowers/learners, female/male students, the aim is to allow broader, intersecting and transnational perspectives on higher science education.The current, first phase, analyses discourses on educational goals in biology students’ motivation texts from the beginning of their undergraduate studies, as well as biology teachers’ teaching approach texts from applications for positions at a Swedish university. Students discourses range from “not having an idea, yet” and “interest in nature” to already expressing the ambition to “becoming a researcher”. The notion of becoming a researcher is strongly present in the teaching approach texts expressing the value of teaching students to think critically and creating a “research family”. A strong discrepancy between what students strive for and what teachers value occurs – a discrepancy that alters students perception of belonging and becoming. Here, biology is representing one example, but this study challenges the idea of the desirable student aiming for doing research and working towards a research career in natural sciences. It allows for reflections on teaching and new perspectives and more diversity in the classroom. Teachers mentioned the aim to create spaces where “social and gender hierarchies are absent”, thus teaching spaces are considered socially hierarchical and gendered.One step to opening up natural sciences and higher science education for a stronger gender perspective, creating interdisciplinary spaces for change and loosening boundaries, is to connect disciplines, allowing conversations especially within academia as a stratified space.Coming from a working-class background and the Black Forest region in Germany, I was the second in my family to graduate from high school. I studied biology at Heidelberg University (B.Sc.), interrupted my studies with a voluntary ecological year in an environmental school working with children and after resumption of my studies I taught in undergraduate courses until my graduation I developmental biology and toxicology. After my Bachelor’s, I continued with a Master’s in biology at Freiburg University, Germany, but before graduation decided to take part in an ERASMUS exchange with Uppsala University. After half a year and since I was intrigued by the educational system, I changed program entirely to Uppsala and graduated in plant systematics. In September 2017, I started my PhD at the Centre for Gender Research at Uppsala University on biology students’ identify formation in higher biology education.Notions of natural, institutional, discourse and affinity identity are categorized and the different perspectives on biology education culture as well as pictures students and teachers bring into teaching and learning situations at the university are made explicit.Students articulated different subject beliefs and visions and pursuing unique paths, entering cultures of higher biology education. Those ideas and goals might or might not correspond to faculty and teacher perspectives they meet during their education and thereby alter students’ perception of belonging and ultimately learning success.This interdisciplinary project aims at looking at students’ identity formation in undergraduate biology education, how discourses within the subject and especially boundary points between students and teachers, influence students’ becoming.
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| 8. |
- Wahlgren, Catarina, 1967-
(author)
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Nature as a gender neutral space : Preschool photographs framing a Swedish natureculture identity
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The image of Swedishness connects to ideals of gender equality and closeness to nature. In this article, 320 outdoor photographs, from four Swedish preschools, with diverse ethnic composition, are analysed to identify how the ideals are activated. The results reveal a display of a Swedish natureculture identity, more clearly expressed in multi-ethnic preschool classes. The natureculture identity seems to be neutral in relation to both ethnicity and gender, whereas children are hard to identify in the photographs. At a first glance, these displays of children might be interpreted as diversity is made invisible. At a second glance, though, it is possible to interpret neutrality as active equality work. The Swedish natureculture identity seems to be caring and sensitive, and thereby raising feminine values as desirable for everyone. The displayed neutrality also sheds light on ways of making all activities possible to participate in, regardless of gender and ethnicity.
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| 9. |
- Wahlgren, Catarina, 1967-, et al.
(author)
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Portraits of Swedish natureculture identity – entanglements of (gender) equity and integration in early childhood education
- 2024
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In: Gender and Education. - : Taylor & Francis Group. - 0954-0253 .- 1360-0516. ; 36:5, s. 527-544
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Photographs of children are used on a daily basis in Swedish preschool practice. Although the preschool curriculum prescribes gender equality and celebration of diversity, photographs of indoor activities have shown to display a homogenous view of children and an emphasis on masculine-coded productions and accomplishments. This article examines 325 photographs of outdoor activities from Swedish preschools with diverse ethnic compositions. Our results reveal a Swedish natureculture identity that is more explicitly performed in the multi-ethnic preschool classes. Since ideals of gender equality and closeness to nature connect to the image of Swedishness, this can be understood as compensatory pedagogy. Moreover, the natureculture identity appears to be neutral in relation to ethnicity and gender, which risks rendering diversity invisible. However, the displayed neutrality is also possible to understand as working towards equity where conventionally feminine values such as care, empathym and sensitivity are underscored as desirable for everyone.
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