Identity development in physics classes: from community of practice towards nexus of multi-membership

The thesis aims to contribute to the general problem of the impact of physics education on students’ identity development. Identity development has become more and more relevant in the last years and, according to OECD, it represents one of the main goals of education (OECD, 2018). In STEM education, the issue resonates with the lack of relevance that most of the students still perceive in learning science at school (physics and mathematics in particular) (Stuckey, Hofstein, Mamlok-Naaman, Eilks, 2013). Starting from this consideration, I carried out an analysis of the research literature to formulate the problem as a “research narrative” grounded on a selection of STEM literature theoretical constructs. The narrative is mainly centered around the idea of community of practice (Wenger, 1998), but is incorporates the constructs of Discourse & Affinity identity (J. Gee, 2000), Practice-linked identity (N. S. Nasir and Hand, 2008), epistemic agency (Stroupe, 2014), socio-scientific norms (Yackel and Cobb, 1996), boundary crossing mechanisms (Akkerman and Bakker, 2011; Wenger, 1998), and appropriation (Levrini, Fantini, Tasquier, Pecori & Levin, 2015)). The narrative has been tested in two empirical studies with physics students attending the course in Physics Education in Bologna. Aims of the studies were: i) to test students’ proximity of the problem and the effectiveness of its reformulation in the narrative (RQ1); ii) to collect suggestions, opinions, experiences to turn the narrative into an operational set of suggestions for teaching (RQ2). The results show a great feeling of proximity and effectiveness of the narrative to stimulate profound personal re-elaborations concerning the nexus between learning physics and personal identity. As for RQ2, initial insights have been collected and directions for further investigations have been pointed out.