“I try to encourage my students to think, read, and talk science” intelligible identities in university teachers' figured worlds of higher education biology

Abstract

AbstractHigher education biology is often imagined, perceived, and described as having reached gender equality in terms of who gets to participate in disciplinary practices. However, like any other natural science discipline, higher education biology is a world whose landscapes are shaped by (re)productions of historical, cultural, and social norms. We explore these norms through the lens of identity, asking what identities are recognized by university biology teachers at a large Swedish university, analyzing 94 teaching statements written when applying for faculty positions in biology. We argue that in and through teaching statements, university biology teachers negotiate and perform overarching academic and disciplinary norms and discourses with the goal to present themselves as intelligible candidates. As statements of value, they thereby display implicit and explicit identities recognized in worlds of higher education biology. Using a discourse analytical framework, we identified two university teacher identities imagined as intelligible: Research Science Teachers and Facilitating Science Teachers. Research Science Teachers position research and associated masculine‐coded competences as anchor points of biology practice. They consider 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 researcher from what makes a university teacher. They transgress dominant imaginaries of research as the ultimate competence for themselves and students, and create spaces for alternative identity work. These findings contribute to a more nuanced understanding of (re)productive processes in science education, providing perspectives of how to together infract intergenerational (re)productions of hegemonic norms of doing science. Additionally, this study provides further evidence that higher education biology is not a gender‐neutral higher education landscape.