“Science happens between people”: teachers’ perspectives in a physics RET program

Abstract

RET summer programs are envisioned as spaces that can help bridge the gap between classroom STEM teaching and STEM research. Much research has focused on the impact of RETs on teachers’ beliefs about inquiry based learning. RET programs provide a unique setting where teachers, as short term visitors in the research lab space, encounter and engage with ideas about the practice of science itself. In this work in progress, we present the narratives constructed by two physics teachers about the doing of science and the doers of science in a quantum science summer RET program. Using a qualitative approach, we analyze teachers’ interviews over the summer and show how these teachers constructed their identities with regard to the doing of science. We demonstrate how both teachers, by the virtue of trying on these new identities, repositioned themselves as doers of science and challenged dominant ideas about the doing of science.