Conference Program

Physics as a discipline has been recognised as a “culture without culture” (1), perpetuating a “myth of neutrality” (2) that masks its unfolding within specific power structures and whose interests it serves, including colonial and militarised agendas (3). In physics teacher trajectories, this myth also depoliticises teaching by positioning physics as objective content to be transmitted rather than as a pedagogical and political practice (4). One assumption sustained by physics departments that reifies this culture is the teaching assumption (5): knowing physics is enough to teach it. This assumption dismisses pedagogical and cultural knowledge, elevates physics above other ways of knowing, and forecloses the possibilities under which physics might function as a democratising practice rather than as a site of disciplinary reproduction and cultural oppression.

We examine how this culture is reproduced across Chile, Cyprus, Italy, and the Netherlands through a comparative case study (6) at micro, meso, and macro levels. At the micro level, we draw on reflective narrative inquiry into the experiences that shaped our becoming as physics educators; at the meso level, we analyse the institutional cultures of physics teacher education; at the macro level, we consider the broader structures and circulating norms that shape local practices. To interpret these dynamics, we draw on Bernstein’s concepts of classification and framing (7), using them to analyse how institutional boundaries and pedagogical control relations reproduce the myth of neutrality across contexts.

We identified similar experiences at the micro level despite significant differences in how control mechanisms operate. At the meso level, strong classification appears in the insulation of teacher preparation within physics departments, physically and intellectually separated from pedagogical expertise. This separation keeps physics as detached from sociopolitical concerns. Strong framing appears through the teaching assumption: what future teachers learn is largely defined by physics content; how they learn is organised through disciplinary hierarchies that privilege abstraction over contextual and human implications; and when they learn to teach is often deferred until after content mastery. At the macro level, these patterns are reinforced by transnational curricula that present physics as culturally neutral and disconnected from local problems (8). By surfacing these patterns across levels, we contest the myth of neutrality that shields physics education from cultural critique.

The participants’ trajectories however show that spaces are not fully closed and point to costly cracks in this disciplinary culture, often emerging through professional and personal crises, conflict with the norms of physics, and efforts to construct alternative relations to teaching the discipline (9). These trajectories show how possibilities for resistance may emerge through friction with the culture of the discipline, enabling physics education to act its liberatory power (10) and for us, at times, resulting in joining collectives to think and enact physics otherwise.

We argue that physics education must be understood as education in its own right, not as a subdiscipline of physics. Only then can physics teacher education become a space for pedagogical judgment, critical inquiry, and democratic practice, rather than the reproduction of disciplinary neutrality.