In my research project teaching queering physics, I am studying methods and techniques for teaching both physical knowledge and competencies of questioning the hidden curriculum in physics. Speaking of the hidden curriculum I mean the transmission of attitudes, values, and norms about physics and physicists – e.g. the representations and norms of physical talent, technological competence, heroes of the history of physics, the presumption of heterosexual normativity, hegemonic masculinity – which impede access to physical literacy and reinforce existing social inequalities. As a physics professor at Hannover University of Applied Sciences and Arts, I teach new students of electrical, mechanical, and industrial engineering. They are mostly male with diverse ages, education and/or work experiences, first languages, nationalities, and ethnic and social backgrounds. I wonder, why the students in my first year physics class are stunningly divers but the graduates of mechanical engineering are not. Apart from the stereotypes of job descriptions, future employers, or colleagues in mechanical engineering, I ask how the hidden curriculum in physics instead of supporting and encouraging my students teaches them lessons to be wrong, losers, not white, male, literate, or genius enough to become appropriate engineers. Moreover, I examine how I am involved in reifying the hidden curriculum in my lecture theater and how I can instead offer an inviting, open, and encouraging lecture format. Feminist pedagogy in science education – including queer theory and other deconstructive approaches – reflects on the reproduction of social inequalities and can be understood as an eye opener for the gendered, classed and raced politics of knowledge-producing processes. Moreover, it can be used to explore and enact material-discursive change in physics education and to teach science in a way that is welcoming, open, and encouraging to all students. I offer some examples from my current teaching practice and exploratory research in a field I term “applied gender research in physics” or, more specifically, teaching queering physics.The strategies I have been developing and using so far can be described as scrutinizing what is supposed to be normal, invisible or silenced; making the familiar strange; reflecting on the discursive production of physical knowledge; revealing narratives of physics as hegemonic presentations; analyzing material-discursive choreographies in the theatre.

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