The discipline of physics has famously been described as a ‘culture of no culture’ (Traweek 1988), and physics is often perceived as objective, universal, and rational, a way of approaching the world that is untouched by social dynamics. At the same time, physics is also described in terms of aesthetics and beauty. This can concern a strive for mathematical beauty (Hovis and Kragh 1993) or take the form of wonder and awe for the vastness and the purity of nature (Girod 2007). Girod (2007) further discuss how scientists describe being able to understand the world differently and more richly because of their understanding of science. Physics is also entangled with notions of intelligence and cleverness, a discipline inaccessible to many (Archer et al. 2020). The question of the (in)accessibility of the discipline of physics has over the years gained much attention in educational research, particularly in relation to the recruitment and retention of students from underrepresented groups (de Barros Vidor et al. 2020).

In this presentation, we align ourselves with research that has characterized students’ movements through learning ecologies as pathways or trajectories that resist “pipelines” or implied linearity. Recently, researchers (e.g. Avraamidou, 2020; Mendick et al., 2017; Rahm et al., 2021) have taken up notions of landscapes of becoming, pathways through STEM, and wayfaring which resist deficit notions dominant in the pipeline metaphor, and permit an analysis of student agency as they may entail path switching or on/off ramps and intersecting paths. Rahm et al. (2021) offer that to learn about the role of science in learners’ lives, we need to move beyond “connecting the dots” of activities in science, and instead attend to that which cannot be represented in pathways or trajectories. Thus, “becoming somebody” in physics is “tied up in complex ways with a web of meanings and practices that constitute learning lives” (p. 4). In this presentation, our concern is to unpick this web as we trace the meanings three mature university physics students make of their experiences in various physics learning ecologies, across time and space. In their stories, these three mature students do not articulate end goals of “physicist”, nor do they narrate clear pathways into their present undergraduate programs. Rather, they speak of physics in ways that reveal their figuring of physics as part of a web of meaning that entails the tangling of emotions with physics learning that might serve, as Avraamidou (2020) argues “as links between past (e.g., personal histories), present (e.g., social positioning), and future selves (e.g., a science person)” (p. 338).

Our analysis is based on the notion that well-being is connected to whether life can be experienced as meaningful and authentic (Sayer 2011). We draw on Schutz’ phenomenological understanding of people’s experience of the world, which seeks to explain people’s meaning-making and connection in relating to the world and each other (Schutz & Luckmann 1983). The central theoretical notions through which we explore our interviewees' narrative are experiences of connectedness versus experiences of alienation. In particular, we utilize the concept of transcendence to illuminate how the interviewees explain their relationship to physics (e.g. Thurfjell et al 2019). Importantly, we do not investigate how moments can add up to trajectories into physics, but rather how mature students view physics as providing an organizing structure for their life trajectories, to materialize a life that might not have seemed possible outside of the realm of physics.

In the presentation we interweave the analyses of three student narratives, those of Tina (first generation university student, early 40s), Tobias (first generation university student, late 20s), and Kamal (second generation immigrant, late 20s).

The study draws on interviews with 21 Swedish higher education physics students, who at the time of the interview were doing their first or second year in an Engineering Physics or Bachelor of Physics programme. The interviewed students had responded to a call to participate in a study exploring what has made it possible for some students from underrepresented groups to continue to higher education physics. As such, the interviewed students in some way identify as being ‘unusual’ within their chosen education. The interviews were conducted as ‘time-line interviews’ (Adriansen 2012), taking a broad, life-history approach to exploring the interviewees’ science trajectories (Goodson & Sikes 2001). The interviews were conducted in Swedish and transcribed verbatim by a professional transcriber. The study has ethical approval from the Swedish Ethical Review Authority. In the analysis, these three interviews with mature students stood out as featuring narratives which told a different story to the rest. While other students described what had made physics possible for them, these stories centred on how physics had possibilised them. How they in this discipline found potential for self-realisation and well-being. We thus focused the analysis for this paper and presentation on the ways that physics has created possibilities for this self-realisation, which led to an analytic focus on transcendence and connectedness.

In our analysis of the three student narratives we highlight three salient features in their meeting with (university) physics. Firstly, how the regularity and predictability of physics can provide an escape from a messy everyday life, and how existential aspects of science and nature can provide comfort. Tobias talks about how understanding ‘a small detail of nature […] it is something rather magical’. Secondly, the narratives of our interviewees also demonstrate that physics can be a space of comfort, in how it provides ways of connecting with something greater than oneself. Tina and Kamal predominantly talk about this in terms of how interactions with nature and space provides a safe space. Tobias stress the challenging quality of physics, reiterating cultural narratives about the discipline as difficult and not easily accessible, but for him the related potential for total absorption in difficult physics issues provides refuge when thoughts are spinning too fast. Thirdly, for all three students, choosing to do higher education physics functions as an act of emancipation. For Tobias and Kamal from previous successful, but unsatisfying, careers in the arts. For Tina, who has a history of abuse, returning to studying as an adult becomes a way to transcend previous constraints and former identifications. University studies in general, but also physics studies in particular, as a discipline that is perceived as particularly intellectually challenging, becomes a way for her to regain and show self-worth. These three stories collectively cause us to reflect on the value of a higher education in physics, and to look beyond normative trajectories leading to gainful employment as the primary goal. Instead these counter stories help us to see that physics education can possibilise selves in ways that cannot be measured, but may be equally significant to well-being and self-actualisation.

Adriansen, H. K. (2012). Timeline interviews: A tool for conducting life history research. Qualitative Studies, 3(1), 40–55. Archer, L., Moote, J., & MacLeod, E. (2020). Learning that physics is ‘not for me’: Pedagogic work and the cultivation of habitus among advanced level physics students. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 29(3), 347-384. Avraamidou, L. (2020). Science identity as a landscape of becoming: Rethinking recognition and emotions through an intersectionality lens. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 15(2), 323-345. de Barros Vidor, C., Danielsson, A., Rezende, F., & Ostermann, F. (2020). What are the Problem Representations and Assumptions about Gender underlying Research on Gender in Physics and Physics Education?: A Systematic Literature Review. Revista Brasileira de Pesquisa em Educação em Ciências, 20(u), 1133-1168. Girod, M. (2007). A Conceptual Overview of the Role of Beauty and Aesthetics in Science and Science Education. Studies in Science Education, 43(1), 38-61. Goodson, I., & Sikes, P. J. (2001). Life history research in educational settings: Learning from lives. Open University Press. Hovis, R. C., & Kragh, H. (1993). PAM Dirac and the beauty of physics. Scientific American, 268(5), 104-109. Mendick, H., Berge, M., & Danielsson, A. (2017). A critique of the STEM pipeline: Young people’s identities in Sweden and science education policy. British Journal of Educational Studies, 65(4), 481-497. Rahm, J., Gonsalves, A. J., & Lachaîne, A. (2022). Young women of color figuring science and identity within and beyond an afterschool science program. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 31(2), 199-236. Sayer, R. A. (2011). Why Things Matter to People: Social Science, Values and Ethical Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schutz, A. & Luckmann, T. (1983). The Structures of the Life­World. Vol 2. Evanston, Il: Northwestern University Press. Thurfjell, David et al. “The Relocation of Transcendence: Using Schutz to Conceptualize the Nature Experiences of Secular People.” Nature and culture 14(2), pp. 190-214. Traweek, S. (2009). Beamtimes and lifetimes. Harvard University Press.