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Based on a survey of 150 respondents and 16 timeline interviews with first-year university mathematics students in Sweden, we explore how the material resources and conditions available to them —mathematics capital— connect to their mathematical identities. We found that mathematics capital has bearing on how early in life students start to consider doing mathematics. We also found individually different trajectories among students with low mathematics capital into university mathematics. The study expands both existing theoretical and methodological ways of researching the material bearings of identity and opens up for new ways of understanding and exploring the conditions that may facilitate access to participation and success in university mathematics. It contributes to understanding on the social and cultural resources that students bring with them to start mathematics, thus complementing the insights that Simon Goodchild’s work had provided on the context of access to university mathematics.

During recent decades, geek culture has become increasingly visible, and the geek has left the cultural margins, becoming more popular than ever. At the same time, nostalgia has emerged as a central component of geek culture. Framed by a post-structural understanding of gender and race and drawing on cultural theorist Svetlana Boym’s distinction between reflective and restorative nostalgia, this article explores how and why geeks nostalgically long for a time when they were largely marginalized. We combine readings of Swedish online geek podcasts and YouTube channels with ethnographic visits to geek conferences and pop-cultural “geek fairs,” such as Comic Con and SciFiWorld. We argue that geek nostalgia represents a clinging on to a “constitutive wound,” allowing the geek figure to mobilize masculine victimhood in ways that simultaneously underpin geek privilege and allow the geek to continue operating as a white male gatekeeper of geek culture.

Doctoral supervision is inherently asymmetrical, and research advocates for more informal supervision practices with less power distance. Humour can make doctoral supervision more informal; however, this qualitative study demonstrates that informal humour does not necessarily foster less hierarchical relationships. We used video-recorded data from a meeting between two male supervisors and a female PhD student to explore how power structures in supervision are negotiated at the micro level. Analytically, we employed the novel technique of 'slow reading',  focusing on the effect each form of interaction had on the conversation. Our analysis revealed that although the supervisors aimed for informality, the jokes within the conversation did not eliminate power dynamics. While humour allowed participants to break norms and taboos, their ability to use humour varied depending on their power position. Rather than dissolving power structures, humour can obscure and conceal power dynamics and, in our case, even reinforce problematic gender roles.

Who feels welcome in university-level physics programmes, and why? Taking a sociomaterial orientation, we have investigated how space influences the way students become recognised and how they construct a sense of belonging in relation to space. Seven students in their first year of a five-year engineering physics programme agreed to participate in our study. They all took part in timeline interviews at the end of their first semester, and four of them participated in walking ethnographies at the end of their second semester. We asked the students to take us to places on the university campus that they found significant for their education. Afterwards, they created maps of these places and were interviewed about how they felt being there. A particular space, a corridor that serves as a transit area between buildings near the physics department, was recognised as important by all participants. They described it as a place where “all physicists” sit and study together. While this statement was not accurate, it highlights how this space makes some students visible among their peers. However, rather than being an entirely inclusive space for the physics community, one of our now-Swedish participants, David, was invisible there. Another participant, Alva, and her friends actively avoided recognition in this corridor, preferring to be “alone”. Our findings show that learning physics through studying in the corridor and gaining recognition are closely connected to the spatial and social configuration of activities.

Talking science is based on the premise of being serious and dignified. Still, both teachers and students use humour when they communicate. However, little is known about the mechanisms of how learning science is constituted when teachers and students are using spontaneous humour in science classroom activities. In this study, we acknowledge this gap. We have analysed video data using practical epistemology analysis (PEA) from two different contexts in physics education, a physics classroom in grade 9 and a group of undergraduate students learning basic mechanics together. The findings showed that spontaneous humour, such as absurdities, supported the learning process in two ways: (1) orienting talk and action towards the scientific purposes of the assignments and (2) sorting out what scientific content and norms were/were not of relevance in the situation. The results illustrate how the participants made jokes to clarify how reasoning and actions tallied with the task at hand. These humorous situations positively affected students’ ability to act intentionally towards the aim of the activity, and the results show that this way of joking can have positive consequences for student learning. Therefore, humour ought to be viewed as a significant resource for learning in the science classroom. Doing science can, like any other activity, be a humorous endeavour in itself, without cartoons or extravagant shows.

In this paper, we have combined a pragmatic and a sociocultural perspective on how artifacts are used in technical problem-solving. With these perspectives we explore how three mechanical engineering students build a plastic spider together, using instructions they found on the internet. Ten hours of video recordings were selected for a detailed analysis regarding linguistic, material, and embodied resources, using Dewey’s pattern of inquiry and Wartofsky’s notion of artifacts. Dewey’s pattern of inquiry renders the students’ relationship with different artifacts in time and space observable, and thereby how students orient themselves towards distinct purposes in different phases of their problem-solving process. A sociocultural perspective enables us to investigate how engineering students as part of the professional practices become acquainted to technology. Our analysis shows that although the problem was ill-structured, problem-solving in design and construction is a concrete activity and includes the three levels of artifacts: physical tools, preservation and transmission techniques and possible or imaginary worlds. An understanding of artifacts, instructions, an intended design, and communicative activities is significant for developing learning activities in engineering education.

Science and technology have contributed to human well-being but are also deeply entangled in structures driving environmental destruction and social injustices. Education, particularly in science and technology, could play a crucial role in transforming society. Yet, it has increasingly become an instrument for maintaining the status quo rather than fostering radically different futures. This workshop invites participants who are already aware of sustainability challenges and who may feel frustrated about the state of the world to explore how we, as a science education community, can contribute to transformation.

We focus on two approaches to change: (1) emotions and humour, and (2) activism. Emotions—such as dread, anxiety, joy, or hope—are increasingly recognized as central to education for sustainability. Humour can be an effective tool for change, bringing people together through shared emotions and making visible or challenging dominant norms. However, it also risks creating distance from urgent issues. Activism, still often perceived as taboo in academic contexts, has historically been a powerful driver of change.

During the workshop, participants will explore the potential of these approaches to promote transformation in and through science education. They will also experiment with the “yes, and…” principle to co-create possibilities for action, potentially drawing on emotions, humour, and activism. Originating in improvisation theatre, this principle has been successfully applied in higher education development. The workshop provides a space for learning, reflection, and experimentation, supporting those who ask ‘What more can I do’?

The aim of this workshop is to leverage participants’ expertise and creativity to collaboratively develop (a) a better understanding of the diverse roles that material artifacts can play in positioning processes and (b) new methods for analyzing these roles empirically. Positioning researchers have recently begun to explore how people use artifacts to position themselves and others. In this workshop, we will draw on post-humanist theories to explore how artifacts become intertwined with human action and communication and positioned together, as human-material entanglements. As a concrete example, we will analyze a short video sequence in which five engineering students engage in small group learning while one of the students eats from glass bowl. We will explore how the student-bowl entanglement is positioned and how it, in turn, positions other students and artifacts. Based on the concrete experiences of analyzing the student-bowl positioning, we will then address three more general methodological challenges: (1) How can we analyze positioning processes involving human-material entanglements? (2)What implications arise for positioning theory more broadly and definitions of central analytic concepts? (3) How can we develop multimodal transcriptions of video data for analyzing and representing positioning processes that involve human-material entanglements?

This workshop uses Holland et al.’s (1998) theory of figured worlds and Lönngren and Berge’s (in print) theory of emotional positioning. We explore figured emotional worlds operating in engineering classrooms and imagine possible futures.  

Framing concepts: Figured worlds (FW) are historical, social, and cultural interpretations of practices that constrain actions and interactions and distribute individuals in social roles across landscapes of action. Used as a lens, FWs let us explore past and current practices and imagine possible futures. In this workshop, we transgress disciplinary and theoretical silos and imagine possible FWs of intersecting and transcending spaces where engineering, education, and social justice meet. Importantly, play is a central avenue through which individuals negotiate with, re-imagine, and change FWs. We actualize play through the concept of playful learning (Nørgård, Toft-Nielsen & Whitton 2017). 

Emotional positioning: Positioning describes the process of assigning rights and duties to individuals. Emotional positioning centers 1) using emotions to position self and others and 2) positioning self and others in terms of emotions (Lönngren and Berge in print). 

Workshop Structure: We illustrate framing concepts with examples from our research before using magazine cutouts to construct collages representing current emotional positioning within engineering classrooms and desired future emotional positioning participants wish to create. In groups, we discuss our collages, synthesize ideas, and close by collectively imagining ways moving from the present into possible future. 

Holland, D., Lachicotte, W. J., Skinner, D., & Cain, C. (1998). Identity and agency in cultural worlds. Harvard University Press.  

Lönngren, J., & Berge, J. (in print). Positioning, Emotions, and Emotional Positioning. In M. McVee et al. (Eds.), Routledge International Handbook of Positioning Theory (pp. 1–17). Routledge. 

Nørgård, R. T., Toft-Nielsen, C., & Whitton, N. (2017). Playful learning in higher education: developing a signature pedagogy. International Journal of Play, 6(3), 272-282.

This conceptual paper contributes to emerging conversations on the meaning of materiality and embodiment in positioning processes. We demonstrate how the positioning of an artifact, a banana, can become analytically inseparable from students’ positioning during small-group interactions.Methodologically grounded in multi-modal analyses of socio-material positioning processes, we empirically root this study in 23 seconds of video data, displaying a group of five engineering students in a project-based sustainability course. We ask (1) how artifacts become positioned with people as sociomaterial entanglements and (2) how artifactual positioning contributes to transforming abstract concepts into concrete understanding. Our analysis follows an artifact’s entanglement with students’ positioning in learning situations in processes of first- to second-, and third-order positioning. More concretely, drawing on the artifactual materiality of the banana, students move from an abstract level of understanding the concept of ‘social pressure’ in the context of Swedish fika to a concrete and embodied example of how social pressure operates for everyone and themselves. Mapping this process empirically and theoretically, we visualize how artifactual positioning facilitates learning, and we suggest multimodality as a methodological tool for further theory development and empirical research.