Pesquisa sobre gênero e sexualidade no ensino de física: um estado do desastre

Abstract

This research aims to understand how the field of Physics Education Research has dealt with what has usually been named “gender issues” and “sexuality issues”, as well as question research practices commonly adopted by researchers that may implicitly reinforce misogynistic and homophobic discourses. To achieve such goals, we employed a methodologic approach mainly inspired by studies known as “state of the art”. We included in our search scope national and international publications, such as doctoral dissertations. master theses and research papers. We also considered national PER research conference communications as an important source to be considered. The research corpus comprised 58 national and 114 international publications, which add up to 172 works. Regarding doctoral dissertations and master theses published outside Brazil, 12 from the 17 works found stem from universities located in the USA. Brazilian universities were responsible for 12 publications of this sort, which stem mostly from the South and Southeast regions. International journals were responsible for 97 research articles, whereas 14 papers were published in national journals, adding up to 143 research articles found. Additionally, 32 PER national conference communications were found. The publications found during the research phase were subsequently subdivided into four categories: (i) Are boys really better than girls in Physics? Searching for psychological patterns among quantitative data; (ii) Physics at school and the “gender problem”; (iii) The constitution of gendered identities in/of Physics; (iv) Reviews and diagnostics. Moving forward, we turned our attention to research publications that reinforced a binary gender model, as described by previous literature. We drew on Gender Studies literature, especially on the feminist post structuralist theorization proposed by Judith Butler, to characterize how such authors have employed the concept “gender”. We identified implicit theorical assumptions and research practices that suggest an adherence to a heterocisnormative conceptualization of gender, that is, one which presupposes the mutual implication of sex, gender, and sexual desire. Further analyses indicated that the sex-gender bijection has been vastly employed by researchers when producing research data, as well as heteronormative expectations have guided the development of research strategies. On the one hand, the convenience of quantitative data production methods has been challenged; on the other hand, heterocisnormativity operates as an intelligibility regime which limits the ways research participants might be represented and, therefore precludes that the experiences of those who do not conform to heterocisnormativity be considered as research objects.