Mötesplats Rydberg - Collective feelings in university physics

Collective feelings in university physics: a qualitative exploratoy study of teaching and learning practices in an undergraduate physics course

With Carolina de Barros Vidor, PhD candidate in Curriculum Studies, Department of Educational Sciences, Uppsala University.

Abstract
This seminar presents findings from a qualitative, exploratory study of how collective feelings are produced, circulated, and negotiated in an undergraduate physics course. Building on critical perspectives on the disciplinary culture of physics and contemporary scholarship on affect, the study examines how everyday teaching and learning practices in university physics education shape students’ experiences of participation and disciplinary identity.

Drawing on interviews with teachers and students, as well as observations of classroom interactions, the study highlights how physics is learned not only through epistemic practices, but also through distinctive affective dynamics. Traditional lectures, assessment formats, and classroom layouts often foster norms of individual responsibility, predictability, and passive engagement, while simultaneously constraining opportunities for dialogue and collaboration. At the same time, students actively construct alternative ways of learning and belonging through peer study networks, collaborative sensemaking, and their responses to pedagogical innovations such as the flipped classroom. These practices reveal how motivation, accessibility, relationality, and the teacher’s embodied presence become key elements in sustaining students’ engagement with physics.

By foregrounding the affective dynamics of university physics education, this seminar offers a new lens for understanding how collective feelings shape what becomes possible in the classroom. The session concludes with reflections on the implications for teaching practice, emphasizing how more inclusive and participatory pedagogies can expand students’ sense of agency, connection, and belonging within undergraduate physics education.

Hybrid meeting

You can attend the Rydberg lecture hall at 15:15. 
Coffee and cake will be served from 15.00.
You can also join Mötesplats Rydberg online via the meeting tool Zoom:

Zoom-link to Mötesplats Rydberg.