Gender Alibi-strategies in Science Education - Adolescent utilization of stereotypes

Numerous studies have found that pupil’s interest in science decreases during their school years, and a significant gender gap has been identified (Archer et al., 2010; Dohn, 2022). The Danish LEARN project aims to shed light on this gender difference in a Nordic context, specifically we are interested in the motivation orientations amongst the most interested pupils in lower secondary school (age 13-16). We present here the preliminary findings and the overall methodology of the project, which is constructed to capture this complex phenomenon, and draws inspiration from expectancy-value theory, activity-theory and reflexive sociology.
As a heuristic analytic lens, we have developed a concept we have dubbed alibi-strategies. We use this analytical concept as a ‘working hypothesis’ and a way to enunciate the specific flavor and content of the discursive practices of the youths in question. In many ways the youths are forming ‘alibis’, meaning that they are using specific rationales to argue for and against certain types of practices and motivations. The concept alibi-strategies is thus a way to try to capture and enunciate the dynamic and often paradoxical nature of the discursive strategies of the youths in question.
Whilst this study uses situated expectancy-value theory (Eccles & Wigfield, 2020) as a way to understand the discursive specificities and as a frame for the quantitative survey, we are very inspired by how activity-theory see motivation intricately connected with context, especially how context and setting acts as the discursive frame for the discursive practices of the youths (Kelly, 2021) and Pierre Bourdieu’s reflexive sociology, and how he conceptualized strategies as unconscious choices in the field (Bourdieu, 2006). With these theoretical underpinnings in place, interest thus becomes a part of the larger activity-structure of the youths, including the motivational orientation, thus formulated opinions and discursive statements can mask ‘hidden’ choices and orientations of the youths or in Bourdieu’s terms they make a virtue out of necessity. To understand the alibi-strategies we thus draw upon both the discourses in the classroom, but also the total setting and context of the discursive practices of the youths which is also influenced by discursive practices and structures ‘outside’ it (school, media, society etc.)