An uncommon case of relevance through everyday experiences

TL;DR

This paper investigates how some life science students recognize physics in daily life and explores teaching strategies to enhance this relevance, challenging the common view that physics is rarely seen outside academic contexts.

Contribution

It presents a contrasting case of a student who perceives physics in everyday life and discusses course approaches to foster such relevance among students.

Findings

Sam recognizes physics in daily phenomena.

Courses can support students to see physics relevance.

Most students do not naturally see physics in everyday life.

Abstract

Physics education research has probed for the relevance of physics in students' everyday lives. Attitudinal and epistemological surveys have asked students if they think of or use physics in their daily lives. We have previously documented how it is uncommon that our life science students describe using or even seeing physics in their daily life (Nair, 2018). This result was unsurprising and aligns with previous scholarship of students majoring in disciplines outside of physics; we have argued that it is optimistic for scholars to expect students with disciplinary homes outside of physics to see their experiences through a lens of physics. Methodologically, we searched for a contrasting case (Sam). Sam is majoring in the life sciences and articulates moments where she uses physics to reason through everyday phenomena. We explore the ways in which courses can support students like Sam to find physics relevant to their everyday experiences.