Classrooms of the present and practices of the past: The importance of understanding physics teachers’ embodied practices as a possible locus for social change

Physics classrooms are still clearly marked by practices belonging to a certain
educational past, while teachers are increasingly being asked to teach in lignment with current equality, diversity and inclusion agendas. At the core of this temporal disconnect are teachers’ practices, which are strongly marked by normative regimes in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, class and other social factors. Moreover, certainpractices more than others are constantly being transmitted, validated and legitimized as the normative ways of teaching. Drawing upon post-structuralist and feminist perspectives on teaching, practices, knowledge and subjectivities, in this theoretical paper I discuss the implications of understanding teachers’ practices as embodied practices. Doing so brings to the fore the normative dynamics of physics teachers’ taken-for-granted and invisible practices. Building on Vick and Martinez’s argument about the centrality of the body in teachers’ practices, I argue for the importance of understanding physics teachers’ embodied practices, because it bridges the gap between the equality that teachers strive to achieve in and through education, and what they end up doing in practice.