Educational spaces in natural sciences and biology are considered spaces for progression and (in)dependent knowledge (re)production, spaces in which change is discussed and in themselves constituting spaces for change, spaces that are strictly separated from perspectives from social sciences or humanities. However, spaces and practices within higher science education are subject to feminist critique, which I follow in this project exploring identity formations of undergraduate biology students at universities with Scandinavian, Continental and Anglo-Saxon education systems. The main question is how the boarder point of education, student-teacher interactions and discourses in teaching situations alter the becoming “a biologist” of students in a community of “doing” and learning biology. Instead for staying within national boarders and binary perspectives on students/teachers, knowers/learners, female/male students, the aim is to allow broader, intersecting and transnational perspectives on higher science education.
The current, first phase, analyses discourses on educational goals in biology students’ motivation texts from the beginning of their undergraduate studies, as well as biology teachers’ teaching approach texts from applications for positions at a Swedish university. Students discourses range from “not having an idea, yet” and “interest in nature” to already expressing the ambition to “becoming a researcher”. The notion of becoming a researcher is strongly present in the teaching approach texts expressing the value of teaching students to think critically and creating a “research family”. A strong discrepancy between what students strive for and what teachers value occurs – a discrepancy that alters students perception of belonging and becoming. Here, biology is representing one example, but this study challenges the idea of the desirable student aiming for doing research and working towards a research career in natural sciences. It allows for reflections on teaching and new perspectives and more diversity in the classroom. Teachers mentioned the aim to create spaces where “social and gender hierarchies are absent”, thus teaching spaces are considered socially hierarchical and gendered.
One step to opening up natural sciences and higher science education for a stronger gender perspective, creating interdisciplinary spaces for change and loosening boundaries, is to connect disciplines, allowing conversations especially within academia as a stratified space.

Coming from a working-class background and the Black Forest region in Germany, I was the second in my family to graduate from high school. I studied biology at Heidelberg University, interrupted my Bachelor studies with a voluntary ecological year in an environmental school working with children and after resumption of my studies I taught in undergraduate courses until my graduation I developmental biology and toxicology. After my Bachelor’s, I continued with a Master’s in biology at Freiburg University, Germany, but before graduation decided to take part in an ERASMUS exchange with Uppsala University. After half a year and since I was intrigued by the educational system, I changed program to Uppsala entirely and graduated in plant systematics. In September 2017, I started my PhD at the Centre for Gender Research at Uppsala University on biology students’ identify formation in higher biology education.

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