Leveraging Cultural Resources in Physics Education: Enhancing Engagement through Culturally-Based Pedagogies

Physics education has long struggled to engage diverse student populations, particularly those from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Traditional instruction often prioritizes abstract mathematical representations and decontextualized problem-solving, reinforcing the perception that physics is disconnected from students' experiences. Emerging research in culturally based pedagogies (CBP) highlights the potential of integrating students' cultural resources, epistemologies, and sensemaking practices to create more inclusive and meaningful physics learning experiences. Our research examines how students in introductory physics courses leverage cultural resources and epistemological perspectives to engage with key physics concepts. We have developed culturally-based assessments and deployed them in a pilot study at three different universities. This talk will introduce the curriculum, the qualitative coding schemes and frameworks that we employed to analyze students' use of cultural resources in learning physics. By investigating how students' cultural backgrounds shape their physics engagement, this research aims to provide insights into how physics education can better integrate students' lived experiences, knowledge systems, and epistemologies.