Science Talent and Unlimited Devotion: An Investigation of the Dynamics of University Students’ Science Identities Through the Lens of Gendered Conceptualisations of Talent

This chapter applies science identity to the notion of talent in higher education science: What it is and who it is for. The study draws on interview data produced to explore what teachers and students value and recognize as ideal and celebrated student characteristics and practices. One dataset is informed by students enrolled at a highly selective master’s science programme where women are majority. The other brings a teacher-perspective using interviews with undergraduate science faculty at the same institution. A thematic analysis that operationalises talent as an ideal, exposes a gendered mechanism for in- and ex- clusion that determine what and who are recognized and privileged in science. The results are treated as two distinct themes: (1) what talent is and is not, locates talent as hegemonically masculine and; (2) the price of talent, investigates how personal sacrifice associates science identity with talent. Together the two themes suggest that feminine performativity, within or outside of science, will not be read as talent. Instead, interviews show that when ‘talent’ is used to describe ideals that associate with science identities, it describes masculinized ideals that work to position students and teachers relative to each other in ways that renders science inherently inequitable.