NANCY W. BRICKHOUSE, MARGARET A. EISENHART AND KAREN L. TONSO FORUM IDENTITY POLITICS IN SCIENCE AND SCIENCE EDUCATION IDENTITY POLITICS, LEARNING, AND ACADEMIC SUCCESS Nancy: Karen raises interesting questions regarding the way in which Pub- lic Engineering School (PES) seems to be a very different kind of learning setting than what we find reported elsewhere in the literature. In particular, PES seemed less able to accommodate diversity than many K–12 settings. My hunch is that she is absolutely correct on this point, and that we need to think more carefully about how the politics of inclusion/exclusion operate in the variety of learning settings of interest to us. Margaret: Karen’s article is a striking example of how the politics of inclusion/exclusion affect learning and academic success, and I agree with Nancy that this is an area that needs much more attention in learning set- tings. After all the work that has been done by anthropologists, sociolo- gists, and others to expose the persistent correspondence between student social or power hierarchies and academic success, it is astonishing and discouraging how infrequently these issues are seriously considered in discussions of subject matter learning. Much research and popular opin- ion about subject matter learning – be it in science, mathematics, read- ing, or engineering – seems to assume that the right curriculum and good teaching will produce student learning and academic success, regardless of students’ social positioning, perspective, or differences. In other words, students’ social worlds are viewed as either homogeneous or irrelevant to learning as long as good instructional materials and methods are used. Karen’s article makes clear that social stereotyping and social constructions of identity have everything to do with learning opportunities afforded and realized. Karen: Like most people who talk about engineers and engineering, PES operated with a rhetoric of sameness, as if there were no diversity before women began to attend in greater numbers in late 1960s and mem- bers of racial and ethnic communities somewhat after that. It is impor- tant to note that there was nothing “the same” about white, middle-class men at PES, and to note that several PES faculty who had attended over 30 years earlier found only a few new terms used among student en- gineers, indicating that men’s diversity had a long history. Thus, while science, and sites of science practice, may be masculinized, this should Cultural Studies of Science Education (2006) 1: 309–324 DOI: 10.1007/s11422-005-9011-8 C  Springer 2006