“Be Better Than You Need to Be” - A-Level Physics Students’ Rants, Resilience and Peer Pedagogy on TikTok

Sep 5, 2026

Amid the growth of social media, students increasingly use short-form platforms for study support and advice. This study investigates how A-level Physics is portrayed by student creators on TikTok, using reflexive thematic analysis of 57 videos tagged #alevelphysics. Findings depict the subject as both intellectually demanding and emotionally taxing, with the exam system framed as a flawed gatekeeper, while creators mix frustration, resilience, and cautionary guidance.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages23

Reading Time58 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Introduction

Literature Review

Physics at A Level

“Be Better Than You Need to Be”: A-Level Physics Students’ Rants, Resilience and Peer Pedagogy on TikTok Wonyong Park Southampton Education School, University of Southampton 1 University Road, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK [w.park@soton.ac.uk](w.park@soton.ac.uk) ORCID: 0000-0002-8911-5968 Abstract Amid the growth of social media, students increasingly turn to short-form platforms for study support and advice. This study examines how A-level Physics is portrayed by student creators on TikTok, a popular platform amongst students for peer-to-peer educational guidance, information sharing, and collective knowledge building. Using reflexive thematic analysis of 57 TikTok videos via \#alevelphysics, we explore how A-level Physics is characterised and what pathways to success are constructed within these informal discourses. The findings show that the subject is depicted as both intellectually demanding and emotionally taxing, with the examination system perceived as a flawed gatekeeper. Creators narrate their experiences through a blend of hyperboles, frustration, and resilience, offering sophisticated peer-generated pedagogies alongside cautionary tales. Recommendations emphasise strategic resource curation, sustained practice, systematic memorisation, and a mindset of deliberate over-preparation. These portrayals of subject demands and agentic responses resonate with prior research on the cultural construction of physics as hard and exclusionary, while also illustrating how affinity spaces on social media enable students to reframe difficulty through shared feelings and tactics. We discuss the value of student-led online discourses about high-stakes examinations for educators in supporting prospective and current physics students. Introduction The rise of social media is rapidly reshaping the landscape of educational guidance, particularly for young people navigating the critical junctures of their academic journeys. Social media platforms such as TikTok have emerged as powerful arenas for peer-to-peer knowledge exchange, supplanting or supplementing traditional sources of advice like teachers, institutional websites, and formal careers services. A recent survey suggested that 48% of 3–17s who watch videos on video-sharing platforms use them to learn or for schoolwork (Ofcom, 2025) . Within these dynamic digital environments, students share lived experiences, study strategies, and subject-specific perspectives, creating a vibrant ecosystem of informal guidance. This content, often perceived as more authentic and relatable, can present narratives about academic life that diverge significantly from official institutional discourse, offering a potent, user-generated counter-narrative to prospective students (Conde-Caballero et al., 2023; Jenkins, 2009; Raaper et al., 2024) . Such online spaces for peer academic interaction can be conceptualised through the lens of“affinity spaces,” a term coined by Gee (2005) to describe sites where individuals gather around a shared interest or practice. Social media platforms facilitate the rapid formation of such spaces, allowing students with common academic goals or challenges to connect, collaborate, and co-construct knowledge outside of formal educational structures such as schools and colleges. These peer-led networks operate according to their own internal logicsand norms, fostering a sense of community and shared identity (Gee, 2005). While they can provide invaluable support and demystify complex academic pathways, they also possess the capacity to perpetuate and amplify specific discourses, including potentially narrow or daunting portrayals of academic difficulty, success, and failure (Gee, 2004; Kirkpatrick & Lawrie., 2024), especially for subjects often seen as hard such as physics. Despite the significance of narratives and discourses about physics, less is known about how they are reproduced, contested, and reconfigured within the contemporary affinity spaces of

FAQs

What is the focus of the study on TikTok content about A-level Physics?

The study examines how A-level Physics is characterized in student-created TikTok videos and what pathways to success are constructed through these informal discourses.

How was the TikTok data analyzed?

Reflexive thematic analysis was conducted on 57 TikTok videos collected via the hashtag #alevelphysics.

What major themes describe A-level Physics and success on TikTok?

The subject is portrayed as intellectually demanding and emotionally taxing, the exam system is often viewed as a flawed gatekeeper, and creators respond with peer-generated pedagogies that blend frustration and resilience.

Sep 5, 2026

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