United States

Societal stereotypes and biases pertaining to who belongs in physics and who can excel in physics can impact motivational beliefs, e.g., of women and racial and ethnic minority students in physics courses. This study investigates how the learning environment predicts male and female students’ motivational beliefs including physics self-efficacy, interest, and identity at the end of year long (spanning two-semester) algebra-based introductory physics courses. These were courses at a large university in the US taken primarily by biological science majors many of whom are interested in health professions. Although women are not underrepresented in these physics courses, societal stereotypes and biases internalized by female students over their lifetime can still impact their motivational beliefs about physics. Our findings show gender gap in motivational beliefs favoring men. These findings can be useful to provide support and create an equitable and inclusive learning environment to help all students excel in these courses.

AAPT SM 21

How the learning environment predicts students’ motivational beliefs in physics

learning environment

identity

equity

diversity

gender

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poster

A model train is automatically controlled for and physics experiments conducted by analyzing its motion. By measuring the motion of this model train using an mobile ultrasonic sensor unit (in the web site [1]) connected to a smartphone, live-time plots of distance, velocity, and acceleration can be obtained. This material will assist students in redefining their interpretation of physical experiences. Furthermore, programming the motion of a model train can be applied not only to physics education, but also to elementary and electronic work training[2]. [1] Moblie Physics Education Lab (Web site): https://sites.google.com/view/diracma888/ [2] A. Adachi: "New Physics Experiments using Model Train and Smartphone Apps: (Volume 1 Constant-Velocity Motion)" (e-books, 2021) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08YD15NZX

Experiment of Model Train using Ultrasonic Sensor Connected to Smartphone

Professional societies call on their members to support diversity, equity, and inclusion. To meet this goal, introductory college courses need to repay the educational debts society owes due to racism and sexism. We investigated the size of and changes in society’s educational debts in conceptual knowledge in introductory chemistry, biology, and physics courses for majors using a critical quantitative framework. The varying gender and racial representation across these disciplines provided context for interpreting the relationship between society’s educational debts and representation across disciplines. We analyzed data from 22,520 students in 328 courses at 34 institutions collected with the LASSO platform using Bayesian hierarchical linear models. The models identified similar trends in educational debts due to racism and sexism in all three disciplines. We will discuss implications for research, instruction, and diversity in physics.

Society’s Educational Debts from Racism and Sexism in Science Disciplines

DBER attracts many faculty from other STEM disciplines, and these faculty have little or no specific training in DBER. DBER requires a mastery of quantitative, qualitative, and/or mixed methodologies, and also a nuanced understanding of breadth of topic, research questions, and theoretical frameworks. This interdisciplinarity is particularly challenging for emerging DBER researchers who often switch into DBER with only discipline specific content and research training. As part of a large study about how STEM faculty become involved with DBER, we interviewed a number of emerging DBER faculty about their pathways into DBER. We conducted a thematic analysis of these interviews grounded in the theoretical frameworks of the reasoned action approach and conjecture mapping. Based on our analysis we identified 3 roles that support new faculty entering DBER. These roles are the peer, the subject matter expert, and the project manager.

How STEM faculty enter Discipline Based Education Research

Dual Process Theories of Reasoning (DPTOR) state that cognition has two major processes: a fast, automatic process (heuristic) and a slow, reflective process (analytic). A common heuristic among introductory physics students is that acceleration and velocity are the same thing. This heuristic has proved remarkably resilient to instruction in the author’s classes. In a Conceptual Physics class, multiple choice questions on free fall were combined with a set of knowledge statements in order to trigger the analytic process. Students were asked to choose if each knowledge statement was helpful, unhelpful, or wrong in the context of the problem. Data suggest that the inclusion of the knowledge statements served as a productive intervention for engaging the analytic process. Student performance improved compared to the population that were not served the knowledge statements. An analysis of question time stamps was also performed to examine what proportion of students changed answers after viewing the knowledge statements.

Knowledge statements as a productive intervention to prompt reflective thinking

Much existing physics education research (PER) on student ideas about momentum focuses on the difficulties that students face when learning this topic. These difficulties are framed as obstacles for students to overcome in order to develop correct understandings of physics. Our research takes a resources-oriented approach to analyzing student responses to momentum questions, viewing student ideas as valuable and potentially productive for learning, over and above their correctness. Here, we highlight four conceptual resources that provide insight into students’ ideas about momentum, which are the conservation resource, direction resource, collisions resource and properties resource These resources are context-dependent and could be elicited and built on by instructors to support students in developing more complex and sophisticated understandings of physics.

Student Resources for Understanding Momentum

Intelligence mindset has been studied extensively in education research, but domain-specific intelligence mindset research is relatively new in the physics context. Additionally, recent mindset research has uncovered separable factors within the intelligence mindset construct. In this study, we test a model involving four factors (My Ability, My Growth, Others' Ability, and Others' Growth) to pre and post survey data from Physics 1 classes. In particular, we explore how these mindset factors change over time as well as their ability to predict course grade. We find that students are less likely to endorse a growth mindset for themselves and others at the end of their first calculus-based introductory physics course than at the beginning. We also find that decrease in mindset measures are more drastic for female students than male students. Finally, we find that the best predictor of course grades is the My Ability component of the mindset construct, which has implications both for creating equitable and inclusive learning environment and determining how educators implement mindset interventions.

Who do students believe a growth mindset applies to?

This study reports the predictive power of different parameters towards FMCE (Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation) post-test scores controlling for FMCE pretest scores. The sample consists of students (N=1060) from a large eastern land-grant university enrolled in Physics 1 (calculus-based mechanics class). These students are primarily pursuing engineering degrees. Multiple linear regression was used with FMCE post-test score as the dependent variable and a broad collection of independent variables including high school GPA, ACT/SAT score, college math entry level, AP classes taken, transfer credits, college credits, self-efficacy, sense of belonging, and personality. The degree to which these variables are still important if FMCE pretest scores are controlled for is examined.

What factors predict FMCE post-test scores controlling for pretest scores?

We have developed a workshop, which meets weekly in an online synchronous format, to support physics majors during the pandemic and to help them develop essential transferrable skills. Class typically begins with a check in to see how students are coping with the challenges of college during the pandemic. The rest of the time is spent on activities and discussions designed to help students develop communication and problem-solving skills, such as communicating science to the public and tackling open-ended problems, that are not commonly addressed elsewhere in the curriculum. There is flexibility built into the class such that we can adapt the schedule to meet the needs of the students or to go into more depth on certain topics. This poster will discuss the workshop format and activities as well as student feedback on the workshop and the potential for incorporating such a course into the physics curriculum.

Developing Essential Physics Skills through a Workshop-style Course

TYCs have unique opportunities to support their students, like through close student-teacher relationships due to small class sizes, and we studied one such class in a cohort program at a TYC for natural science majors intending to transfer. This course was a STEM research methods course that we observed by taking field notes, administering written journal reflections to the students throughout the course, and by interviewing some of the students at the end of the course. In this poster, we will discuss the course overall and the student experiences, as well as the ways our observational methods supported us building helpful research relationships.

Observing and Characterizing a Two-Year College Research Methods Course

Descriptions of the Nature of Science are in contrast with the widespread notion that “physics” is objective, unaffected by human influence. To better understand students’ thinking about the nature of physics, we taught a lesson from the Underrepresentation Curriculum and collected written responses before and after in-class discussion about the nature of physics. In this manuscript, we share student responses about the presence of subjectivity in physics and relate them to commonly accepted ideas about the Nature of Science. Prior to discussing subjectivity, students tend to describe physics without reference to human influence. Afterwards, many students identify that while physical properties may be objective, human interpretation, biases, and values influence physics as well. Some students also consider our understanding of physics as incomplete. These discussions are a first step towards increasing awareness of structural and individual subjectivity. We believe this will ultimately support a more equitable, robust scientific community.

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How the learning environment predicts students’ motivational beliefs in physics

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