United States

At the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, undergraduate Learning Assistants (LAs) are utilized to support course reforms in introductory physics labs. These LAs are previous students from the course who act as classroom aides and assistants alongside a graduate teaching assistant in our reformed physics labs. In two sets of interviews with LAs, we seek to better understand the motivations of LAs and why they choose to volunteer as instructors. We also probe the skills that LAs develop during their training and how their own experience as students in the course may affect their approach to instruction. Using our understanding of these aspects of the LA experience, we hope to improve our LA program by adapting our LA training to teach skills and practices that LAs find useful in the classroom.

PERC SM 21

Studying the Learning Assistant Experience at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

near-peer instruction

learning assistant model

peer instruction

learning assistant

interview

**Making Physics More Inclusive and Eliminating Exclusionary Practices in Physics**

As a gateway discipline to STEM majors and careers, physics plays a central role in deciding who does, and who doesn't, get to discover and pursue scientific careers. Technical and scientific professionals are rewarded with economic privilege and status which affords them both social and cultural power. Therefore, social justice will be realized only when the opportunity, and the choice, to excel in physics is open to all students. The culture and practices of the physics classroom reflect the culture of physics at large, which raises the question of how our professional physics communities can embrace, rather than inadvertently repel, a diverse group of academics that can help improve physics culture.  To this end, the 2021 Physics Education Research Conference will focus on defining inclusive spaces and practices. Additionally, we will explore strategies for eliminating exclusionary practices in our classrooms, research spaces, and professional organizations. We call on the community to propose sessions that will drive conversations related to these initiatives throughout PERC 2021.

Please download the full program [here. ](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TRMC_SYJ3PUqXyP7sskA7LRSA8ow0eRE/view?usp=sharing)

August 4, 2021 - August 5, 2021 in a Virtual Conference Format

Making Physics More Inclusive and Eliminating Exclusionary Practices in Physics

poster

In a prior study, we investigated graduate student reasoning on a set of entropy-related conceptual tasks in a think-aloud format. The tasks involved entropy from microscopic and macroscopic perspectives, ideal gases, and a novel context involving a system with a dynamic string. In the current study, we conducted interviews with undergraduates using the same questionnaire. Most students were interviewed during the second half of their upper-division Thermal Physics course at the University of Colorado Boulder while two were upper-division undergraduates from other institutions with strong physics programs. We analyze the responses of the undergraduates to a section of the interview involving a novel system of a dynamic string waving in a bath of water and discuss the similarities and differences between the undergraduate and graduate students' responses. The responses from the two populations share many similarities with a few noteworthy exceptions. The undergraduates generally did not produce multiple macrostate classifications in the novel system, and some expressed a concern with what they perceived to be an infinite number of microstates---and thus infinite entropy---which was not a concern among the graduate students.

Comparing undergraduate and graduate student reasoning on a conceptual entropy questionnaire

Assessments provide opportunities for students to make sense of curriculum by connecting their existing ideas to generate new knowledge. As educators, we would like to be able to engage students in this process of sensemaking to help their learning. Through a case study, we present an approach to identifying assessment task features that facilitate sensemaking. The context involves an introductory student's attempt to a physics problem.  We analyze the student's transcript through the lens of sensemaking epistemic game and note the student's actions (`moves') while solving the problem. By analyzing these moves, we argue that the assessment features that played a role in the student's sensemaking can be identified. We find that the presence of a real-world context, engaging with multiple representations, and requiring a physical interpretation of a numerical answer to be instrumental in student's sensemaking. Identifying task features in this way can be instrumental in designing future assessment tasks that increase the chances students engage in sensemaking while working on them.

A methodology for identifying task features that facilitate sensemaking

Understanding the nature of causality is a key component of conceptual understanding in science. The hypothesis of this study is that certain types of causal inference are more challenging than others. If correct, particularly challenging causal inferences may provide a unified explanation for different conceptual difficulties across physics content areas. This paper investigates two aspects of a simple, qualitative force-and-motion problem that may impact the difficulty of the causal inferences required. The first aspect is the type of causal inference required: cause-to-effect (CE), effect-to-cause (EC), or cause-to-cause (CC). The second aspect is information about an alternative cause, which can be explicitly constant, explicitly unknown, or ambiguous. To test the impact of these two problem aspects on participants inference accuracy we conducted an on-line experiment in which participants were randomly assigned to one of thirty-six conditions that systematically varied these two aspects across conditions. The results show that (i) for explicitly constant alternative causes, CC inferences are more difficult than CE or EC inferences, (ii) inferences given explicitly unknown alternative cause information are more difficult than inferences given explicitly constant alternative causes, and (iii) ambiguous alternative cause information is treated as implying the alternative causes are explicitly constant, which is in line with conversational assumptions rather than a formal, logical perspective. These results hint at the potential fruitfulness of understanding the causal inferences underlying conceptual difficulties in physics.

Investigating causal inference difficulties with a simple, qualitative force-and-motion problem

We discuss an investigation of student difficulties with the representation in which a Hermitian operator corresponding to a physical observable (e.g., the Hamiltonian operator corresponding to energy) is diagonal in the context of degenerate perturbation theory involving the Zeeman effect in the hydrogen atom. This investigation was carried out in advanced quantum mechanics courses by administering written free-response and multiple-choice questions and conducting individual interviews with students. We discuss the common student difficulties related to these concepts, knowledge of which can be useful for developing research-validated learning tools.

Student difficulties identifying diagonal operators for degenerate perturbation theory

We discuss an investigation of upper-level undergraduate and graduate students’ difficulties with fundamental concepts involving a system of identical particles. The investigation was carried out in advanced quantum mechanics courses by administering written questions and conducting individual interviews with students. We find that students share many common difficulties related to these quantum mechanical concepts, e.g., with regard to the many-particle Hamiltonian and stationary state wavefunctions for a system of non-interacting identical particles.

Student difficulties with the basics for a system of non-interacting identical particles

Inclusivity is a premise for successful scientific discourse in the endeavor of gaining a broader understanding. In this work therefore, we elicit different “schools of thought” in the context of flight physics for reducing unconsciously exclusionary practices. For decades aerodynamic lift explanations have been a highly controversial topic in PER – and they still are. However, the discussion has always been mainly driven by disjunct models and hermeneutical arguments. This paper tries to carve out empirically different “schools of thoughts” by asking 400+ university students at different institutions about their agreement to various explanations for aerodynamic lift. The study was accompanied by the expert-validated ANONYMIZED Concept Inventory (ANONYM.) and therefore can differentiate what high performers, low performers and flight instructors think. The results surprised even the authors: Among many other findings, this study revealed that – within ONE mind – nai?ve concepts can coexist with expert concepts and that this phenomenon is especially prevalent among high scoring individuals of the ANONYM. instrument.

Naïve concepts of aerodynamic lift – data lessons from different (learning) cultures

We are interested in trying to understand ways that students collaborate to solve conceptual physics problems in the context of spherical unit vectors in upper-division E&M, especially ones that have been shown to be difficult for students to solve individually on their own, but which groups of students have been more successful at. Using a think-out-loud protocol, we interviewed students in small groups, asking them to solve together on a large whiteboard conceptual problems from this E&M context. The interviews were video and audio recorded, and qualitatively analyzed applying an emergent coding method and the resources framework [4]. Through this analysis, we observed one common mechanism in all three group-interviews whereby students collaborated effectively: first one student activated a conceptual resource and expressed it, then another student took up that idea, and finally the whole group then together used that idea to move forward with the problem. We call a resource activated and used this way a shared resource [8]. We propose that the shared resources construct could be a useful tool to help understand how students collaborate in solving conceptual physics problems. In this paper, we report our method of analysis and the results from one group interview to illustrate one shared resource we identified and the role it played in helping students collaboratively solve the conceptual problem in this context. Future work is suggested.

Shared Resources in Student Problem-Solving of Spherical Unit Vectors

While efforts have been made in undergraduate science content courses to specifically support pre-service elementary teachers’ skills, knowledge, and pedagogical disciplinary knowledge of experimental design, much of this work predates the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). To date, few, if any, assessment instruments are well correlated with the NGSS practice Planning an Carrying Out Investigations (PCOI). To meet this need, a team including four faculty members from physics, a social scientist, and a science education faculty member developed an appropriate instrument for measuring students’ knowledge of PCOI and, particularly important to pre-service teachers, their students’ pedagogical disciplinary knowledge of this practice. The instrument was developed by mapping items to relevant PCOI sub-practices at the elementary grade level, since it was developed for pre-service elementary STEM teachers. In this poster, we describe the process of developing items in preparation for validation of the instrument.

Developing an Instrument to Assess the Next Generation Science Standard Practice Planning and Carrying out Investigations in Preservice STEM Teachers

Recent studies have begun to explore the connection between physics identity development and career skill development with the facilitation of informal physics programs by our students. Informal physics programs, or outreach programs, provide pathways for less structured, voluntary engagement with the field, beyond the formal spaces of a classroom or laboratory, where students can explore their passions within the field. This work narrows the focus of a prior study to explore the differences in experiences between graduate and undergraduate students who facilitated at least one of five outreach programs at a large, public, land grant university. Results from this work may help inform departmental efforts regarding retention, inclusion, and structures to promote skill development beyond the classroom.

Comparing the impact of informal physics program on undergraduate versus graduate student facilitators

Previous literature about students’ understanding of heat and temperature primarily emphasizes students’ misunderstandings of canonical physics concepts. In our study, we used a resources-oriented approach to analyze 653 student responses to questions about thermal phenomena, looking for ways in which their responses could serve as valuable resources for continued learning. We identified three common conceptual resources: (A) heat transfer is directional; (B) an object’s physical properties matter in thermal processes; and (C) hotter objects have more energy. These resources could be used to strengthen physics teaching by using students’ understandings of heat and temperature to support the development of more advanced physics ideas.

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Studying the Learning Assistant Experience at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

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