United States

Physics is a degree that supports many career paths, and students often develop preferences for particular methods, such as theoretical, computational or experimental. However, it is not well understood how those preferences develop and affect students&#39; later career decisions. We used Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) as the basis for interpreting students&#39; decision-making processes. SCCT provides a framework for connecting learning experiences, self-efficacy, and outcome expectations with students&#39; interests, goals, and decisions. Semi-structured interviews with 8 physics students were conducted. This analysis focuses primarily on a single student to provide space to explore all three method specializations (theory, computation, and experiment) in more depth. We find that the availability of resources and learning opportunities had a significant impact on students&#39; career choices. Theoretical and computational experiences were readily available through classwork, undergraduate research, and could be worked on at home and in peer study groups. Students lacked the ability to work on experimental physics outside of infrequent classroom opportunities and could not build peer networks that supported their experimental skill growth, which was linked to lower interest and self-efficacy in regards to experimental physics.

PERC SM 21

Access to opportunities affects physics majors interest and choice of methods specialization

specializations

social cognitive career theory

career decision-making

qualitative research

experimental

**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

Physics is a degree that supports many career paths, and students often develop preferences for particular methods, such as theoretical, computational or experimental. However, it is not well understood how those preferences develop and affect students' later career decisions. We used Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) as the basis for interpreting students' decision-making processes. SCCT provides a framework for connecting learning experiences, self-efficacy, and outcome expectations with students' interests, goals, and decisions. Semi-structured interviews with 8 physics students were conducted. This analysis focuses primarily on a single student to provide space to explore all three method specializations (theory, computation, and experiment) in more depth. We find that the availability of resources and learning opportunities had a significant impact on students' career choices. Theoretical and computational experiences were readily available through classwork, undergraduate research, and could be worked on at home and in peer study groups. Students lacked the ability to work on experimental physics outside of infrequent classroom opportunities and could not build peer networks that supported their experimental skill growth, which was linked to lower interest and self-efficacy in regards to experimental physics.

poster

Change efforts in higher education are increasingly focused at the department-level, allowing for the benefits of a grassroots approach while also incorporating top-down implementation. Two models for departmentally-based change are active at the University of Colorado Boulder: the Departmental Action Team (DAT) Project and Teaching Quality Framework (TQF) Initiative. In both models, externally-facilitated teams meet regularly to work on projects relevant to their departments, however the focus of teams’ work differs, as do the models’ underlying frameworks and principles. To better understand how these models of institutional change operate and their implications for change work in higher education, we interviewed individuals from both efforts, including team facilitators, principal investigators, and those involved in the development of the models. Our results indicate that differences between the models (such as facilitation styles, team meeting processes, and team-level and initiative-level goals) have connections to the frameworks underlying each, and they have implications for participants’ experiences and teams’ outcomes. We present notable differences and similarities in the change process in the two models, the potential impact of these similarities and differences, and implications for others doing change work.

Fostering departmental change through collaborative work: an analysis of two approaches and their implications

As the field of Quantum Information Science (QIS) continues to advance, there is an increased need for a quantum-smart workforce to address the needs of the growing quantum industry. As institutions begin to expand their course offerings, there is a unique opportunity for discipline-based education researchers to have an impact on the curricular and pedagogical choices being made in these courses. As a first step, it is necessary for education researchers to have a representative picture of what QIS education currently looks like.

We reviewed recent course catalogues from a large sample of institutions in the United States looking for courses focused on QIS content. Our conservative analysis reveals that roughly a quarter of the institutions we reviewed offer QIS courses. While encouraging for such an emerging field, we found disparities in the types of institutions offering these courses as the vast majority were Doctoral-granting institutions. Additionally, we found that some classifications of minority serving institutions were much less likely to offer a QIS course (for example Historically Black Colleges and Universities or Predominantly Black Institutions), while Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander serving institutions were more likely than the national average to offer a QIS course. These disparities may lead to further racial, socioeconomic, and geographic disparity in the future quantum workforce. We also found that there was no single department that offered a majority of the QIS courses, indicating that the best efforts to improve QIS education will need to consider the multi-disciplinary nature of the field of quantum information science.

An Overview of Quantum Information Science Courses at US Institutions

Earning a bachelor's degree is expensive and time-consuming. Many undergraduate students pursue Advanced Placement (AP) courses in high school or transfer coursework from degree-granting institutions. However, the effect of those transfer credits on the time that it takes students to graduate (time-to-degree) is currently not well understood. We have investigated how incoming transfer credit impacts students' time-to-degree by defining three independent groups of transfer students: (1) those entering with College-level transfer credit, (2) those with only AP-level transfer credit, and (3) those without any transfer credit. The time-to-degree has been shown to be statistically different for each of these groups, with students who enter with college-level transfer credit graduating with the fewest semesters. We have explored differences in time-to-degree for students majoring in Physics and particularly for those who are traditionally underrepresented in the field. Cohen's d results suggest large negative effects on the time-to-degree for Physics students without any transfer credit, especially for female students and underrepresented ethnic or racial minority students. These results provide implications toward how universities advertise graduation in four years, as well as other impacts toward student financial aid such as four-year scholarships.

Analyzing time-to-degree for transfer students at a Large Midwestern University

This study informs the Physics Education Research (PER) community about patterns in reported funding and authorship data between 2010 and 2019. The study involves a text-based analysis of all contributed PERC and Physical Review PER papers during this time to identify funding sources, author collaborations, and changes over time. PERC and PRPER are both central to publication in the PER community, but are different in terms of project stage and publication prestige. Physical Review articles are in general mature projects, and this is the more prestigious publication venue. PERC proceedings represent the community across a broader set of authors and project stages. Results are also contrasted with the Frontiers in Education proceedings to provide context to these findings. The goal of this work is to provide insight into the community's history and to provide a benchmark for funding and collaboration in PER prior to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Contrasting funding and author data for PERC proceedings and PRPER

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.

Community Roles for Supporting Emerging Education Researchers

Informal physics programs create spaces through various formats to bring together physicists, physics students and public audiences. The facilitators, volunteers, and audience members each bring their own knowledge, experiences, and interests to these spaces which, in addition to availability of resources, influences the physics content and activities that these programs employ. As one part of our greater qualitative research study, we analyze interview data from lead facilitators of multiple informal physics programs with different formats to better understand the key organizational factors important to the design and implementation of meaningful informal physics activities. In this poster, we discuss common aspects from personnel, audiences, and available resources that impact informal physics content and activities, and consider the implications of COVID.

Understanding Influencing Factors of Informal Physics Content and Activities

We present the initial results using an assessment of calculus proficiency in the context of introductory physics (i.e., calculus transfer to physics), comparison of calculus transfer ability with physics self-efficacy, and how these attributes intersect with student gender. Although students demonstrated an improvement in their calculus transfer ability, most nevertheless displayed a decrease in their physics self-efficacy. Similarly, while women showed consistently exhibited lower physics self-efficacy than men, women demonstrated larger gains in their proficiency with calculus transfer to physics. We also discuss future work to better evaluate the interdependence of mathematics self-efficacy, physics self-efficacy, and ability to transfer calculus to physics.

Interplay between physics self-efficacy, calculus transfer ability, and gender

Research on self-efficacy -- or the confidence in one’s capability to perform a task -- has been shown to predict achievement and persistence in the sciences. Throughout a student’s experience in curricular and/or co-curricular activities, they may face threats to their self-efficacy. To investigate the threats or supports to students’ self-efficacy, we are using a mixed methods approach. This novel design creates a holistic narrative of which curricular and/or co-curricular activities are impacting a student’s self-efficacy as well as how and why these activities may be affecting their self-efficacy. We use a mixed methods approach to collect in-the-moment information about lived experiences. Quantitatively, we employ the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) using surveys of domain-specific self-efficacy. Qualitatively, we use daily reflections to investigate threats and supports toward students’ self-efficacy. Using an example, we will present the research design while focusing on building this conversation between the ESM and qualitative reflections.

Identifying Threats and Supports to Self-Efficacy Using Mixed Methods Research

This study is situated within possible selves theory to explore how senior undergraduate students in STEM develop and envision their future possible selves after graduation. We interviewed senior students at an urban institution in the US and encouraged them to think about who they will be in the future associated with their future career choices. This study presents two case studies: Ricky and Francisco. These two students discuss a variety of academic contexts through which they negotiate and explore career-related possible selves: conferences; experiences from classes and research; maintained aspirations for science; and dissatisfaction with education from high school. However, we found that in some cases academic contexts alone are not enough to help students develop possible future selves. Rather, they intersect with social contexts (social identity, out-of-school experiences) through which possible selves emerge. Our findings suggest that students might need more than just classroom-based lessons to explore their possible selves. Implications from this research can benefit the ongoing curriculum development aiming at increasing students' interest in STEM-related careers and building a meaningful professional life after graduation.

Senior undergraduate students developing and envisioning possible selves after graduation

In this study, we adapted a prior identity framework to investigate how students’ perception of learning environment (including sense of belonging, peer interaction and perceived recognition) in an introductory physics course predicts their course grades and physics motivational beliefs (including self-efficacy, interest and identity) at the end of this course. We found signatures of inequitable and non-inclusive learning environment in that female students’ mean scores for sense of belonging, peer interaction and perceived recognition were all lower than male students’ in the course. In addition, we found that female students had lower average course grades than male students. Using structural equation modeling, we found that students’ perception of the learning environment predicts their self-efficacy, interest, identity and grades at the end of the course. In particular, students’ perceived recognition, e.g., by instructors and teaching assistants, played a major role in predicting students’ physics identity, and students’ sense of belonging in physics played an important role in explaining the change in students’ physics self-efficacy. Our findings can be helpful for creating an inclusive and equitable learning environment in which all students can excel.

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Access to opportunities affects physics majors interest and choice of methods specialization

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Fostering departmental change through collaborative work: an analysis of two approaches and their implications

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