United States

Race continues to play a major role in the experiences of students of color at predominantly white institutions. In this study we examine the experiences of six graduate STEM students of color using the lens of Critical Race Theory (CRT), in order to understand their racialized experiences. CRT has deep roots in legal studies and was created for understanding and transforming the relationship between race, racism, and power, thus providing a theoretical framework for analyzing student responses. Our participants reported experiencing microaggressions and isolation while pursuing their graduate degrees. This article serves to highlight the voices of students of color while simultaneously raising awareness to issues of racism that student of color may face at predominantly white institutions.

PERC SM 21

Microaggressions and Isolation among Graduate STEM Students of Color

isolation

microaggressions

people of color

critical race theory

graduate students

equity

inclusion

diversity

**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 this work we report on a pilot study where we used machine learning to predict whether students will correctly solve the classic “ballistic pendulum” problem based on an essay written by students elucidating their approach to solving the problem. Specifically, students were asked to describe the “principles, assumptions, and approximations” they used to solve the problem. Student essays were codified using the practices of natural language processing. Essays from two non-consecutive semesters were used for training/validation (N = 1441) and testing (N=1480). The final model used to make predictions was an ensemble classification scheme using random forest, eXtreme Gradient Boosting classifier (XGBoost), and logistic regression as estimators. Our accuracy in predicting students’ correctness was around 80% with slightly higher accuracy in identifying students who incorrectly solved the problem and slightly lower in predicting student who correctly solved the problem.

Using natural language processing to predict student problem solving performance

The Conceptual Survey of Electricity and Magnetism (CSEM) is a multiple-choice survey that contains a variety of electricity and magnetism concepts at the level of introductory physics used to help inform instructors of student mastery of those concepts. Prior studies suggest that many concepts on the survey are challenging for introductory physics students and the average student scores after traditional instruction are low. The research presented here compares the performance of students in introductory, upper-level, and graduate-level physics courses on five CSEM questions to understand the cross-sectional evolution of student understanding of these concepts from the introductory to upper-level to graduate-level. We discuss five CSEM questions that remain challenging for many upper-level and graduate students.

Evolution in student conceptual understanding of electricity and magnetism

We evaluated the use of student peer review in an introductory physics laboratory as a central part of writing instruction. During a recent revision of a physics laboratory course the number of written reports was reduced from weekly to three per semester but each report went through a process of review by a peer and then revision based on the feedback before final submission for grading by the instructor. Copies of laboratory reports from all sections of the laboratory were collected and evaluated following a coding scheme that had previously been developed to evaluate the quality of student writing on different facets of the written reports. The results were then compared to student reports from before the revision. It was found that the quality of the reports undergoing peer review was comparable or better than those without, although the former submitted only a fourth of the number of reports. The use of peer review resulted in comparable to improved student writing while significantly reducing the workload for students and instructors.

Evaluating the Effectiveness of Peer Review in Introductory Physics Labs

Many physics education research studies aim to assess the impact of curriculum on student learning and experience. Fewer studies examine how the specific assessment structure or the grading approach of the course impact student learning and experience. In a typical university physics course, assignments are given a letter or numerical grade and returned to the student. This potentially focuses the student on obtaining high marks and discourages them from more productive epistemological stances. In this study, we aim to employ and assess the impact of an ungrading approach where grades are not given on individual assignments and a final letter grade is determined through a scaffolded negotiation between teacher and student. Preliminary data from different sections of a 2021 Spring semester college physics course are presented in this poster, and further work is needed.

Evaluating the impact of grading approach and assessment structure upon students in physics courses

Low-stakes research-based assessments are opportunities for professors to understand and integrate course transformation built on pedagogical research. These assessments often come in the form of pre- and post-tests, such as the Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation -- the usefulness of which, however, relies on voluntary student participation. A prior study by Nissen et al. investigating participation rates as well as performance outcomes in low-stakes assessments found a possible connection between student participation rates and final course grades. We explore this connection at a different large research university with pre- and post-test participation rates and course grade data from a data set of more than 2000 students using statistical methods from the previous paper.

Investigating the connection between course grades and student participation in research-based assessments

The American Physical Society calls on its members to improve the diversity of physics by supporting an inclusive culture that encourages women and Black, Indigenous, and people of color to become physicists. Introductory physics courses provide opportunities for recruiting and retaining diverse students or enacting policies and cultural practices that disproportionately harm students from minoritized groups. Introductory calculus-based electricity and magnetism courses have received far less attention from researchers than introductory mechanics courses. To better understand the role introductory electricity and magnetism courses play in the lack of diversity in physics, we investigated the intersecting relationships between racism and sexism in inequities in student conceptual knowledge using a quantitative critical framework. The analyses used Bayesian hierarchical linear models to examine students' conceptual knowledge as measured by the Conceptual Survey of Electricity and Magnetism. The data came from the LASSO database and included 3,686 students from 83 calculus-based courses at 16 institutions. The model indicated society owed educational debts in conceptual knowledge due to racism, sexism, or both to Black, Hispanic, Asian, and White Hispanic students and White women. Of these groups, society owed the largest educational debts to Black students. The courses, of which almost all used collaborative instruction (81 of 83) supported by learning assistants (66 of 83), added to the educational debts owed to Black students, maintained the debts owed to Hispanic and White Hispanic students and White women, and mitigated the debts owed to Asian students.

Societal Educational Debts Due to Racism and Sexism in Calculus-based Electricity and Magnetism Courses

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.

Embracing subjectivity in physics to support student empowerment

Physics mentors play an important role in supporting students in postsecondary education and in their transition to graduate school and careers. The knowledge and beliefs physics mentors have about disability can affect how they mentor students with disabilities. We administered the Disability and Physics Careers Survey (DPCS) to 237 practicing physicists recruited through physics-specific listservs to measure their knowledge about disability and beliefs about the viability of physics careers for people with different disability diagnoses. This study compares practicing physicists’ varied knowledge about different categories of impairments and diagnoses, and their beliefs about the viability of future careers for students with specific impairments. We present our findings examining the knowledge of practicing physicists about disability, their beliefs about the viability of certain physics careers for people with disabilities, and how those beliefs may vary depending on their personal disability experience

Examining physicists’ perspectives of career viability and knowledge of impairment

This study examines survey data from 2,129 women undergraduates at CUWiP (Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics) in order to classify what led them to study physics. We use expectancy-value and self-efficacy theory to create a coding framework based on different types of value and efficacy expectations in order to group responses. We find that the most common attractions are social persuasion, which is due to pressure or persuasion from people around the students, and intrinsic value, which is related to the inherent value of engaging in physics.

Examining reasons undergraduate women join physics

Prior research shows that gender differences in self-efficacy and test anxiety can predict students’ course performance. Although there has been research that uses test anxiety and self-efficacy to predict student grades, no study to our knowledge has investigated this in the context of low- and high-stakes physics assessments. In this work, we used survey data and grade information to compare the predictive power of self-reported selfefficacy and test anxiety on low-stakes (e.g., homework and quizzes) and high-stakes (e.g., traditional exams) assessment scores in a traditionally taught large introductory physics course. We found that there are gender differences in both self-efficacy and test anxiety, as well as in high-stakes assessment outcomes. There were no gender differences in low-stakes assessment scores. Further, we found that models that control for self-efficacy and/or test anxiety eliminate the predictive power of gender for high-stakes assessment scores. Finally, we found that self-efficacy partially mediates the effect of test anxiety on high-stakes assessment outcomes. These trends suggest that teaching methods that alleviate test anxiety have the potential to create a more equitable learning environment.

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Microaggressions and Isolation among Graduate STEM Students of Color

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