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The Next Generation Science Standards outlines the &quot;crosscutting concepts&quot; as the common tools and lenses adopted across the disciplines of STEM. Little work has been conducted on crosscutting concepts to date. To address this gap, a qualitative research study was undertaken to assess the effects of discipline-specific instruction on students&#39; conceptualization of energy and matter within introductory science and engineering coursework. The first law of thermodynamics served as the primary topic given its crucial role as a guiding principle for energy and matter. Three first law problems were developed that each incorporated field-specific systems, language, and notation. The dynamic transfer framework served as the methodological and theoretical basis for the study. Interview questions monitored the epistemological frames adopted by students to solve the problem and the target tools students read out to &quot;know with.&quot; Physics, chemistry, and engineering students were recruited from majors&#39; courses that each served to introduce the first law of thermodynamics. Participants were tasked with solving one in-discipline and one out-of-discipline interview problem. Physics and engineering students were generally shown to apply a physical mapping epistemological frame by reading out the first law as an equation, while chemistry students more commonly read out an inferred energetic process to reason about changes in internal energy. However, physics and engineering students differed in the application of the physical mapping frame. Physics students uniquely demonstrated the ability to modify equations based upon read out systems and language, while engineering students tended to map problem features directly onto the provided equations through a perceived arithmetical approach. These findings shed light on how different disciplines within STEM conceptualize first law problems and energy and matter concepts to bridge across disciplinary boundaries.

PERC SM 22

Exploring science and engineering students’ guiding epistemologies when addressing first law problems across disciplinary contexts

PERC 2022 is focused on "queering physics education" through an intersectional lens. By "queering," we are centering queer theory which breaks down social constructions and hierarchies to unpack normalized assumptions. In the context of physics education, we want to apply the theory to unpack who has power in physics to control the production of future physicists, how physics policies and practices are sometimes built on ideas of punishment and power, and how PER embeds binaries in both its content and sociological research. Further, we want to encourage a dialogue that is both a critique and an imagining of a queer future for PER.

Explicit attention will be given to constructions of race, (dis)ability, gender, sexuality and how they interact and impact lived experiences.

We have had such a fun time organizing this year’s PERC. You might be aware that we were committed to transparency and documenting our processes and decision making which we outlined here. This year has also been challenging to be a queer or otherwise marginalized person in the US. And we continue to seek and provide support for those individuals.

As such, we recommend that folks visiting Grand Rapids who have the means consider giving to some local organizations who are working to advocate for those impacted by historic and ongoing marginalization and violence.


PERC 2022 focused on "queering physics education" through an intersectional lens. By "queering," we centered queer theory which breaks down social constructions and hierarchies to unpack normalized assumptions. In the context of physics education, we apply the theory to unpack who has power in physics to control the production of future physicists, how physics policies and practices are sometimes built on ideas of punishment and power, and how PER embeds binaries in both its content and sociological research. Further, we wanted to encourage a dialogue that is both a critique and an imagining of a queer future for PER. Explicit attention was given to constructions of race, (dis)ability, gender, sexuality and how they interact and impact lived experiences.

The Next Generation Science Standards outlines the "crosscutting concepts" as the common tools and lenses adopted across the disciplines of STEM. Little work has been conducted on crosscutting concepts to date. To address this gap, a qualitative research study was undertaken to assess the effects of discipline-specific instruction on students' conceptualization of energy and matter within introductory science and engineering coursework. The first law of thermodynamics served as the primary topic given its crucial role as a guiding principle for energy and matter. Three first law problems were developed that each incorporated field-specific systems, language, and notation. The dynamic transfer framework served as the methodological and theoretical basis for the study. Interview questions monitored the epistemological frames adopted by students to solve the problem and the target tools students read out to "know with." Physics, chemistry, and engineering students were recruited from majors' courses that each served to introduce the first law of thermodynamics. Participants were tasked with solving one in-discipline and one out-of-discipline interview problem. Physics and engineering students were generally shown to apply a physical mapping epistemological frame by reading out the first law as an equation, while chemistry students more commonly read out an inferred energetic process to reason about changes in internal energy. However, physics and engineering students differed in the application of the physical mapping frame. Physics students uniquely demonstrated the ability to modify equations based upon read out systems and language, while engineering students tended to map problem features directly onto the provided equations through a perceived arithmetical approach. These findings shed light on how different disciplines within STEM conceptualize first law problems and energy and matter concepts to bridge across disciplinary boundaries.

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Discipline-based education researchers produce knowledge that is aimed at helping instructors improve student learning and educational outcomes. Yet, the information produced may not even reach the educators it is intended to influence. Prior work has found that instructors often face barriers to implementing practices in peer-reviewed literature. Some of these barriers are related to accessing the knowledge in the first place such as difficulty finding and understanding research and a lack of time to do so. To lower these barriers, we created an online blog, [blinded], that summarizes recent discipline-based education research in short posts that use plain language. Having covered nearly 100 papers to date, we conducted a survey to see if we were addressing the need we had originally set out to address. We posted a 23-item survey on our website and received 24 usable responses. The results suggested that readers do generally agree that we are meeting our original goals. Readers reported that our articles were easier to understand and used more plain language than a typical discipline-based education research (DBER) journal article. At the same time, readers thought that all the important information was still included. Finally, readers said that this approach helped them keep up with DBER studies and read papers they otherwise wouldn't have. However, most readers did not indicate they changed their teaching and research practice as a result of reading our blog. Our results suggest that alternative methods of sharing research (e.g., non-peer reviewed publications or conference talks) can be an effective method of connecting research with practitioners, and future work should consider how we as a community might build on these efforts to ensure education research can make meaningful changes in the classroom.

Using blogs to make peer-reviewed research more accessible

Numerous studies have identified gender inequity in how students divide roles in lab courses. Few studies, however, have probed how these inequities impact women's experimental physics identity development. In this work, we used closed-response surveys to investigate which lab tasks students view as part of "doing physics" and how these designations varied by gender. In both courses, we found that most students viewed working with the experimental apparatus, taking lab notes, doing data analysis, and thinking about the physics theory behind the experiment as part of doing physics. Only 50% of students, however, viewed managing the group progress as part of doing physics. While men and women's views did not vary in the first-semester lab course, in the third-semester course women were more likely to view notes and managing as part of doing physics than were men. Given that previous research has indicated that women are more likely to take on managing and note-taking roles than men, our results suggest that women may be receiving less recognition as physicists from their peers, which may hinder their experimental physics identity development.

Student views of what counts as doing physics in the lab

Research has shown that students in inquiry-based physics labs often expect their experiment to verify a known theory or model, contrary to the goals of the lab. It is important, therefore, to identify ways for instructors to shift students' expectations or epistemic frames to those in line with scientific inquiry. In this paper, we analyze video recordings of one inquiry-based lab session in which the instructor intentionally encourages students to falsify, or disprove, the claim under investigation. We find that students operationalize the instructor's prompt by taking up one of two distinct epistemic frames: open outcome and verification. Students in the open outcome frame initially expect to falsify their claim, but form other conclusions in the face of alternative evidence. Students in the verification frame, however, view falsification as verifying that a claim is false and do not consider other possible outcomes even when they find conflicting data. These results suggest that students may interpret instructor prompts for frame shifts in very different ways. We argue that to shift students to epistemic frames in line with scientific inquiry (e.g., the open outcome frame), instructor prompts should explicitly address uncertainty in outcomes (regarding an experimental result as unknown) and epistemic agency (perceiving oneself as a producer of knowledge).

Students’ varying responses to instructor prompts for frame shifts in physics labs

Learning is a process that involves mutual responsibility and practice adjustments. By mutual responsibility, we mean students' relying on their instructors and classmates for feedback as they proactively navigate new material. By practice adjustments, we mean changes in a student's approach to a course based on monitoring and evaluating their progress in the course. However, in introductory physics, many students struggle to adjust their practices in response to challenges encountered in the learning process. We studied these difficulties in an introductory studio physics course by assigning a weekly reflection journal with questions about the students' experience in the course, including the challenges they encountered and the study habits they practiced. These reflection assignments prompted the students to describe the roles fulfilled (or unfulfilled) by members of the course community, to identify practice adjustments (or lack thereof), and to self-assess their progress toward positive learning outcomes. We reviewed these students' final reflection assignment and recorded themes that emerged: These students talked about collaboration (interacting with a classmate in the learning process), course difficulty (degrees or progression of difficulty), responsibility (Who is responsible for the student's learning?), self-managed growth (the learner making adjustments or taking actions to maintain or assert agency over their learning), and a lack of change in their practices, capabilities, or success. These insights into the student learning experience will be used to further classify student responses and generate course improvements.

Insights into Student Metacognition from Reflective Writing in an Introductory Studio Physics Course

Identifying Symbolic Forms Associated with Inequalities in Physics

This study aims to understand how physics faculty seeking guidance in making departmental changes related to recruitment and retention frame the challenges in their program. We focus our analysis on one set of applications submitted to the Departmental Action Leadership Institute (DALI) in its first year of operation. DALI is the community engagement activity of the Effective Practices for Physics Programs (EP3) initiative.It brings together a cohort of physics faculty to apprentice into strategies for sustainable institutional change and facilitation practices associated with leading change teams. Through analysis of DALI applications, we find that many applicants attribute their enrollment challenges to sources outside of their immediate control, while those that do propose solutions to these challenges primarily focus on curriculum change. By understanding how DALI applicants frame their enrollment challenges, developers of departmental change resources can better mold their recommendations and community engagement activities to what is needed, whether that be meeting faculty and departments where they are at or pushing departments to explore new strategies and frameworks for evaluating their challenges.

Exploring faculty's explanations of enrollment issues: where does responsibility and control reside?

Research-validated clicker questions comprise an easy-to-implement instructional tool that can scaffold student learning while formatively assessing students' knowledge. We present findings from the development, validation and implementation, in consecutive years, of a Clicker Question Sequence (CQS) on measurement uncertainty as it applies to two-state quantum systems. This study was conducted in an advanced undergraduate quantum mechanics course, in both a virtual and in-person learning environment. Student learning was first assessed after receiving traditional lecture-based instruction on relevant concepts, and their performance on it was compared with that on a similar assessment given after engaging with the CQS. We analyze and discuss similar and differing trends observed in the two modes of instruction.

Development, validation and virtual and in-person implementation of clicker question sequence on quantum measurement uncertainty

In Basic Education in Mexico, it is intended to develop critical thinking through the study of Natural Sciences. Particularly, at the elementary level, students have their first approach to the study of optics and are expected to understand physical phenomena of the environment, among which is light and its interactions. However, this represents a challenge, because, during initial teacher training, the contents related to physics are not included in the curricular map. The objective of this research was to analyze the Mexican educational program to recognize what are the expected learnings regarding the branch of optics and its implications in teaching. The study was carried out with three types of population: urban, rural and indigenous context; through a documentary analysis and interviews with teachers at the primary level.
In the results, in the study program it was identified that the main resource to arouse children's interest in optics are situations of daily life, for example, the operation of some instruments such as the periscope, binoculars and magnifying glass; or, the formation of images in mirrors and lenses. Regarding teachers, the need to use teaching methods to develop skills, knowledge and attitudes for the study of this science was recognized. Also, make use of experimental activity to promote the development of scientific thinking in childhood.

Approach to the study of optics with primary school students

There have been numerous calls for physics instructors to utilize active learning in their courses. Many research-based instructional strategies also suggest the use of group work. However, instructors frequently revert back to didactic instructional styles and make modifications to research-based instructional strategies to suit their students' needs and context. To support physics instructors in fostering effective and inclusive group work, we developed a literature-based guide composed of 29 recommendations for practice, including citations to the literature, descriptions of what, why, and how instructors can implement the recommendations, and example implementations. The purpose of this paper is to introduce, discuss the development and features of, and present findings from pilot interviews with instructors about the alignment of the guide's recommendations with their own instructional practices. Overall, we found that participating instructors implement some of the recommended practices and cite department-level constraints for not implementing other recommendations.

Supporting effective and inclusive group work in introductory physics courses: a guide for instructors

The pathways and engagement of physicists in informal physics education are varied, which makes their professional development needs not well understood. As part of ongoing efforts to build and support community in the informal physics space, we conducted interviews with physics practitioners and researchers with a range of different experiences. Through thematic analysis, we use personas methodology to articulate the needs and pain points of professional physicists. We present our set of four personas: the physicist who engages in informal physics for self-reflection, the physicist who wants to spark interest in physics, the physicist who wants to provide diverse role models to younger students and inspire them to pursue a STEM career, and the physicist who wants to improve the relationship between scientists and the public. This work will allow the informal physics community to create tailored resources for the variety of professional development needs of informal physics facilitators.

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Exploring science and engineering students’ guiding epistemologies when addressing first law problems across disciplinary contexts

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