United States

The University of Washington Bothell (UWB) STEM Public Outreach Team (SPOT) trains undergraduate students to give presentations and lead activities related to current STEM research topics. During 2020 and 2021 the SPOT program pivoted to online classrooms and events with adaptations that will carry forward. Access and availability for the SPOT Student Ambassadors as well as the participating schools and community groups has been expanded through online engagement options. The SPOT program collaborates with the UW Center for Evaluation and Research for STEM Equity (CERSE) on Evaluating the Impact of Participation in STEM Outreach on Persistence of Diverse Students in Physics, Math, and Engineering.

PERC SM 21

STEM Public Outreach Team (SPOT) Impact and Adaptation

public

outreach

education

**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

technical paper

The ongoing marginalization of underrepresented students in college physics programs is an issue that researchers in PER are still working to solve. Studies that look at some of the reasons for dropping or switching fields indicate that students struggle to feel connected to the physics community. In this study, we complete a systematic literature review of four major journals in PER on the effects of informal STEM programs on the facilitators. Preliminary results indicate that informal programs do positively affect physics identity and a sense of community. However, it is unclear if and how these benefits affect marginalized groups in physics.

Supporting marginalized students through informal STEM programs: a systematic literature review

Faculty and graduate students develop as education researchers through different avenues. One possible path is through their participation in the Professional development for Emerging Education Researchers (PEER) program, which is designed to develop participants' discipline-based education research through hands-on activities during a series of workshops. We collected data before and during participation in one of the editions of this program conducted entirely online with primarily physics and math faculty. This data allows us to examine in what ways engagement in the workshops affects participants' research ideas and their self-efficacy. In particular, we explore the ways in which participants' perception of their growth in the field evolves as they engage in this professional development program. This work will enable us to analyze the impact of this virtual professional development experience as well as gain a deeper understanding of different facets of emerging education researchers’ professional development.

Development of Physics and Math Faculty during Online Professional Development Experience

Conversations around the interactions of ethics, science, and society within STEM classrooms provide opportunities for students to practice large-scale ethical reasoning in the context of their future careers. We have designed and implemented curricular units which help instructors to scaffold these conversations in Texas State University STEM courses, including Modern Physics and Observational Astrophysics. We have collected and analyzed video data and written work in these course contexts. Our analysis has demonstrated that students’ scaffolded considerations of different stakeholder groups can build empathy and deepen their understanding of the broader context for ongoing ethical issues. We also see that students’ characterization of stakeholder groups’ motivations and identities can grow in complexity and nuance. In this talk, I will use classroom video and other artifacts to illustrate some examples we have identified where we see students building nuance and consider lessons for supporting students’ engagement with complex ethical issues in physics.

Building Nuance in Classroom Conversations about Ethics, Science, and Society

The shortage of human resources in the fields of technology and science has now become one of the main obstacles to the economic development. Due to the low number of Physics lessons and the declining popularity of science subjects, choosing appropriate teaching methods can be a serious challenge for teachers. In the Physics education, a change of attitude towards innovative teaching methods is necessary in order to be effective even under the changed conditions and provide students with the same quality of education. In order to enhance the popularity of Physics among students, the application of techniques and methods considered successful in other fields can be a good solution by promoting an internationally successful approach in the Physics education. The process of educational development requires the use of new ideas when applying traditional activities, and the development and testing new methods and tasks. Competence-based Physics education provides an opportunity for students to acquire the expected knowledge according to specific requirements. The requirement system helps teachers to plan lessons by taking into account specific competences that they would like to develop with the chosen activities. The inquiry-based method can effectively contribute to students’ competence development and it supports Physics lessons, too. The method encourages students to take part actively in their learning process and acquire knowledge by observing, describing and understanding different phenomena. Teachers monitor the learning process by providing a logically-structured way for students to reach the appropriate level while developing skills. In our study, we present an Arduino-based opportunity for student experimentation and investigate its role in competence development and the acquisition of necessary knowledge. With the methodological description of the tasks we have developed, we would like to support colleagues in choosing successful teaching methods.

Competence-based Physics Teaching

Due to the advances in digital technology, many new perspectives have been opened in the educational system. The use of digital devices in the classroom can enhance the level of classes and increase our students’ attitude towards Physics. Digitalized education is popular and as the pandemic situation proved, it is essential to rely on digital teaching methods. This situation and the findings of research in the importance of handwriting and digitalism in education have induced our investigation of the influence of digital and traditional Physics homework solving on students’ academic performance. The study discusses the effect of digitalized education on students’ academic performance and cognitive development, investigates the role of handwriting in education – focused on homework solving – and compares it with the opportunities given by using digital methods. The research was carried out in Budapest among 7th graders. We investigated which method can contribute effectively to the long-term information processing. The students were organized into two groups. The test group prepared homework via Google Classroom, while the control group solved the same homework with traditional methods. The application of appropriate tests provided valid data for comparing students’ test results and cognitive development. The answers on a questionnaire show our students’ learning habits and their attitude towards learning Physics. The results of the research indicate that there is no significant deviation in the short-term knowledge of the students in the different groups, but there is a significant negative deviation in students’ digitally acquired long-term knowledge. Based on the students’ answers on the attitude-test, the traditional learning methods can contribute to academic success. The study raises attention on that although the use of digital technology in education can have positive effects, there are parts of the learning process where the traditional methods are essential

The Influence of Traditional and Digital Homework on Students’ Academic Performance and Attitude towards Physics

Dr. Clausell Mathis will discuss research on strategies and methods that physics teachers have used to become culturally relevant educators. In particular, Clausell will describe a previous study he did with a female physics instructor who attempted to incorporate culturally relevant pedagogy features, along with his current research in assisting physics teachers to be more equitable in their instruction. Findings from his work show that teachers show the strongest indicators of culturally relevant pedagogy through their willingness to address sensitive topics, consistent encouragement of students toward academic excellence, and the ability to adapt the curriculum to students' strengths. However, there remain challenges that physics teachers have in actualizing culturally relevant pedagogy. Findings from Dr. Mathis's research give implications for physics faculty who wish to use culturally relevant pedagogy in their instruction. He will also discuss the challenges and affordances that may occur when making pedagogical changes that support culturally relevant instruction.

A Look at Physics Teachers Searching for Cultural Relevance

Partial derivatives are among the many mathematical tools used throughout physics to help describe the physical world. We have been investigating how students are able to determine and interpret partial derivatives both symbolically and from contour graphs with mathematical, electrostatic, and thermodynamic contexts. While many students had strong procedural abilities for calculating derivatives, most did not strongly link this process (of finding a partial derivative) with the idea of "holding a variable constant," especially when dealing with a thermodynamics context. We found this to be true regardless of the representation in which students were asked to work. These results suggest a deeper theoretical framework is needed for understanding how students think about partial derivatives.

How Students Reason about Changes when Finding Partial Derivatives

The present study examined the covariational reasoning of three preservice mathematics teachers (PSTs) as they make sense of a simple model to introduce climate change. The PSTs worked on a mathematical task that required PSTs to activate their covariational reasoning abilities in order to explore two key notions related to climate change: (i) the balance of energy between the components of the climate system (Sun, surface, and atmosphere), and (ii) the link between carbon dioxide (CO2) pollution and global warming. The PSTs completed the task during an individual, task-based interview of approximately 60 minutes.

The analysis revealed that, in order to develop a operative understanding the climate system model, the PSTs' covariational reasoning must support, at a minimum, the ability to: (i) understand how the balance between the energy inflow into and the energy outflow from the climate system regulates the variation of the plante's mean surface temperature over time (dynamic relationships), and (ii) conceptualize the energy exchange between the surface and the atmosphere interms of two energy flows changing in tandem and obeying a circular relationship as time elapses (feedback loop). The analysis also revealed that the differences in the PSTs' covariational reasoning abilities coincided with two ways of thinking about the link between CO2 pollution and global warming: a productive way of thinking that had the potential of making visible the role of human activities in driving global climate change, and a less productive way that had the potential of promoting misconceptions about regarding that environmental challenge.

The study's results show that PSTs can engage in covariational reasoning while they learn about climate change and that covariational reasoning (and in general mathematics education) can have a role in promoting climate change education.

Connecting mathematics education and climate change education through covariational reasoning

Students and experts engage in a plethora of sophisticated ways of thinking during modeling tasks, blending between mathematical and physical reasoning. This integrated way of reasoning about quantities and how they are related is ubiquitous to “thinking like a physicist.” One facet of this process is covariational reasoning -- reasoning about how changes in one quantity relate to changes in another quantity. In laboratory courses that engage students in experimental design, students commonly use covariational reasoning as they model changing quantities and the relationships between them. However, those without strong mathematical reasoning skills may unintentionally be perceived as also having less nuanced physics reasoning skills. To investigate the multifaceted ways students model in physics lab courses, we examined student discussions during remote, student-designed labs in which students interact with physical, but fictitious, matter in a virtual reality (VR) simulation. The VR environment allows for students to observe and measure novel situations for which the “answer,” in this case a mathematical model about the particles’ behavior, is not known. Using a conceptual blend analysis, we examine two lab groups that take different approaches to the task, despite beginning with the same observations and reporting on the same final model. One group demonstrates expert-like mathematical reasoning that is typically rewarded in physics courses, while the other engages in early signs of expert-like physics reasoning. Our analysis suggests that there are productive ideas emerging in both groups, and that of the less mathematically rigorous may be going unnoticed. We suggest that characterizing these features of physics covariational reasoning may provide an opportunity to move beyond data analysis techniques in lab courses towards incorporating more physics expert-like techniques. In doing so, instructors may recognize hidden strengths that may otherwise go undetected.

Emerging covariational reasoning student resources in physics lab courses

Student chapters of affinity-based, professional societies provide students from minoritized and marginalized groups with a number of benefits, including an opportunity to network with other students who share socio-demographic identities and disciplinary interests. When these programs provide summer bridging opportunities for students transitioning into college, it is especially helpful to first year students who might otherwise know few, if any, of their peers at the beginning of their collegiate journey. This may ease the transition to college for students who are underrepresented at the institution due to their sociocultural and sociopolitical identities. In particular, research suggests that peer relationships are important for first-generation college students and students identifying as African American or Hispanic/Latinx (Martin, 2015; AIP TEAM-UP, 2020). 

In our study, we investigated the relationship between participation in student chapters of affinity-based, professional societies and centrality in a classroom network. In our first data set, centrality is based on student interactions with their peers as reported by students in a survey administered at the end of the second semester of a two-semester sequence introductory physics course for engineering students. In the second data set - collected during a different academic year - centrality was based on student reports of which of their classmates they knew by name in the second week of the first semester of a two-semester sequence introductory physics course. We found that in both cases, students who participated in affinity-based professional societies had higher centrality measures. Additionally, we examined the relationship between centrality and course performance as determined by final course grade. Preliminary results will be presented.

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STEM Public Outreach Team (SPOT) Impact and Adaptation

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Supporting marginalized students through informal STEM programs: a systematic literature review

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