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The 2021 Inclusive Curriculum in Physics Workshop Series is a three part series organized and led by the National Society of Black Physicists, the National Society of Hispanic Physicists, and the American Association of Physics Teachers. The series leverages the expertise of equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) experts, as well as an organizing team of physics students, faculty and STEM professionals at different stages of their studies and careers.The purpose of the series is to: Explore the importance of EDI in the classroom and the existing instructional materials that focus on EDI, with members of the broad physics education community; Engage participants in discussion and action items around the current challenges to equity in STEM education with input from experts in the field; Provide support to working groups through a network of partners to engage in specific physics education projects using the lens of inclusion.

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The 2021 Inclusive Curriculum in Physics Workshop Series

inclusive

curriculum

physics

**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)

PERC SM 21

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

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This meeting is a great opportunity to explore sessions and workshops designed with your professional development in mind. Present your research and exchange ideas on the latest in teaching and pedagogy. Participate in a wide range of events, activities, plenaries, and so much more, connecting you with peers and colleagues who share your commitment to excellence in physics education.

The Learning Assistant Program is a relatively recent advancement in undergraduate education. The core tenet of the program aims to have undergraduate students use instructor-approved and research-backed group activities and discussions along with general peer support to encourage active participation in the course they assist in. Students requiring special accommodations make up a significant portion of students. In this poster, learning assistant anecdotes of interactions with these populations are presented. The use of learning assistants and dialogue between pertinent entities, the instructor, and the student as a means of allowing needed flexibility in these courses are explored. Sponsored by: Sujata Krishna, Ph.D.

Creating Connections

The Learning Assistant (LA) Program can be used as a pathway for students to develop pedagogical skills and gain independence in a variety of different learning environments. Here we describe the growth of a Physics LA over four semesters. Starting with a course in pedagogy along with the active facilitation of group learning, we can see the LA creating a strong foundation in their educational skills. Through diversity and inclusion trainings, the LA can start to cater to the different learning styles of students more effectively. As the LA becomes more adept in assisting students, they can take on more independent tasks like running discussion boards, providing exam reviews, and hosting office hours. After just four semesters, we can see the LA becoming self-sufficient in the classroom setting. Throughout their experience, the LA continually receives mentoring from professors and establishes rapport with peers of similar paths.

The Growth of a Physics Learning Assistant over Four Semesters

The Physics graduate program of Stony Brook University attracts students from diverse backgrounds, and involves a very intense workload right from the begining. This made it clear that it is necessary for the department to provide help in adapting to the environment, which led to the creation of a mentoring program. In the past three years, this program has undergone significant changes, the foremost being that it is heavily student-led. Besides faculty mentors, very active student mentors are assigned. This has formed a basis for improved communication between the incoming students and the department, with various benefits which range from success in making through the program requirements to overall mental health. In this talk, I will present the main characteristics and results, obtained through anonymous surveys, of this mentoring program. In the end, I will also discuss possible extensions of these methods to undergraduate programs in the US.

Students mentoring students eases diversity conversation and increases success rates

One of the broad concerns about the future of physics education research is a relative paucity of active PER groups at colleges and universities that are not primarily focused upon research. Yet, institutions that are primarily focused on teaching need to replicate these studies directly, whether to confirm that results at different university types are similar, or to identify differing outcomes that are connected to institutional type. Differences in institutional focus attract different student populations, and hence, different student motivations, which can directly affect data results from long-recognized quantitative and qualitative measuring instruments. This poster outlines a preliminary “lay of the land” view from the perspective of a solo PER researcher working at a regional comprehensive state university – both as an example of a non-research university and looking at other teaching-focused institution types – in order to determine the current outlook of PER’s growth outside the research university.

PER outside Research Universities: A Solo PER Perspective

Amazon Prime's much-anticipated television adaptation of The Wheel of Time book series premiered in November 2021. The series is based on broadly acclaimed source material and features a talented and diverse cast and writing staff. With a market continuing to demand high-fantasy entertainment, the show is expected to entertain for years to come. This premiere also presents an opportunity for physics educators to engage with students, as the original series author, the late Robert Jordan, majored in physics and consistently incorporated his physics background into the story’s setting. I review some of the history of this series and outline thoughts for how we might use this material to engage our students in discussion of physics concepts and representation in the physics community.

Engaging Physics Students with The Wheel of Time

The standard view is that space and time act together, putting&nbsp;aside the energetic component, leaving STR to paradox over it. GTR clears this up and deals, inclusively, with accelerated frames, where energy acting over spacetime is the essential part of the GTR equation. Still, the primary attention is over, the challenged to imagine Minkowski's 4-dimensional spacetime. Their representation commonly expresses a curved space & time consequence of energy over spacetime instead from its origins, the equivalent moving space by the presence of proper energy and the surrounding ones.

An Intuitive Way to Understand Curved Spacetime

This talk describes a two-week module on astrodynamics developed for incoming STEM students. The goal of the module is for students to design and simulate a mission from Earth to Venus using the Hohmann transfer---a space maneuver used to travel between two planetary orbits. This application was selected because it utilizes a variety of introductory physics topics. The participants were all low-income, Pell-eligible college students; most were Black, Hispanic, and/or first-generation college students. This group is most at risk of leaving STEM, yet 80% of students who took this course were retained in STEM. In this talk we will present the course learning objectives, details of the Hohmann transfer simulation in VPython, and student outcomes including grades, retention rates, and survey results. This module could be replicated at the high school or college levels to help students achieve proficiency in programming while learning basic physics and astronomy content.

Summer Short Course on Astrodynamics for Incoming STEM Majors

Physics remains an area of STEM with lower amounts of diversity among the student population, therefore it becomes important to consider how classroom culture may contribute to a lack of belonging for students in underrepresented groups. This study aimed to determine how students in physics courses at Miami University perceived peer interactions in their courses during formal and informal group work. Virtual interviews were conducted with nine physics majors and responses were coded for positive and negative statements related to themes of respect, contribution, outcome of the task and overall class culture. It was found that on average male students had a higher percentage of positive statements about class culture, while female students had a higher percentage of positive statements about task outcomes and a higher percentage of negative statements about communication and class culture.

Perceived Effectiveness of Peer Interaction in Physics Courses

Most people likely think of learning the constellations of the night sky when they think of planetariums, but that’s not going to help you teach physics; It may not even really be astronomy, but more like sky geography; I think it’s important to teach astronomy and physics whenever possible, and planetariums can help with so much more than just constellations; Planetariums can do things that regular classrooms cannot do. This in-dome presentation will look at both specific and general ways that planetariums can help you teach physics and astronomy.

Planetarium Potentials

The STEP UP project (STEPUPphysics.org) was designed to reduce barriers for high school women in physics and encourage them to pursue an undergraduate physics degree, in which women have been underrepresented historically. STEP UP focuses on implementing high school interventions by recruiting high school physics teachers, called Advocates, who are trained to teach STEP UP’s research-driven materials in their classroom. To understand the effects of material implementation on Advocates, surveys are being administered to them before and after the school year. Using a “tempered radicals” framing, this talk will present an analysis of initial survey responses describing the characteristics of teachers who are willing to be disruptive in order to reduce barriers for women and change the physics classroom culture. Results will inform our understanding of teachers and the ways in which we can support their development as tempered radicals.

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