United States

This study investigates how college-level and high-school-level variables affect FMCE (Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation) pretest and post-test scores. The sample consists of students attending a large eastern land-grant university in the US who are enrolled in the introductory calculus-based mechanics class (N=1060). Variables examined include college performance, high school preparation, and non-academic variables such as sense of belonging, self-efficacy, personality, and demographics. Correlation analysis and linear regression were used to understand relations between these variables. High school physics preparation and student achievement in high school physics were consistently the most important variable in explaining pretest scores.

AAPT WM 22

Academic and Non-cognitive Factors Affecting FMCE Pretest and Post-test Scores

non-cognitive factors

perfomance

achievement

self-efficacy

gender

regression

correlation

**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

technical paper

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.

It is important for physics students to develop ethics knowledge, yet this is rarely taught in undergraduate physics classes. We are addressing this limitation in an ethics unit for an observational astrophysics class at Texas State University. The unit encompassess an introduction of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), a local perspective in San Marcos, a history of Hawaii, perspectives about the TMT, and formal ethical frameworks. I will present our preliminary analysis of data from Spring 2020 and 2021, with an emphasis on the students’ written work at the end of the unit. Our analysis indicates that students experienced an increased understanding of the complexity of the issue, increased empathy to both sides, and a desire for a compromise. In order to support the physics educator community in teaching about ethics in physics classes, I will highlight what worked well in our design and what could have been improved.

Students’ reflections about an ethical dilemma in physics

Physicists are likely to encounter ethical dilemmas during their careers. However, physics students are often not taught about ethics during their degrees. It is imperative that future physicists are introduced to the real-world implications of their work in order to develop their ethical reasoning skills. At Texas State University, we have developed and implemented an ethics unit for a new Observational Astrophysics course. The unit is centered on the potential construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope on Mauna Kea. We video-recorded whole class and small group discussions via Zoom from Spring 2021 to study the responses of students throughout the unit. In this talk, I will share examples of how students respond to prompts that invoke their ethical reasoning skills within physics, and consider how they navigate ethical discussions with their classmates.

Analyzing Students’ Discussions about Ethical Dilemmas in Physics

The conversion of lecture-based physics and astronomy classes to online instruction is reported. The role of active learning techniques in achieving the transition and the results of incorporating active learning in the online courses is discussed. A significant increase in remote and online instruction has occurred because of the COVID-19 pandemic and increased popularity of distance learning. Sustaining student engagement and communication in online classes is critical and can be achieved using active learning techniques. How the active learning techniques were incorporated into the online curriculum, the types of active learning materials used, and the outcomes from the inclusion will be discussed. Pre to post gains from quantitative assessments made with the CLASS, CTSR, TOAST, and LPCI, and qualitative assessment results from interviews and free response surveys will be presented. There were good pre-post gains observed on the concept inventories and students reported satisfaction and improved conceptual understanding.

Teaching online courses with active learning techniques

Hispanic serving institutions (HSIs) are an increasingly large set of higher education institutions. From 2010-2020 the number of HSIs went from 311 to 569. Within the PER community, research perspectives from HSIs have provided critical insights into how to support racially and ethnically diverse students in physics education. This presentation will investigate the number of physics education researchers at HSIs, the fraction of HSIs that have physics education researchers, and demographic data from IPEDS providing information about how HSIs contribute to the diversity of undergraduate physics students and graduate physics students in comparison to other institutions. In addition, we will examine themes from funded research and publications at HSIs to highlight how physics education&nbsp;researchers center their HSI’s unique student population in their research and what ways these unique populations advance physics education research.

Investigating the Impact of HSIs on Physics and PER

The physics gender gap is a well-known discrepancy in performance between male and female students despite having similar prior preparation. With an increase in the use of technology, new ways of instruction have been developed such as Interactive Video-EnhancedTutorials (IVETs). The IVETs involve web-based activities that lead students through a problem solution using expert-like problem-solving approaches. Several IVETs were evaluated by comparing the performance of students who completed the IVET with those who watched a non-interactive video solution (control group) which utilizes the same problem-solving approaches as the IVET on a paired problem on the same concepts. Results show that for the IVET group, women who had collectively performed worse on the previous exam, either reduced or reversed the gap between them and their male counterparts on the paired problem, while in the control group, there was no difference from the results of the previous exam.

Reducing the Gender Gap in Introductory Physics using Interactive Tutorials

I will report the results of using student story-telling as a pedagogical technique in physics that I have applied four college courses: a two-semester Introductory Physics course, Modern Physics, and Statistical Mechanics. Students were asked to research biographies of physicists and present 5-7 minute summaries that went beyond a narration of facts and events but provide context and connections. Students were asked to focus on what motivated physicists to study physics, what challenges they faced, their contributions and hobbies apart from physics, and how they interacted with other scientists in their time. A special effort was made to promote story-telling of the background and contributions of women and minorities in physics. I will report on student responses and reactions to this effort, based on blind surveys, exam results and general observations.

Student Storytelling in Physics Courses to Promote Engagement and Diversity

Goals for inclusivity can be met in physics classrooms that focus on self-advocacy and empowerment through disciplinary practices, foci that are critical in high school physics courses and pre-service teacher preparation programs. We’ve published work demonstrating that in such learning environments, learning gains are similar for students from minority and majority groups. These data provide the foundation for PEER Physics, a curriculum-driven professional learning community for both High School physics and teacher preparation. We now evaluate these courses from a new perspective by exploring student attitudes and beliefs towards physics and their physics learning experiences, as assessed using the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey (CLASS) and student reflections. Comparisons of student attitudes before and after their course experience suggest they came to see science in a way more similar to how experts do, and these shifts in opinion were greater among traditionally underserved student groups.

Student Attitudes When We Focus on Self-advocacy Through Disciplinary Practices

One of the important but challenging topics students face in introductory quantum mechanics is perturbation theory. Difficulties arise over questions such as validity, namely when a perturbation is considered ``small'', or what states are ``good'' in degenerate perturbation theory. We discuss a multipronged treatment of perturbation with analytical approach augmented with numerical and symbolic computation. In this approach we are able to compute and compare against exact results, sometimes analytical but most often numerical, to ascertain the effect of perturbation. Not only does computation help cut down mathematical drudgery, it also enables more in-depth study. For instance, one can find with ease good states beyond the standard 2-state treatment in degenerate perturbation calculations (see https://jwang.sites.umassd.edu/ for examples).

Perturbation: Analytical vs Numerical Treatment

Many curricula challenge students to explain discrepant events. Dual process theories can account for the tension learners experience between competing lines of thinking. When faced with a novel problem, the heuristic process generates an initial model, based on recognition. These models can be inconsistent with formal knowledge, such as Newton’s laws, learners have developed. In some cases, cognitive reflection initiates scrutiny of the initial model by the analytic process, with the possibility of formal knowledge being activated. But how readily can learners override a strongly appealing intuitive idea in favor of formal knowledge? In an ongoing collaboration, we have been developing “screening-target” question pairs that elicit normative reasoning in low distraction contexts, but trigger alternative models in related, higher distraction contexts. We have used selected pairs in interviews. This talk shares a case study of a student holding competing reasoning in tension, using dual process theory as an interpretive lens.

The Challenge of Evaluating Consistency of Competing Lines of Thinking*

Comparisons of the effectiveness of two instructional interventions in a general education physics class on improving students’ scientific reasoning skills and attitudes toward science were made. The first intervention was to have students watch short videos on scientific topics while completing worksheets. The second was to have students manipulate PhET simulations and complete worksheets based on those simulations. The instructional interventions were applied for two control semesters, three video treatment semesters, and two PhET manipulation semesters. The Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey was used to assess the students’ attitudes about science and Lawson’s Classroom Test of Scientific Reasoning was used to assess the students’ scientific reasoning skills. Pre and Post assessment results are presented and compared for the control semesters, video activity semesters, and PhET manipulation semesters. Initial findings showed improvements in both student attitudes toward science and students' scientific reasoning skills with both interventions.

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Students’ reflections about an ethical dilemma in physics

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Women have lower physics self-efficacy controlling for grade even in courses in which they outnumber men

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