[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Gender in Physics.] This is an empirical study on the underrepresentation of people of color in scientific careers. Grounded in critical race theory, the paper examines the lived experiences of six Black women physicists and addresses obstacles faced in their career paths and strategies used to overcome these obstacles. Data for this study were collected through semistructured interviews and coded for emergent themes. The findings reveal that college recruitment and funding were fundamental for these women to choose physics over other STEM fields. In addition, Black women experience unique challenges of socialization in STEM, particularly by exclusion of study groups. We suggest physics departments provide a more inclusive environment to support Black women in science.

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Gender in Physics.] This study of achievement differences, as reflected by course grades, on a third-semester electromagnetism course at a Swedish research university was motivated by instructor concerns about gender inequalities. Quantitative analysis showed a gender gap in course grades between female and male students for the period of fall 2007 to spring 2013. Dynamics behind this gap were explored through interpretative discourse analysis on interviews of 21 students who had recently passed the course. A recurring pattern was identified in the interviews. Students described studying electromagnetism as either studying to pass or studying to learn. Their choice of practice was influenced by the significance recognized in the course, which primarily was discussed in relation to program affiliation. Students stressed that perceived differences, in their study context, were larger between students affiliated with different programs than between male and female students on the same program. This was supported by quantitative analysis of course grades in relation to study programs, where the grade difference between female and male students on the same program in most cases were not statistically significant. The gender gap in grades for the whole course was related to different achievements on different programs. Programs further from the discipline of physics had lower mean grades and also enrolled a larger fraction of female students. Society-wide gender differences in interest and study choice are reflected in the grades on this single course. These results displace the achievement gap from the level of individuals to that of programs, and the gender gap from a difference in achievement to a difference in study choice. We discuss the implications of this shift of perspective in relation to gender differences for both research and teaching.

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Gender in Physics.] We have investigated gender differences in performance over the past eight years on the Australian Science Olympiad Exam (ASOE) for physics, which is taken by nearly 1000 high school students each year. The ASOE, run by Australian Science Innovations (ASI), is the initial stage of the process of selection of teams to represent Australia at the Asian and International Physics Olympiads. Students taking the exam are generally in their penultimate year of school and selected by teachers as being high performing in physics. Together with the overall differences in facility, we have investigated how the content and presentation of multiple-choice questions (MCQs) affects the particular answers selected by male and female students. Differences in the patterns of responses by male and female students indicate that males and females might be modeling situations in different ways. Some strong patterns were found in the gender gaps when the questions were categorized in five broad dimensions: content, process required, difficulty, presentation, and context. Almost all questions saw male students performing better, although gender differences were relatively small for questions with a more abstract context. Male students performed significantly better on most questions with a concrete context, although notable exceptions were found, including two such questions where female students performed better. Other categories that showed consistently large gaps favoring male students include questions with projectile motion and other two-dimensional motion or forces content, and processes involving interpreting diagrams. Our results have important implications, suggesting that we should be able to reduce the gender gaps in performance on MCQ tests by changing the way information is presented and setting questions in contexts that are less likely to favor males over females. This is important as MCQ tests are frequently used as diagnostic tests and aptitude tests as well as to assess learning.

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Gender in Physics.] The Longitudinal Study of Astronomy Graduate Students (LSAGS) arose from the 2003 Women in Astronomy Conference, where it was noted that a majority of young members of the American Astronomical Society were women. The astronomy community wishes to make every effort to retain young women in astronomy, so they commissioned a longitudinal study to be conducted that would pinpoint the factors that contribute to retention in general, with a focus on differences between women and men. The LSAGS follows a cohort of people who were graduate students in astronomy or astrophysics during 2006–07. The first survey was conducted during 2007–08 and the second during 2012–13. The analysis presented in this paper used a subset of the respondents, all of whom had Ph.D.s in astronomy, astrophysics, or a related field at the time of the second survey. We tested the effects of four major concepts on two measures of attrition from physics and astronomy. These concepts included the imposter syndrome, mentoring and advising during graduate school, the “two-body problem” that occurs when a couple needs to find two jobs in the same geographic area, and the sex of the respondent. While the imposter syndrome and mentoring affected the likelihood of respondents’ thinking about leaving the field, they did not directly contribute to actually working in a field that was not physics or astronomy. Relationship with graduate advisors and the two-body problem both had significant effects on working in physics or astronomy, as did completing a postdoc. The sex of the respondent had no direct effect on our measures of attrition, but indirectly affected attrition because women were less likely to report positive relationships with graduate advisors and more likely to report two-body problems. This research identifies specific areas of concern that can be addressed by the scientific community to increase the retention of all people, but especially women, in astronomy and astrophysics.

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Gender in Physics.] The dearth of women in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields has been lamented by scholars, administrators, policymakers, and the general public for decades, and the STEM gender gap is particularly pronounced in physics. While previous research has demonstrated that this gap is largely attributable to a lack of women pursuing physics in college, prior research reveals little in terms of the characteristics and career interests of women who do plan to major in physics or how these traits have evolved over time. To address these gaps, this study utilized nationwide data on first-time, full-time college students to (1) document national trends in plans to major in physics among women entering college, (2) document the career aspirations of women who intend to major in physics, and (3) explore the characteristics of women who intend to major in physics and how this population has evolved across time. This study found that women’s interest in physics has been consistently very low in the past four decades. The most popular career aspiration among women who plan to major in physics is research scientist, although this career aspiration is declining in popularity, while increasing numbers of women say that they are undecided in their career choice. Further, this study identifies a distinctive profile of the average female physics student as compared to women in other STEM fields and women across all majors. Women who plan to pursue a physics major tend to be confident in their math abilities, value college as an opportunity to learn, plan to attend graduate school, and desire to make theoretical contributions to science. However, they are less likely than women in other fields to have a social activist orientation. These findings have important implications for scholars, educators, administrators, and policymakers as they seek to recruit more women into the physics field.

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Gender in Physics.] There is a long history of research which confounds the simple interpretation that evaluations in an educational context are purely measures of competency. One such issue is that of gender bias in student evaluations of their teachers. In our prior work, we found that male students underrated female high school teachers in biology and chemistry while all students underrated female high school teachers in physics. In the current work, we independently checked and extended this earlier work to examine the effect of physics identity on student evaluations and gender bias. Employing multiple regression on survey data from a representative sample of 6772 college students across the U.S., attending both 2-year and 4-year post-secondary institutions (including STEM and non-STEM majors), we find the core physics effect is unchanged despite a gap between studies of nearly 10 years. Namely, both male and female students underrate their female high school physics teachers, even after controlling for physics grades and classroom experiences. Our new focus on physics identity reveals that students with a strong physics identity show a larger gender bias in favor of male teachers than those with less of a physics identity. These results may help to explain how structures that privilege certain groups and marginalize others are prevalent amongst the youngest members of a defined physics community and may serve to uphold the status quo as these young members traverse to higher levels of physics community membership. Furthermore, biased evaluative feedback structures may be one of the propagators of women’s lower competency beliefs in physics, a result that has been found by many prior studies.

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Gender in Physics.] This focused collection explores inequalities in the experiences of women in physics. Yet, it is important for researchers to also be aware of and draw insights from common patterns in the experiences of women across science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. Here, we review studies on gender disparities across college STEM on measures that have been correlated with retention. These include disparities in academic performance, engagement, self-efficacy, belonging, and identity. We argue that observable factors such as persistence, performance, and engagement can inform researchers about what populations are disadvantaged in a STEM classroom or program, but we need to measure underlying mechanisms to understand how these inequalities arise. We present a framework that helps connect larger sociocultural factors, including stereotypes and gendered socialization, to student affect and observable behaviors in STEM contexts. We highlight four mechanisms that demonstrate how sociocultural factors could impact women in STEM classrooms and majors. We end with a set of recommendations for how we can more holistically evaluate the experiences of women in STEM to help mitigate the underlying inequities instead of applying a quick fix.

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Gender in Physics.] There is growing evidence of persistent gender achievement gaps in university physics instruction, not only for learning physics content, but also for developing productive attitudes and beliefs about learning physics. These gaps occur in both traditional and interactive-engagement (IE) styles of physics instruction. We investigated one gender gap in the area of attitudes and beliefs. This was men’s and women’s physics self-efficacy, which comprises students’ thoughts and feelings about their capabilities to succeed as learners in physics. According to extant research using pre- and post-course surveys, the self-efficacy of both men and women tends to be reduced after taking traditional and IE physics courses. Moreover, self-efficacy is reduced further for women than for men. However, it remains unclear from these studies whether this gender difference is caused by physics instruction. It may be, for instance, that the greater reduction of women’s self-efficacy in physics merely reflects a broader trend in university education that has little to do with physics per se. We investigated this and other alternative causes, using an in-the-moment measurement technique called the Experience Sampling Method (ESM). We used ESM to collect multiple samples of university students’ feelings of self-efficacy during four types of activity for two one-week periods: (i) an introductory IE physics course, (ii) students’ other introductory STEM courses, (iii) their non-STEM courses, and (iv) their activities outside of school. We found that women experienced the IE physics course with lower self-efficacy than men, but for the other three activity types, women’s self-efficacy was not reliably different from men’s. We therefore concluded that the experience of physics instruction in the IE physics course depressed women’s self-efficacy. Using complementary measures showing the IE physics course to be similar to others in which gendered self-efficacy effects have been consistently observed, we further concluded that IE physics instruction in general is likely to be detrimental to women’s self-efficacy. Consequently, there is a clear need to redress this inequity in IE physics, and probably also in traditional instruction.

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Gender in Physics.] It is established that male students outperform female students on almost all commonly used physics concept inventories. However, there is significant variation in the factors that contribute to the gap, as well as the direction in which they influence it. It is presently unknown if such a gender gap exists on the relatively new Concise Data Processing Assessment (CDPA) and, therefore, whether gendered actions in the teaching lab might influence—or be influenced by—the gender gap. To begin to get an estimates of the gap, its predictors, and its correlates, we have measured performance on the CDPA at the pretest and post-test level. We have also made observations of how students in mixed-gender partnerships divide their time in the lab. We find a gender gap on the CDPA that persists from pre- to post-test and that is as big as, if not bigger than, similar reported gaps. We also observe compelling differences in how students divide their time in the lab. In mixed-gender pairs, male students tend to monopolize the computer, female and male students tend to share the equipment equally, and female students tend to spend more time on other activities that are not the equipment or computer, such as writing or speaking to peers. We also find no correlation between computer use, when students are presumably working with their data, and performance on the CDPA post-test. In parallel to our analysis, we scrutinize some of the more commonly used approaches to similar data. We argue in favor of more explicitly checking the assumptions associated with the statistical methods that are used and improved reporting and contextualization of effect sizes. Ultimately, we claim no evidence that female students are less capable of learning than their male peers, and we suggest caution when using gain measures to draw conclusions about differences in science classroom performance across gender.

According to dual processing theory there are two types, or modes, of thinking: system 1, which involves intuitive and nonreflective thinking, and system 2, which is more deliberate and requires conscious effort and thought. The Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) is a widely used and robust three item instrument that measures the tendency to override system 1 thinking and to engage in reflective, system 2 thinking. Each item on the CRT has an intuitive (but wrong) answer that must be rejected in order to answer the item correctly. We therefore hypothesized that performance on the CRT may give useful insights into the cognitive processes involved in learning physics, where success involves rejecting the common, intuitive ideas about the world (often called misconceptions) and instead carefully applying physical concepts. This paper presents initial results from an ongoing study examining the relationship between students’ CRT scores and their performance on the Force Concept Inventory (FCI), which tests students’ understanding of Newtonian mechanics. We find that a higher CRT score predicts a higher FCI score for both precourse and postcourse tests. However, we also find that the FCI normalized gain is independent of CRT score. The implications of these results are discussed.

While the positive outcomes of undergraduate research experiences (UREs) have been extensively categorized, the mechanisms for those outcomes are less understood. Through lightly structured focus group interviews, we have extracted the cognitive tasks that students identify as engaging in during their UREs. We also use their many comparative statements about their coursework, especially lab courses, to evaluate their experimental physics-related cognitive tasks in those environments. We find there are a number of cognitive tasks consistently encountered in physics UREs that are present in most experimental research. These are seldom encountered in lab or lecture courses, with some notable exceptions. Having time to reflect and fix or revise, and having a sense of autonomy, were both repeatedly cited as key enablers of the benefits of UREs. We also identify tasks encountered in actual experimental research that are not encountered in UREs. We use these findings to identify opportunities for better integration of the cognitive tasks in UREs and lab courses, as well as discussing the barriers that exist. This work responds to extensive calls for science education to better develop students’ scientific skills and practices, as well as calls to expose more students to scientific research.

This study investigates the representations and understandings of electric fields expressed by Chinese high school students 15 to 16 years old who have not received high school level physics instruction. The physics education research literature has reported students’ conceptions of electric fields postinstruction as indicated by students’ performance on textbook-style questions. It has, however, inadequately captured student ideas expressed in other situations yet informative to educational research. In this study, we explore students’ ideas of electric fields preinstruction as shown by students’ representations produced in open-ended activities. 92 participant students completed a worksheet that involved drawing comic strips about electric charges as characters of a cartoon series. Three students who had spontaneously produced arrow diagrams were interviewed individually after class. We identified nine ideas related to electric fields that these three students spontaneously leveraged in the comic strip activity. In this paper, we describe in detail each idea and its situated context. As most research in the literature has understood students as having relatively fixed conceptions and mostly identified divergences in those conceptions from canonical targets, this study shows students’ reasoning to be more variable in particular moments, and that variability includes common sense resources that can be productive for learning about electric fields.

Despite the fact that approximately half of high school physics students are female, only 21% of physics bachelor’s degrees are awarded to women. In a previous study, drawn from a national survey of college students in introductory English courses, five factors commonly proposed to positively impact female students’ choice of a physical science career were tested using multivariate matching methods. The only factor found to have a positive effect was the explicit discussion of the underrepresentation of women in physics. In order to explore this further, a case study of the classes of one teacher reported to discuss the underrepresentation of women was conducted. Two classroom underrepresentation discussions were recorded, students and teacher were interviewed, and relevant student work was collected. Analyzing the case study data using a figured worlds framework, we found that discussing the underrepresentation of women in science explicitly creates an opportunity for students’ figured worlds of professional and school science to change, and facilitates challenging their own implicit assumptions about how the world functions. Subsequently, the norms in students’ figured worlds may change or become less rigid allowing for a new openness to physics identity development amongst female students.

Interactive engagement activities are increasingly common in undergraduate physics teaching. As research efforts move beyond simply showing that interactive engagement pedagogies work towards developing an understanding of how they lead to improved learning outcomes, a detailed analysis of the way in which these activities are used in practice is needed. Our aim in this paper is to present a characterization of the type and duration of interactions, as experienced by students, that took place during two introductory physics courses (1A and 1B) at a university in the United Kingdom. Through this work, a simple framework for analyzing lectures—the framework for interactive learning in lectures (FILL), which focuses on student interactions (with the lecturer, with each other, and with the material) is proposed. The pedagogical approach is based on Peer Instruction (PI) and both courses are taught by the same lecturer. We find lecture activities can be categorized into three types: interactive (25%), vicarious interactive (20%) (involving questions to and from the lecturer), and noninteractive (55%). As expected, the majority of both interactive and vicarious interactive activities took place during PI. However, the way that interactive activities were used during non-PI sections of the lecture varied significantly between the two courses. Differences were also found in the average time spent on lecturer-student interactions (28% for 1A and 12% for 1B), although not on student-student interactions (12% and 12%) or on individual learning (10% and 7%). These results are explored in detail and the implications for future research are discussed.

Research-based assessments represent a valuable tool for both instructors and researchers interested in improving undergraduate physics education. However, the historical model for disseminating and propagating conceptual and attitudinal assessments developed by the physics education research (PER) community has not resulted in widespread adoption of these assessments within the broader community of physics instructors. Within this historical model, assessment developers create high quality, validated assessments, make them available for a wide range of instructors to use, and provide minimal (if any) support to assist with administration or analysis of the results. Here, we present and discuss an alternative model for assessment dissemination, which is characterized by centralized data collection and analysis. This model provides a greater degree of support for both researchers and instructors in order to more explicitly support adoption of research-based assessments. Specifically, we describe our experiences developing a centralized, automated system for an attitudinal assessment we previously created to examine students’ epistemologies and expectations about experimental physics. This system provides a proof of concept that we use to discuss the advantages associated with centralized administration and data collection for research-based assessments in PER. We also discuss the challenges that we encountered while developing, maintaining, and automating this system. Ultimately, we argue that centralized administration and data collection for standardized assessments is a viable and potentially advantageous alternative to the default model characterized by decentralized administration and analysis. Moreover, with the help of online administration and automation, this model can support the long-term sustainability of centralized assessment systems.

We have studied the types of student teams that are most effective for collaborative learning in a large freshman university physics course. We compared teams in which the students were all of roughly equal ability to teams with a mix of student abilities, we compared teams with three members to teams with four members, and we examined teams with only one female student and the rest of the students male. We measured team effectiveness by the gains on the Force Concept Inventory and by performance on the final examination. None of the factors that we examined had significant impact on student learning. We also investigated student satisfaction as measured by responses to an anonymous evaluation at the end of the term, and found small but statistically significant differences depending on how the nine teams in the group were constructed.

We explore the overlap of two nationally recognized learning outcomes for physics lab courses, namely, the ability to model experimental systems and the ability to troubleshoot a malfunctioning apparatus. Modeling and troubleshooting are both nonlinear, recursive processes that involve using models to inform revisions to an apparatus. To probe the overlap of modeling and troubleshooting, we collected audiovisual data from think-aloud activities in which eight pairs of students from two institutions attempted to diagnose and repair a malfunctioning electrical circuit. We characterize the cognitive tasks and model-based reasoning that students employed during this activity. In doing so, we demonstrate that troubleshooting engages students in the core scientific practice of modeling.

This work examines how experiences in one disciplinary domain (biology) can impact the relationship a student builds with another domain (physics). We present a model for disciplinary relationships using the constructs of identity, affect, and epistemology. With these constructs we examine an ethnographic case study of a student who experienced a significant shift in her relationship with physics. We describe how this shift demonstrates (i) a stronger identification with physics, (ii) a more mixed affective stance towards physics, and (iii) more expertlike ways of knowing in physics. We argue that recruiting the student’s relationship with biology into experiences of learning physics impacted her relationship with physics as well as her sense of how physics and biology are linked.