United States

While the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) have grown in the past twenty years, the proportion of women in these fields has not seen the same growth. This article researches how inquiry-based instructional approaches can better support gender-equity in classrooms. It will look at the effects that confidence, group work, and Socratic questioning have on women in STEM courses, and how small changes in instruction can have large impacts on the experiences women have in STEM courses.

AAPT SM 21

 qSupporting Gender-Equity in the STEM Classroom

inquiry-based instruction

gender-equity

socratic questioning

stem

high school

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technical paper

Addressing sexual harassment requires an understanding of what it is as well as the impact it can have upon persons who experience it, the ability to discuss it in our workplaces, and workplace structures and policies for addressing it. Women who enter the field of physics have frequently reported experiencing sexual harassment and have discussed how it impacts them in terms of persistence in the field. In order to create physics environments in which women feel valued and respected, it is necessary to educate both ourselves and those in our workspaces and to have difficult conversations about sexual harassment. Education on sexual microaggressions is a helpful starting place for understanding sexual harassment and opening conversations.

How to talk about Sexual Harassment

We have designed an instructional model involving two sessions. The first session involves conceptual model building and the second session involves consolidation and transfer of learning in novel contexts. We have been implementing this model over the last several semesters. However, in the most recent semesters, we implemented this model in a remote instructional approach making adjustments in the instruction. In this presentation, we report the impacts of the modality change in various aspects of student learning of knowledge and skill. We have explored the factors affecting the students’ engagement level in remote instruction and subsequently to the student performance. We will describe impacts on students’ problem-solving approach and competency. Additionally, the results from the in-class clicker quiz and conceptual exam questions have also provided some useful information. Using the CLASS survey result, we will present the impacts on student attitude about learning physics.

Impact of Remote Instruction Modality on a Two-staged Instructional Approach

Both Active Learning and Three-Dimensional Learning (3DL) represent major shifts in how introductory STEM courses are taught. These take two separate approaches, with Active Learning focusing on how students learn and 3DL on what students learn. By pairing Active Learning with 3DL, student-centered learning environments can be more meaningful and promote deeper learning by engaging students with the scientific ideas and skills centrally important to our disciplines. In this talk, I will present 2 years of data from including exam assessment items and in-class video recordings from physics, chemistry, and biology courses. Using of the 3D-LAP and 3D-LOP, we have characterized the learning environment for both the potential to engage students in 3DL and the incorporation of active learning strategies. We will discuss how our findings indicate that placing an explicit focus on engaging students in Scientific Practices is necessary for using 3DL to create more meaningfully active learning environments.

Meaningful Active Learning Environments and the Need for Scientific Practices

As an introduction to atomic physics in an algebra-based introductory physics for the life sciences course, students learn how to calculate the energy levels of organic molecules. They use this knowledge to determine the conjugation lengths of the molecules. The students at our university have taken 4 semesters of chemistry before taking physics, so they have a good understanding of organic chemistry. With this method, students are able to find the wavelengths of photons that are absorbed and emitted by these molecules. Students then create mixtures in lab with these organic molecules to see their absorption peaks at specific wavelengths. Once we move into fluorescence, students are able to use their knowledge of energy levels to discover that chlorophyll fluoresces in the red. Only when they get to lab are they able to see this phenomenon in real life and truly appreciate the ideas behind atomic physics.

Chlorophyll fluoresces red!

Airborne droplets emitted from the mouth during coughing, sneezing and breathing provide the main pathway for transmission of respiratory diseases such as COVID-19. We show how classical mechanics (Newton’s Laws) and fluid mechanics concepts (drag force, buoyancy, Reynolds number) can be applied in some simple models to help students understand the motion of aerosols emitted during respiratory events. The results illuminate why aerosols can remain in the air for long times and travel for surprisingly long distances. For those interested in further exploring the physics of respiratory aerosols, we provide links to some recent journal articles and to a computational model by Bazant et al. of risks of respiratory infection in indoor areas with variable ventilation, number of occupants and human behaviors (breathing rates, mask wearing compliance etc.)

Using Introductory Physics to Model Motion of Respiratory Aerosol Droplets

One of the distinguishing attributes of first year physics students is the novice-style approach to solving problems, typically based upon common variables or equation hunting. Having students shift to more expert-like strategies, based upon more over-arching ideas or concepts is often a challenge in physics teaching. This talk will discuss several strategies implemented in an urban-emergent high school for both traditional junior level students, as well as AP level students to help shift student approaches from novice to expert.

Toward Expert Level Approaches

While much of our research centers on recruiting more physics majors, the introductory physics courses serve a variety of STEM majors. Pre-Health majors account for a large portion of student enrollment in introductory physics. In this study, we investigate how Pre-Health majors are motivated to persist in their introductory physics course and how features of the course may shift their perceptions of physics. Pre-Health students are perceived to be extrinsically motivated to persist in their physics class as a means to an end in preparation for their MCAT or curricular requirements. Using Eccles Expectancy Value and Cost Theory, we test and analyze how Pre-Health majors enrolled in Modeling Instruction (MI) course change their perceptions of physics and their physics identity. This study will present results from surveys of about 140 students enrolled in MI in addition to several interviews exploring students’ classroom experiences and their reasons to persist.

The Costs to Persist in Introductory Physics for Pre-Health Majors

This talk will provide both zoomed-out and zoomed-in perspectives of LGBT+ experiences in Physics. Drawing on the results of a study by the American Physical Society, the climate experiences and persistence of LGBT+ physicists will be discussed focusing on intra-group differences: Experiences of exclusionary behavior were found to vary significantly by gender with transgender participants experiencing the most hostile climate; respondents who were out were found to be more comfortable at their workplaces; evidence was also found for differences in experience grounded in intersections with race. The talk will then examine the specific experiences of two LGBT+ individuals as they navigated a course, highlighting key moments where LGBT+ identities foregrounded themselves in the context of disciplinary thinking as well as ways in which existing support structures did not address their needs. These two perspectives will be used to highlight prospects for new research directions around LGBT+ identity in Physics Education.

LGBT+ Physicists: Harassment, Persistence, and Uneven Support Systems

What is queer theory? What are its basic terms of analysis? How might it apply to LGBT physicists? This presentation offers an introduction to this this field of thought, and uses historical examples to question some of the basic tenets of LGBT rights discourse

From LBGT to Queer: Physicists Without Identities

Women make up a shrinking portion of physics faculty in senior positions, a phenomenon known as a "leaky pipeline.'' While fixing this problem has been a priority in academic institutions, efforts have been stymied by the diverse sources of leaks. In this paper we identify a bias potentially contributing to the leaky pipeline. We analyze bibliographic data provided by the American Physical Society (APS), a leading publisher of physics research. By inferring the gender of authors from names, we are able to measure the fraction of women authors over past decades. We show that the more selective, higher impact APS journals have lower fractions of women authors compared to other APS journals. Correcting this bias may help more women publish in prestigious APS journals, and in turn help improve their academic promotion cases.

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