United States

After working as a Physics Education Researcher for nearly 15 years, I received the opportunity to serve as an American Association for the Advancement of Science - Science and Technology Policy Fellow (AAAS-STPF) at the National Science Foundation (NSF) in Division of Undergraduate Education. I pursued this fellowship to explore the role of policy in STEM Education. In this talk, I will present lessons I have learned through this fellowship including ways that policy effects education and education research, and the roles policies play in leading change in education. Additionally, I will reflect on what I have learned about how funding agencies like NSF enact change through policy and reflect on ways that the Physics Education Research community could use this to be more impactful change leaders for science education.

PERC SM 20

The Roles of Policy in Educational Change

science policy

institutional change

physics education research

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AAPT SM 21

technical paper

Join us in exploring emergent themes in PER as a scholarly endeavor and as a research community!  Since its inception, PER has served as a confluence of discipline, theory, research methodology, practice, and application.  How have these facets and the interplays among them been fruitful for physics education globally, regionally, locally, or otherwise?  And, how have our successes and interactions influenced the very nature of PER itself?
Following the lead of AAPT for the summer meeting, PERC 20/20 was virtual. Enjoy browsing the content.

Since its inception, PER has served as a confluence of discipline, theory, research methodology, practice, and application.  How have these facets and the interplays among them been fruitful for physics education globally, regionally, locally, or otherwise?  And, how have our successes and interactions influenced the very nature of PER itself?

Technology has always been a medium to help teachers provide the best educational experiences for our nation's youth. Augmented and Virtual Reality is becoming more common in the classroom which brings unprecedented opportunities. Our team created an Augmented Reality (AR) application to use with the Merge Cube that focuses on Forces and Motion. This application is used with multiple in-service and pre-service teachers for two reasons. The first is to enhance their understanding of mechanics. The second is that they allow us to asses both the usability and willingness to use not only that application, but ARVR in general. We found that after modifications they were extremely receptive to the application, learned from it and would implement it in the future.

Teaching Force and Motion in Augmented Reality

There is a serious shortage of secondary science and math teachers across the United States. Part of this shortage can be attributed to a lack of research-based recruitment materials. To this end, we have developed written and visual materials for recruiting future STEM teachers as part of the Get the Facts Out (GFO) project. We have tested and refined our materials through faculty and student focus groups at several demographically and geographically diverse US universities over the last two years. Recently, we collected large-scale data via a national online survey that will be shared here for the first time. Our findings provide insights into optimal recruitment strategies, and we will share our unique considerations for different locations, demographics, and target audiences. We will also discuss our testing and refinement strategies through interactive activities.

Research-based, User-tested Materials for Recruiting STEM Teachers

We present a study of a large-scale intervention designed to shift lab instruction away from tightly prescribed lab norms. The intervention was implemented in a network of Professional Learning Communities of Israeli high-school physics teachers (N=250) operating in a high-stakes exam setting with limited resources, and catering to diverse groups of students. An introductory questionnaire examined the lab goals that the teachers valued, revealing a gap between teachers' optimal lab goals and prevailing ones, in particular as concerns experimental design. The intervention addressed both teachers' interest in change as well as the constraints imposed by the setting in which they work, by: a) modest restructuring of traditional labs: encouraging students to reflect on the considerations underlying the experimental design; b) involving teachers in collaborative reflection on classroom enactments of the restructured labs. Indeed, most teachers chose to carry out the restructured labs. We will describe barriers and affordances that the teachers identified when reflecting on their experience.

Re-defining Lab Norms via Professional Learning Communities of physics teachers

Conceptual blending has been used to study student reasoning at the math-physics interface, but the current emphasis is mostly on the product of student reasoning, while information about the reasoning process is missing in the analysis. Therefore, we adapted the blending diagrams to also include the dynamics of student reasoning. In this session, we will use data from an interview study that focused on undergraduate students understanding of boundary conditions for the heat equation. We demonstrate the construction of a dynamic blending diagram (DBD) and its use as an analytical framework. We show that by using a DBD, we can judge the degree to which students integrate their understanding of mathematics and physics. The DBD also enables the reader to follow the line of reasoning of the students. Moreover, a DBD can be used to diagnose difficulties in student reasoning.

Dynamic conceptual blending analysis to model student reasoning processes while integrating mathematics and physics

Student assistants (SA), including graduate and undergraduate teaching/learning assistants, are pivotal to non-traditional physics instruction in large classrooms. Despite its effectiveness, little is known about how SAs Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) affects SA-student interactions and how those interactions promote students learning. We are particularly interested in SAs PCK of questioning (PCK-Q) skills. In this workshop, we will present a 6-level coding scheme to analyze SA support in different vignettes of SA-student interactions in class videos. The frequency of certain levels in multiple vignettes could suggest a measure of SAs performed PCK-Q. We will also present a written instrument with open-ended questions assessing SAs narrated PCK-Q in given situations which are drawn from vignettes of authentic SA-student interactions. We will demonstrate the process of developing and validating the coding scheme and written instrument and their use in studying SAs impact on students conceptual understanding of physics and critical thinking skills.

Measuring and improving Pedagogical Content Knowledge of student assistants in introductory physics classes

Game-based learning (GBL) has garnered much attention among researchers, as games could be an essential tool in the science classroom to enhance the learning process through play. However, the inclusion of games in astronomy education has been hampered by the lack of astronomy game resources validated in the classroom and aligned with curriculum learning outcomes. This study investigated the use of GBL activities in secondary students' conceptual understanding of astronomical concepts from the curriculum. A quasi-experimental research study involved 483 students from junior-cycle level (12-16 years) in Ireland. In this study, it was observed that the sociocultural environment promoted by the games favours student's motivation and prolonged conceptual change. During this presentation, the authors will report on how GBL facilitated or constrained the student learning process. Particularly, we will focus on how the ontological aspects of students reasoning about astronomical phenomena are affected by GBL instruction.

Game-based learning as a tool for promoting conceptual change in astronomy

Physics courses often have high failure rates that may disproportionately harm students who are marginalized by racism, sexism, and classism. We examined the associations between Learning Assistant (LA) supported courses and equity in non-passing grades (DFW) in introductory physics courses. The data used in the study came from 2312 students in 41 sections of introductory physics courses at a regional Hispanic serving institution. We developed hierarchical generalized linear models of student DFW rates that accounted for gender, race, first-generation status, and LA-supported instruction. We used a quantitative critical race theory (QuantCrit) perspective focused on the role of hegemonic power structures in perpetuating inequity. Our QuantCrit perspective informed our research questions, methods, and interpretations of findings. The models associated LAs with overall decreases in DFW rates and larger decreases for students of color than their white peers. While inequities in DFW rates were lower in LA-supported courses, they were still present.

Associations Between Learning Assistants, passing introductory physics, and equity: a QuantCrit Investigation

Undergraduate physics laboratory course structures have been identified in policy reports for novel design innovations to meet the needs of a diverse and growing student population. To this end, an at-home laboratory option was implemented at a large, public university for introductory physics students. A quasi-experimental, observational quantitative study was undertaken to understand students epistemological views, socialization, and help seeking behaviors in in-person and at-home laboratory environments. Students in introductory physics (N=998) were surveyed to elicit their epistemological beliefs about physics laboratory work and their views on social engagement and academic help-seeking. Students showed no statistically significant differences in attitudes related to epistemological beliefs and help-seeking behaviors when compared to students in traditional laboratory courses. In-person students valued socialization higher than at-home students. This study provides insights into the feasibility of at-home, hands-on laboratory work to meet students needs, and institutional recommendations for student advisement.

Epistemological, socialization, and help seeking views of students taking in-person and online undergraduate physics laboratories

Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) are key partners in the education of undergrads. Given the potentially large impact GTAs can have on undergraduate student learning, it is important to provide them with appropriate preparation for teaching. But GTAs are students themselves, and not all of them desire an academic career. Therefore, it is crucial that GTA preparation not be a burden but rather be fully integrated into their professional development. In this talk, we describe a GTA preparation course for first-year PhD students. Through a yearly cycle of implementation and revision, the course has evolved into a robust and comprehensive professional development program that is well-received by physics graduate students. We assessed the effectiveness of the course with a combination of surveys, pre/post tests, and student evaluations. We found that GTAs feel better prepared for teaching and adopt more learner-centered teaching approaches after participating in the program.

Transforming the Preparation of Physics GTAs

Instructors know that many college students tend to delay working on homework assignments until close to the due date. Such "cramming" behavior may lead to insufficient engagement with learning materials. In this study, we investigate the effectiveness of reducing "cramming" by offering small amounts of extra credit for completing parts of the assignments before the due date. Student learning behavior is characterized by first identifying clusters of clickstream records that represent a continuous study session, then analyzing the duration and starting time of each study session. We observed that after offering extra credit for early completion, the average duration of study sessions remains unchanged, but more study sessions took place earlier than the assignment due date, shortly before the extra credit due dates. We will discuss how extra credit impacts different student populations, as well as the quality of students learning behavior. As institutions across the nation shift abruptly to online learning at the onset of the COVID-19 epidemic, students are facing significant challenges to keep up with regular course schedules when studying from home, and due dates for online assignments must be more flexible as to accommodate for those challenges. This study suggests that the use of extra credit can be an effective method to incentivize completion of assignments among some students.

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