Studying Equity in Undergraduate Physics Labs

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With support from the NSF Improving Undergraduate STEM Education Program: Education and Human Resources (IUSE: EHR), this project aims to serve the national interest by studying how fairness in group interactions during laboratory classes affects students' decisions to persist in physics. Despite extensive efforts to improve science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education, many students who declare a STEM major early in their college years do not persist to graduation. Although the many variables that affect student persistence are complex and intertwined, an important observation is that students do not leave STEM simply due to poor grades. This study, in the Exploration and Design tier of the Engaged Student Learning track, will evaluate how lab experiences affect student perspectives of what it means to do physics and whether they will continue to do it. The work will focus on lab courses where students conduct experiments together, requiring coordinated decision-making between the group members. The project will gather data about student experiences though structured observations of students in labs, paired with interviews of their experiences. By linking direct observations with interviews, this project provides a rare opportunity to connect persistence to actual in-class activities. The significance of this work is increased by the observation that inequities in group interactions may more negatively impact the persistence of some groups of students, such as women and minority students. The proposed study aims to answer two research questions: 1) What are the characteristics of equitable lab groups and lab activities? 2) How do students' lab experiences (equitable or not) affect their perspectives of what it means to do physics and whether they will persist in physics studies? Students' experiences in group work will be evaluated through observations of talk time and turn taking, bids for inclusion and exclusion, assuming leadership roles, equipment handling, and ownership of ideas. Targeted interviews and surveys will probe students' views about what it means to do physics, who can do it, and whether they plan to continue to do it, while also drawing connections to their group work experiences in the lab. A significant focus will be on evaluating interactions between common predictors of persistence (students' self-efficacy, sense of belonging, science identity, and sense of agency) and their experiences in lab. The goal of this work is to generate a set of implications for how lab instruction can affect student persistence in STEM and recommendations for improvements to physics labs. Its research methodology will enable the investigators to probe how lab experiences affect different groups of students, including groups that have been historically underrepresented in physics. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.