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On their way to an academic career in physics, Ph.D. students have to overcome difficulties at many levels. Beyond the intellectual challenge, there are also psychological, social and economic barriers. We studied the difficulties…
Gender imbalance among German physicists persists, with fewer women in advanced degrees and research leadership roles. Although female enrollment in Physics programs increased slightly until 2022, potentially influenced by COVID-19 the…
Between 1984 and 2011, the percentage of US bachelor degrees awarded in physics declined by 25%, in chemistry declined by 33%, and overall in physical sciences and engineering fell 40%. Data suggest that these declines are correlated to a…
Researchers have pinpointed recognition from others as one of the most important dimensions of students' science and engineering identity. Studies, however, have found gender biases in students' recognition of their peers, with inconsistent…
The physics community explores and explains the physical world through a blend of theoretical and experimental studies. The future of physics as a discipline depends on training of students in both the theoretical and experimental aspects…
We analyze a data set comprised of academic records of undergraduates at the University of Oregon from 2000-2004. We find correlations of roughly 0.35 to 0.5 between SAT scores and upper division, in-major GPA (henceforth, GPA).…
The persistent underrepresentation of women and other gender minorities in physical science fields has been an ongoing concern. This study investigates gender dynamics in introductory physics laboratory courses, focusing on whether students…
Diversity has an important, multifaceted role in the success of education. I have used a corpus analysis of the first ten years of Physical Review Physics Education Research to investigate the diversity, broadly defined, of physics…
In deciding on a student's grade in a class, an instructor generally needs to combine many individual grading judgments into one overall judgment. Two relatively common numerical scales used to specify individual grades are the 4-point…
The pursuit of knowledge in particle physics requires constant learning. As new tools become available, new theories are developed, and physicists search for new answers with ever-evolving methods. However, it is the case that formal…
Despite nation efforts to promote diversity and inclusion, women and gender minorities remain underrepresented in physics. One common approach to studying gender in physics contexts treats gender as a categorical identity variable (e.g.…
While there have been numerous calls to increase the participation of people with disabilities in STEM, many postsecondary institutions are not equipped to support students with disabilities. We examined the digital accessibility of 139…
Physics education research has used quantitative modeling techniques to explore learning, affect, and other aspects of physics education. However, these studies have rarely examined the predictive output of the models, instead focusing on…
Previous work has identified that recognition from others is an important predictor of students' participation, persistence, and career intentions in physics. However, research has also found a gender bias in peer recognition in which…
Students face diverse pathways as they journey through undergraduate study. The analysis of student course records can untangle common patterns in course progression, and identify group trends in student outcomes. The current work examines…
At large institutions of higher education, students frequently have a choice whether to attend the introductory physics sequence asynchronously online, on-site in a traditional lecture-setting, or in a reformed studio setting. In this…
Evidence is presented that offering introductory physics courses with an explicit focus on mastery can reduce the gender gap to zero. Taken together with a previous study showing that a concepts-first course may zero out another demographic…
A national survey of physics faculty was conducted to investigate the prevalence and nature of computational instruction in physics courses across the United States. 1246 faculty from 357 unique institutions responded to the survey. The…
We have analyzed the impact of taking an associated lab course on the scores on final exam questions in two large introductory physics courses. Approximately a third of the students who completed each course also took an accompanying…
In a previous study, students' self-expressed learning orientations towards an exercise centered on self-monitoring one's ability to solve a pre-lab physics problem were identified from a post-test feedback survey given to an introductory…