During the discussion following my Portfolio I presentation, my committee and I discussed my desire to work on my writing. While this was a major focus of mine in all of my classes over this past year, I have two specific examples, my GRA position and my independent study, where I have really worked to write with a more academic mindset. Both of these experiences resulted in submitting articles to journals for review this past December.
In my personal essay for Portfolio I, I discussed my work as a GRA and how I was able to experience parts of the research process not accessible during a semester long class. The focus of my GRA position for this past year has been writing the results, discussion, and limitations sections of the paper as well as the final editing process. During our meetings, Dr. Erin Peters-Burton and I would sit down and edit our paper line by line. This process has helped me evaluate my use of academic language and work on the process of getting thoughts from my brain to paper. When writing, I struggle to articulate my ideas, and by talking through the paper with Dr. Peters-Burton, I am slowly getting better at this process.
Writing the results and discussion sections of the paper were particularly difficult for me. One reason is because it was the first time I had done so. For class, I have only written research proposals or literature reviews, never a full research paper. Those two sections are also focused on articulating my interpretations of the data and how they align with the research. As stated above, verbalizing my data analysis is much easier for me than capturing it on paper. By working through the paper with Dr. Peters-Burton in the way we did, I was able to write in a much clearer way by the end of the process as compared to where I was a year ago.
During the Spring 2018 semester, I enrolled in an independent study, The STEM Gender Gap with Dr. Nancy Holincheck. For this class, I read research on gender differences in regard to representation within science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. I narrowed my focus to looking at the specific issues that are found for students and professionals studying physics for my final paper, The Gender Gap in Physics: A Literature Review. Dr. Holincheck worked very closely with me to think through and edit the paper. While I turned in a “final paper” for the class, the work did not end our work on the paper there. We continued to meet to fine tune the paper. In the end, we were able to turn my literature review for a class into an article which was submitted to the International Journal of Science Education for review. Dr. Holincheck pushed my thinking on how to categorize research studies. For example, we had many in depth discussions about whether a study was addressing the perspective of “change the culture” or the “change the girl.” These discussions changed how we structured the paper in preparation to being sent to the journal, as well as the poster Change the Culture or Change the Girl: The Gender Gap in Physics which I presented in January at the Association for Science Teacher Education (ASTE) International Conference in Savannah, GA.
Not only did my independent study help me to grow as a writer, it also helped to grow my interest in representation within STEM, specifically women in science. While gender may not have been the research topic of my other classes nor specific topics in my research proposals, it has been a thought process always running in the back of my head during discussions. I took STEM Education Research and Policy concurrently with The STEM Gender Gap. Those two classes really played into one another and I was able to take information from one class to stretch and challenge my thinking in the other. This past fall, I took Current Trends in Science Education Research. Many of the readings for this class looked at different underrepresented groups within the science community. I was able to see how the theme of “change culture” or “change the girl” that came out of my independent study could be expanded to a larger conversation of “change the culture” or “change kid/scientist.” I feel very grateful I was able to take these three classes together, and in the order I did, to help develop and evolve my thought processes.
Moving forward I want to continue to push myself out of my writing comfort zone. There are things about my writing such as the use of “that” that I have been working on, and am happy with my progress while other things, such as the use of complex and compound sentences, where I still struggle. I also want to work on being more comfortable with the writing process. I am hesitant to begin the writing process and am not confident enough to share my writing until it is close to complete. I want to work on being more confident to jump in to writing and share my writing along the way, rather than at the end of the process to further improve my prose. And ironically, these issues have been the obstacles I have had to overcome while writing this portfolio. I currently have the opportunity to revise two papers based on journal reviews, one revise resubmit and one rejection with encouragement to rework the paper. This will give me another opportunity to work on my writing and gain insight from a new type of feedback for me.