Publications

Culturally Relevant Pedagogy: A Model To Guide Cultural Transformation in STEM Departments

A. Johnson, S. Elliott

Despite recent interest and pressing need, we lack a clear model of culturally relevant, responsive, sensitive teaching in university STEM departments. Most culturally relevant efforts within STEM education address actions individual professors can take within their own classrooms and mentoring, rather than describing how to go about enacting cultural transformation at the departmental level. In this article, we propose the application of the Ladson-Billings model of culturally relevant pedagogy to promote an inclusive culture within undergraduate STEM departments. The model consists of three components: academic success, cultural competence and integrity, and critical consciousness. We define each component and describe what it looks like and how it can be used to guide departmental transformation, including examples in biology, physics, mathematics, and computer science departments at our own institution. This model can help guide faculty committed to creating departments where all kinds of STEM students can thrive, provided they are willing to work hard.

Where women of color study physics

This report presents national data about women in physics, by race and ethnicity. It also lays out, in broad strokes, the categories of institutions where women of color complete physics degrees at higher rates, by institution type (PhD-granting, masters-granting,and liberal arts colleges) and student population (predominantly White, minority-serving, historically Black). Finally, it includes lists of institutions graduating higher numbers of Black women, Latinas and American Indians in physics, as well as institutions granting physics degrees to these women at higher rates.

A. Johnson, E. Mulvey, R. Young

Physics Education and Gender: Identity as an Analytic Lens for Research

Chapter Four

A. Johnson

This Edited Volume engages with concepts of gender and identity as they are mobilized in research to understand the experiences of learners, teachers and practitioners of physics. The focus of this collection is on extending theoretical understandings of identity as a means to explore the construction of gender in physics education research.

This collection expands an understanding of gendered participation in physics from a binary gender deficit model to a more complex understanding of gender as performative and intersectional with other social locations (e.g., race, class, LGBT status, ability, etc). This volume contributes to a growing scholarship using sociocultural frameworks to understand learning and participation in physics, and that seeks to challenge dominant understandings of who does physics and what counts as physics competence. Studying gender in physics education research from a perspective of identity and identity construction allows us to understand participation in physics cultures in new ways. We are able to see how identities shape and are shaped by inclusion and exclusion in physics practices, discourses that dominate physics cultures, and actions that maintain or challenge structures of dominance and subordination in physics education. The chapters offered in this book focus on understanding identity and its usefulness in various contexts with various learner or practitioner populations. This scholarship collectively presents us with a broad picture of the complexity inherent in doing physics and doing gender.

Parenting and physics: how to support physics students who are raising children

This study addresses the obstacles and lack of support available for physics students who are also parents. The purpose of this study is to provide physics parents with strategies that other students like them have used and provide ideas for universities and physics faculty to support physics students who are raising children. Majoring in physics could present a challenge to any parents, given the demands of the major. Further, given the low numbers of women in physics and previous research on student parents, it is likely that majoring in physics might be an extra burden for women who are parenting. Given the need for people trained as physicists and engineers, finding ways to support parents in physics could have benefits all around: It could increase the pool of highly trained STEM workers, while diversifying physics and also helping parents prepare for careers that can support their families.

R. Young

Approaching gender equity in academic chemistry: lessons learned from successful female chemists in the UK

J. Miller-Friedmann, A. Childs, J. Hillier

The internationally acknowledged gender gap in science continues to be an unrelenting concern to science educators; aggregate data in the UK show that both recruitment and retention of women in academic science remain relatively low. Most published research focuses on women in the broad field of science, generates correlations or predictions, or examines the reasons why women do not participate in fields like physics or engineering. Previous work has not yet addressed how women have found ways to succeed in particular fields, such as chemistry, or how successful pathways may be applied to recruitment and retention efforts in those fields. This study investigated the experiences of successful British female chemists, in order to uncover coping mechanisms and commonalities that may illuminate obstacles and solutions particular to women in chemistry. Four case study semi-structured life history interviews with highly successful British female chemists revealed common experiences that helped the women in the study to succeed. Of these, two resonated with the literature: having an integrated support network, and the ability to cope with financial and career instability; choice of subfield and adaptation of (unconscious) bias are offered as new insights. The findings suggest changes in policy and practice that would provide particular kinds of support for women in chemistry at school and university level. Implementing these changes may be the impetus needed to approach gender parity in UK academic chemistry from undergraduate to Professor.

Common Challenges Faced by Women of Color in Physics, and Actions Faculty Can Take to Minimize Those Challenges

Women of color are deeply underrepresented in physics. Between 2002 and 2012, only 1% of graduating physics majors were Black women and another 1% were Latinas; only 61 American Indian women total completed degrees in physics in those years (out of 48,000 physics majors). This isolation can lead to additional obstacles that women of color majoring in physics must face above and beyond the challenging material. In this article we draw on qualitative findings to describe common obstacles women of color face. However, departments can take deliberate steps so that underrepresentation need not turn into loneliness and isolation. We describe the characteristics of a department where women of color report that they are thriving. We end with concrete steps physics faculty can take to support women physics majors of color.

A. Johnson, M. Ong, L. Ko, J. Smith, A. Hodari

Enacting Agency: The Strategies of Women of Color in Computing

A. Hodari, M. Ong, L. Ko, J. Smith

Research on marginalized groups in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) commonly overlooks those who persist and succeed, positioning groups such as women of color as passive victims instead of active agents in their own achievements. Focusing on women of color who are successfully staying in STEM, particularly in a field like computer science where women and minorities are severely underrepresented, lets researchers pay attention to the ways the women enact agency. This articles examines the agentic strategies women of color in computing use to ensure their own success. The authors present stories of agency from women of color who describe their approaches for actively persisting in computing. Such approaches include being motivated by challenges and finding inspiration from failure; drawing on unique experiences as marginalized persons; and developing and using "soft"' skills.

Mitigating Challenges Faced by Women of Colour in Physics

A document prepared by the US National Science Foundation in 2017 reported on the current situation for minority groups in STEM-related fields of study and employment. In summary, the report highlighted that women, persons with disabilities, and three racial and ethnic groups – African Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans – are significantly underrepresented. While the number of individuals from minority groups receiving university degrees has increased, there is still a major shortfall, especially in the STEM workforce. To correct this, there needs to be greater emphasis on the broader cultural elements within an academic community, especially those that are negatively impacting the study and work experiences of women of colour in physics. Up until now, however, it has been easier to shift scrutiny and blame from the failures of educational institutions themselves to the student. Many issues arise when the finger of blame is pointed based on superficial, biased or inaccurate assumptions about the racial and cultural backgrounds of the individual student.

A. Hodari, A. Johnson

Pathways, Potholes, and the Persistence of Women in Science: Reconsidering the Pipeline

E. Branch, Editor

Chapter Eleven

M. Ong, L. Ko, A. Hodari

Training for and pursuing a career in science can be treacherous for women; many more begin than ultimately complete at every stage. Characterizing this as a pipeline problem, however, leads to a focus on individual women instead of structural conditions. The goal of the book is to offer an alternative model that better articulates the ideas of agency, constraint, and variability along the path to scientific careers for women. The chapters in this volume apply the metaphor of the road to a variety of fields and moments that are characterized as exits, pathways, and potholes. The scholars featured in this volume engaged purposefully in translation of sociological scholarship on gender, work, and organizations. They focus on the themes that emerge from their scholarship that add to or build on our existing knowledge of scientific work, while identifying tools as well as challenges to diversifying science. This book contains a multitude of insights about navigating the road while training for and building a career in science. Collectively, the chapters exemplify the utility of this approach, provide useful tools, and suggest areas of exploration for those aiming to broaden the participation of women and minorities. Although this book focuses on gendered constraints, we are attentive to fact that gender intersects with other identities, such as race/ethnicity and nativity, both of which influence participation in science. Several chapters in the volume speak clearly to the experience of underrepresented minorities in science and others consider the circumstances and integration of non-U.S. born scientists, referred to in this volume as international scientists. Disaggregating gender deepens our understanding and illustrates how identity shapes the contours of the scientific road

Undergraduate and Alumni Research

Identifying and Scaling Up What Helps Women of Color Thrive in Physics

E. Mulvey, A. Johnson, R. Young

LGBT+ in Stem: The Transgender Experience

V. Webb, A. Hodari, A. Johnson, A. Keene, E. Mulvey, R. Young

It has been widely reported that youth are more accepting of LGBT+ identities, and an increasing number of colleges and universities allow students to use gender-neutral pronouns. Yet, research on how inclusive STEM educational cultures are of sexual identity and gender fluidity is meager. According to a survey by the Human Rights Campaign, 75 percent of LGBT+ youth report that most of their peers have no problem with their LGBT+ identity, yet 4 in 10 say the community in which they live is not accepting (HRC, 2012). STEM cultures are configured within this broader context, and little is known about the LGBT+ acceptance and inclusion within them. In this poster we present interview results and on the lived experiences of transgender undergraduates in physics, mathematics, and computer science at institutions that have bettered their inclusion by gender and race compared to that of other institutions, with an emphasis on students of trans experience.

Physics and Parenting: Supporting Physics Students Who Are the Guardians of a Minor

Parents or guardians who are pursuing an undergraduate degree in Physics have many barrier to their success. In this project, I explore the possibility of extending the standard notions of student support systems to include classroom practices which have enabled undergraduate students to succeed and thrive while pursuing their degree. I ask: Can physics departments be supportive of students with dependent children, and if so, how? By studying students who have/ are thriving in physics, engineering, math and computer science undergraduate degree programs around the United States, the author examines strategies that administrators and faculty use to make their departments supportive and inclusive for student parents. The poster describes the non-traditional challenges physics undergraduates who are the guardians of minors can face, as well as the support systems that may be created, and policies and practices that ensure their success.

R. Young

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