Research
EQUITY IN PHYSICS
My main research line - on issues of equity in participation, retainment and success in physics field - is heavily informed by my identities as a first-gen cis-woman physicist. Being a field historically dominated by White men, physics has often failed to diversify or to remove systemic barriers (i.e., discrimination, biases, etc.) for women and minorities. My work centers around understanding the impact of physics culture on underrepresented groups’ motivations, achievements, and retention in physics or physics-related fields. I particularly focus on students’ self-efficacy (one’s belief about their ability to achieve well - A. Bandura 1977), their physics identity development in physics courses, and their sense of belonging. I have faciliatated social psychological interventions in calculus-based physics classrooms to shift students’ mindset in physics learning from a fixed mindset (i.e., intelligence is innate and being smart is required in physics) to a more growth mindset view (i.e., anyone studying in a smart and efficient way can achieve well). My colleagues and I have found that these interventions are particularly helpful to students from minority groups while having minumum or no effect on students from majority groups (Binning et al. 2020). Enhancing equity and inclusivity in the physics community is essential to the devleopment of this fascinating field by recruiting all interested and hard working students regardless of their gender, race, ethnicity, or any other demographic background. Extending my Ph.D. work in this area, I plan to continue investigating how to identify the cultural barriers in the field and eliminate them from physics education.
AGENCY IN PHYSICS LABS
Learning experiences in college labs can be great opportunities for students, particularly in physics or physics-related majors, to become familiar with many scientific processes. Traditionally, science labs (including physics) have been taught in a procedural and confirmative manner: students follow provided instructions to complete tasks in labs without engaging cognitively with the experimentation. They learn how to do something, but not why it is done. At Cornell, much of the lab instruction has been transformed into a more open-ended structure (Holmes et al. link for physport) in order to provide a more authentic experience in how science is done. In these labs, students are encouraged to make decisions in their experimental steps, pursue their own research questions, and expand their investigations based on their own observations. I am interested in understanding how this shift in instruction in physics labs can play a role in the development of student agency (i.e., the sense of autonomy and control over one’s own learning). More importantly, I investigate whether there is an interaction between agency and gender in lab courses. Since agency and self-efficacy are a feedback loop (A. Bandura, 1989), it can be critical for elevating minority groups in physics (particularly gender) to understand the iterative interaction between agency and self-efficacy across female and male student groups.
QUANTITATIVE METHODS IN PER
Expanding on my Ph.D. work, I continue to use and improve on the quantitative methods in my research. As a field, PER has increasingly used statistical tools borrowed from the social sciences. Employing statistical tools is especially needed for PER because much of the data are collected from large introductory physics courses. To make sense of such large amounts of data requires robust analysis techniques. For much of my research, I have utilized statistical, mathematical, and computational methods (e.g., Structural Equation Modeling, Hieararchial Models, Machine Learning families, etc.). I think it is important to not simply port these tools into a PER context, but to fully recognize how to best apply these tools for answering PER questions. More importantly, I have also become more cognizant of seeking ways in quant methods to be more inclusive. #Quantcrit is a new lense for me to think more critically about our research methods in PER. For my current and future quantitative research, I will focus on seeking ways in which we do not erase any student identities and do not generalize our results without understanding their unique experiences.
TEACHING ASSISTANT (TA)’S BELIEFS IN LABS
Both from my personal experience being a TA for more than 5 years, and working with TAs, students’ interactions with TAs in recitations, office hours, or in lab courses play a huge role in their engagement within a particular course. I am currently working on examining TA’s beliefs on reformed lab courses and their beliefs about lab teaching in general. This area is especially understudied within Physics Education, and the improvement in TA training for physics departments has been very slow. With this research, I hope to shed light on TA’s beliefs, expectations, and mindset in physics learning so we can develop and implement more comprehensive TA training programs.
MINDSET IN PHYSICS LEARNING AND TEACHING
In engaging with different tasks, people can hold certain beliefs about whether they have natural talent to do well or not. This is called "Fixed Mindset" according to Carol Dwecks' mindset framework. On the other hand, people can be more "Growth Mindset" if they think that putting effort and spending time can grow your skills without the need for natural ability. Physics as being one of the few disciplines with the belief of "brilliance is needed or required to be successful" (Bian et al. 2017), can deter many individuals from pursuing it. This can be even more of an obstacle for individuals who are not fully represented in the field. My research focuses on understanding why and how students (undergrad and grad) and faculty form fixed versus growth mindset in learning, teaching and doing physics.