Building classroom and organizational structure around positive cultural values

Albanna, Badr F.; Corbo, Joel C.; Dounas-Frazer, Dimitri R.; Little, Angela; Zaniewski, Anna

doi:10.1063/1.4789638

Cited by 13 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…The next iteration of the GRF was spearheaded by the Compass Project, a student-run organization whose mission is to improve equity in the UC Berkeley Physics Department through sociocultural support and other strategies 26 . Compass adapted the Status and Progress Rubrics for use at the university level.…”

Section: A Prior Work: Iterations 1-3mentioning

confidence: 99%

Attending to lifelong learning skills through guided reflection in a physics class

Dounas-Frazer

Reinholz

2015

American Journal of Physics

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This paper describes a tool, the Guided Reflection Form (GRF), which was used to promote reflection in a modeling-based physics course. Each week, students completed a guided reflection and received feedback from their instructors. These activities were intended to help students become better at the process of reflection, developing skills that they could apply in their future learning. We analyzed student reflections: (1) to provide insight into the reflection process itself and (2) to describe common themes in student reflections. Most students were able to use the GRF to reflect on their learning in meaningful ways. Moreover, the themes present in student reflections provide insights into struggles commonly faced by physics students. We discuss the design of the GRF in detail, so that others may use it as a tool to support student reflections.

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Section: A Prior Work: Iterations 1-3mentioning

confidence: 99%

Attending to lifelong learning skills through guided reflection in a physics class

Dounas-Frazer

Reinholz

2015

American Journal of Physics

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“…These programs are informed by research on the importance of supportive environments for supporting the success of diverse groups of students (BHEF 2013;NA2 2010;Seymour and Hewitt 1997). These programs help students form a supportive learning community to engage with interesting and authentic science; details of these programs are reported on in prior work (Albanna et al 2013;Dounas-Frazer et al 2013). …”

Section: Sundial Project At Arizona State Universitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Increasing STEM success: a near-peer mentoring program in the physical sciences

2016

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Background: Mentoring supports professional success in a myriad of fields; in the physical sciences, mentoring increases the retention of diverse groups of students. While physics education has made progress in classifying the availability and structural components related to mentoring programs, little is known about the qualitative nature of mentoring relationships. This article draws from frameworks in science identity and belongs to analyze the nature of relationships in the mentoring program offered by the Sundial Project at Arizona State University, which aims to help new students with diverse backgrounds succeed in physics and related majors. To provide insight into mentoring relationships, we analyze over 150 reports submitted by mentors and mentees in a near-peer mentoring program. Results: Mentoring groups enjoyed positive rapport and often remarked upon becoming friends. As such, mentoring relationships provided mentees with both psychosocial and academic support. Mentoring supported students to deal with a wide variety of topics, ranging from academic to personal, according to the needs of individual mentees. Moreover, outcomes of students in the mentoring program were favorable; the mean GPA of participating mentees was 3.49 for their first college semester. Conclusions: Mentors acted both as guides who shared information and as caring friends who providing psychosocial support, including normalizing struggle. These connections supported students to develop a sense of belonging and positive science identities.

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“…CU-Prime is a member of The Access Network (hereafter "Access"). 20 Access organizations-including The Berkeley Compass Project, 21 The Chi-Sci Scholars Program, 22 and several other organizations-are characterized by student leadership and a commitment to improving diversity in the physical sciences through community building. To achieve their goals, these organizations offer multiple services designed to support students from underrepresented groups and raise awareness about issues of marginalization in physics.…”

Section: A Organizational Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Personalized instructor responses to guided student reflections: Analysis of two instructors' perspectives and practices

Reinholz

Dounas-Frazer

2017

American Journal of Physics

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One way to foster a supportive culture in physics departments is for instructors to provide students with personal attention regarding their academic difficulties. To this end, we have developed the Guided Reflection Form (GRF), an online tool that facilitates student reflections and personalized instructor responses. In the present work, we report on the experiences and practices of two instructors who used the GRF in an introductory physics lab course. Our analysis draws on two sources of data: (i) post-semester interviews with both instructors and (ii) the instructors' written responses to 134 student reflections. Interviews focused on the instructors' perceptions about the goals and framing of the GRF activity, and characteristics of good or bad feedback. Their GRF responses were analyzed for the presence of up to six types of statement: encouraging statements, normalizing statements, empathizing statements, strategy suggestions, resource suggestions, and feedback to the student on the structure of their reflection. We find that both instructors used all six response types, in alignment with their perceptions of what counts as good feedback. This exploratory qualitative investigation demonstrates that the GRF can serve as a mechanism for instructors to pay personal attention to their students. In addition, it opens the door to future work about the impact of the GRF on student-teacher interactions.

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Building classroom and organizational structure around positive cultural values

Cited by 13 publications

References 11 publications

Attending to lifelong learning skills through guided reflection in a physics class

Attending to lifelong learning skills through guided reflection in a physics class

Increasing STEM success: a near-peer mentoring program in the physical sciences

Personalized instructor responses to guided student reflections: Analysis of two instructors' perspectives and practices

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