How do they get here?: Paths into physics education research

Abstract

Physics education research (PER) is a relatively new and rapidly growing area of Ph.D. specialization. To sustain the field of PER, a steady pipeline of talented scholars needs to be developed and supported. One aspect of building this pipeline is understanding how students come to graduate and postdoctoral work in PER and what their career goals are. This paper presents the first study on the experiences and career pathways of students in PER. Data were collected through open-ended interviews with 13 graduate students and postdoctoral scholars in PER. Results show that many of these PER graduate students and postdoctoral scholars were not aware of PER as undergraduates. PER graduate students that were aware of PER as undergraduates chose to study PER as they were applying to graduate schools. The graduate school experiences of the interviewees were overwhelmingly positive, with participants reporting a positive climate that was facilitated by communicative and productive relationships with their advisors. However, some participants reported concerns about the acceptance of PER within some departments, including open hostility towards the field. The majority of participants were interested in pursuing a career as a university faculty member, with more participants preferring a position at a research-intensive university. These results suggest that a further large-scale study of graduate students in PER may be able to highlight the field as being a leader in student mentoring and community development while collecting important demographic information that could show PER to have more gender diversity than other subfields of physics.

Physics education research: A research subfield of physics with gender parity

“…The survey instrument was developed by us from results of the previously discussed qualitative study of graduate students and post-doctoral research associates in PER [4]. A member check was performed by presenting a draft of the survey to the PER research group at the University of Colorado Boulder.…”

“…The results of this qualitative study [4] described how the participants came to PER, why they chose the field, and gave an overall look at their experiences within the field. Of importance to our analyses were the composition of the participants and their description of their experience within PER.…”

“…Although the field of physics is known for having very low female representation [1][2][3], anecdotal evidence suggests that PER has near gender parity in both departments of physics and schools of education [4,5]. This possible gender parity represents a difference between both schools of education and departments of physics.…”

“…The experiences assessed included work relationships and comfort within their work environment (climate), when they chose to pursue PER, career expectations (trajectory), and desired outcomes of their research (goals). These experiences were targeted because they emerged as important in an earlier qualitative study of PER graduate students and post docs [4].…”

“…A recent call by the National Research Council suggested that in order to sustain Discipline Based Education Research (which includes PER), new research needs to focus on the educational pathways by which new researchers enter the field [10]. Our efforts to understand these pathways into PER began with a qualitative study interviewing 13 graduate students and post-doctoral scholars in the field [4].…”