Impact of out-of-class science and engineering activities on physics identity and career intentions

Abstract

The number of physics bachelor's degrees that are awarded in the United States annually is small compared to most other science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields, and only about one-fifth of these degrees are awarded to women. Understanding the influence of students' science and engineering experiences on career choices is critical in order to improve future efforts to increase the number of physics majors and the participation of women. In this work, we use a physics identity framework to examine the impact of out-of-class science and engineering activities on three identity dimensions and the relationship between these dimensions and physics career choice. Through structural equation modeling of survey data from 5541 college students, we find that out-of-class science and engineering activities have the largest influence on physics performance/competence beliefs, but the association of performance/competence beliefs to overall physics identity and physics career choice is primarily mediated through recognition beliefs and physics interests. Furthermore, out-of-class science and engineering activities have a larger effect on recognition beliefs for men than for women, which is a challenging finding in light of the fact that recognition beliefs are the most influential identity dimension for women. The results of this work begin to highlight the need for out-of-class science and engineering activities that focus on not only enhancing students' performance/competence beliefs but also students' interests, particularly those students not previously interested, and women's recognition beliefs with respect to physics.

The context dependence of physics identity: Examining the role of performance/competence, recognition, interest, and sense of belonging for lower and upper female physics undergraduates

“…In terms of specific findings that address the hypotheses posed earlier, we found that for both first year and senior female physics undergraduates, interest is mediated by recognition and performance/competence; interest does not have a direct effect on physics identity 1 . This is in contrast with earlier studies for broader student populations (with many different disciplinary interests and aspirations) which found interest to have a direct effect on physics identity while performance/competence had an indirect effect mediated by both recognition and interest (Figure 1; Godwin et al, 2016; Lock et al, 2019; Potvin & Hazari, 2013). Another recent model of students in introductory calculus‐based physics courses at one institution found that all three constructs had a direct effect on physics identity, although both interest and performance/competence had smaller effects than recognition (Kalender et al, 2019).…”

“…Students who felt able to perform and competent, needed to be recognized or become interested in order to see themselves as a “physics person.” These results were consistently replicated across multiple domains (mathematics, physics, and science generally) in different studies with broad college student populations (not just physics majors; Cribbs, Hazari, Sonnert, & Sadler, 2015; Godwin et al, 2016). In physics, this has also been studied at both the high school and university level for students in classes with broad student populations with similar findings (Cheng et al, 2018; Godwin et al, 2016; Lock et al, 2019).…”

“…The survey was initially developed by reviewing the literature on important factors for undergraduate women in STEM, drawing from preexisting valid and reliable survey instruments measuring those factors, and drafting new items for factors that instruments could not be found for. In particular, the survey questions related to performance/competence, recognition, and interest were modified from previously validated and reliable instruments developed for college students (Godwin et al, 2015; Lock et al, 2019). For face and content validity, the instrument was piloted with college students in STEM who provided feedback on clarity, wording, and content.…”

“…Furthermore, as described in the previous section, the theorized constructs emerge repeatedly from qualitative work on gender and physics identity. For broad groups of college students (with many different majors, STEM and non‐STEM), quantitative work using the theorized constructs has revealed that the performance/competence construct was mediated by recognition and interest in affecting physics identity (Figure 1) (Godwin et al, 2016; Lock et al, 2019; Potvin & Hazari, 2013). In other words, for students who have a broad range of science intentions (STEM and non‐STEM majors), performance/competence was necessary but not sufficient for physics identity construction.…”

“…Previous model for students' physics identity among broad college student populations (Godwin et al, 2016; Lock, Hazari, & Potvin, 2019; Potvin & Hazari, 2013). Note : The performance/competence construct in the figure is labeled “perf/comp”…”