‘Biology is easy, physics is hard’: Student perceptions of the ideal and the typical student across STEM higher education

Wong, Billy; Chiu, Yuan-Li Tiffany; Murray, Órla Meadhbh; Horsburgh, Jo; Copsey-Blake, Meggie

doi:10.1080/09620214.2022.2122532

Cited by 14 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…As mentioned above, higher education biology is an arena, which is often perceived as gender‐neutral or even feminine, easy, accessible in relation to other natural science practices (Wong et al, 2022). This myth is challenged by our study.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Women and other minoritized groups are still strongly underrepresented in natural science landscapes (UNESCO, 2021) in general and greatly outnumbered by men among biology faculty in, for instance, Sweden (SCB, 2020) and the United States (Sheltzer & Smith, 2014). Biology is consequently not excepted from common patterns of a decrease of women's participation in the natural sciences along the academic career ladder and finds itself in a disciplinary STEM hierarchy (Wong et al, 2022).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Higher education biology is perceived as more accessible and easier than other natural science disciplines (Wong et al, 2022) and thereby often considered as the most inclusionary university natural science field, within which gendered processes of exclusion are assumed to be absent and equality along the axis of gender has been reached. In contrast to, for instance, physics, a male dominated natural science discipline that is given extensive attention in science education research, qualitative explorations of higher education biology are rather scarce and marginalized.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In a US American context, Brownell and Tanner (2012) employing the lens of professional identity find biology faculty's professional identity to be grounded in research performances, leaving little space for teaching, similarly to Andersson (2018). While further work has continued to address undergraduate students' science and biology identity work (e.g., Cole & Beck, 2022; Wong et al, 2022), there is a need for further explorations related to university biology teachers' identities. In this article, we focus on this population for various reasons.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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“I try to encourage my students to think, read, and talk science” intelligible identities in university teachers' figured worlds of higher education biology

2022

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Higher education biology is often imagined, perceived, and described as having reached gender equality in terms of who gets to participate in disciplinary practices. However, like any other natural science discipline, higher education biology is a world whose landscapes are shaped by (re)productions of historical, cultural, and social norms. We explore these norms through the lens of identity, asking what identities are recognized by university biology teachers at a large Swedish university, analyzing 94 teaching statements written when applying for faculty positions in biology. We argue that in and through teaching statements, university biology teachers negotiate and perform overarching academic and disciplinary norms and discourses with the goal to present themselves as intelligible candidates. As statements of value, they thereby display implicit and explicit identities recognized in worlds of higher education biology. Using a discourse analytical framework, we identified two university teacher identities imagined as intelligible: Research Science Teachers and Facilitating Science Teachers.Research Science Teachers position research and associated masculine-coded competences as anchor points

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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“I try to encourage my students to think, read, and talk science” intelligible identities in university teachers' figured worlds of higher education biology

2022

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“…Physics is a notoriously difficult subject in the eyes of many undergraduates. 1 Introductory physics courses are typically among the most-failed courses on college campuses. According to student evaluations of teaching at our university 2 the workload of the first-semester physics course is perceived as considerably heavier than the workload of introductory courses in general chemistry or statistics.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Practice Makes Better: Quantifying Grade Benefits of Study

Black¹,

Matz²,

Mills³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Problem Roulette (PR), an online study service at the University of Michigan, offers point-free practice to students preparing for examinations in introductory STEM courses. Using four years of PR data involving millions of problem attempts by thousands of students, we quantify benefits of increased practice study volume in introductory physics. After conditioning mean final grade on standardized (ACT/SAT) math test score, we analyze deviations based on student study volume. We find a strong effect; mean course grade rises quadratically with the logarithm of the total number of PR questions encountered over the term (N Q,tot ), with an overall gain of 0.78 ± 0.12 grade points between 1 < N Q,tot < 1000. The gains are persistent across the range of math test score represented in our sample. A linear model for final grade using test score and study volume largely accounts for demographic stratification, including by sex, parental education level, number of parents at home, nationality / underrepresented minority status, and regional income level, with two significant exceptions: students whose parents did not earn a college degree, who earn −0.27 ± 0.04 grade points (6.2σ ) below expectations and underrepresented minority students at −0.14±0.04 points (3.7σ ). Residual scatter in final grade remains comparable to the maximum gain from studying more, implying that the model is far from deterministic at the level of an individual. Our findings can help motivate students to study more and help teachers to identify which types of students may especially need such encouragement.

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How Motivation for Undergraduate Physics Interacts With Learning Activities in a System With Built‐In Autonomy

Bøe,

Lauvland,

Henriksen

2024

Science Education

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Supporting student participation and learning in STEM involves motivating students to engage in the most effective learning activities. In this article, we study how student motivation interacts with learning activities, and we pay special attention to active learning and the Scandinavian context where participation in learning activities is largely voluntary. Twenty‐one undergraduate physics students at a large, research‐intensive university in Norway participated in nine focus group interviews at the beginning and end of the spring term of 2020. With self‐determination theory as a lens, our thematic analysis resulted in three themes: First, students' autonomous motivation came from mastery experiences and perceived learning, such as the joy of solving a problem. Second, active learning activities enabled students' autonomous motivation when these activities supported competence, for example through optimal challenge or with evident learning gains. In contrast, students experienced low or controlled motivation when excessive challenge and lack of mastery threatened their sense of competence. Third, students' sense of competence was strengthened by being part of a community of learners. The community ensured that help and mastery experiences were available, and interactions with the community made evident that other students struggle too. The emphasis on mastery and competence for these students is discussed considering how physics is associated with difficulty and extraordinary cleverness. We argue that the main threat for students who do not feel competent enough in physics is the threat of not belonging in physics due to this perceived lack of competence. Implications for teaching and research are discussed.

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‘Biology is easy, physics is hard’: Student perceptions of the ideal and the typical student across STEM higher education

Cited by 14 publications

References 39 publications

“I try to encourage my students to think, read, and talk science” intelligible identities in university teachers' figured worlds of higher education biology

“I try to encourage my students to think, read, and talk science” intelligible identities in university teachers' figured worlds of higher education biology

Practice Makes Better: Quantifying Grade Benefits of Study

How Motivation for Undergraduate Physics Interacts With Learning Activities in a System With Built‐In Autonomy

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