How do gender and inchargeness interact to affect equity in lab group interactions?

Abstract

In physics lab groups, students experience a wide range of equitable and inequitable interactions. After observing videos of students collaborating in an introductory physics lab, we defined that an equitable group is one in which every student's bids are heard by their peers. We developed a methodology to characterize different lab groups by tracking students' bid exchanges and assessing their levels of inchargeness. The analysis of equitable and inequitable groups showed that lab groups where one student is in charge can be equitable, as long as each group member's opinions are acknowledged. We also found that gender and inchargeness do not sufficiently predict the equity of student groups. Based on these results, we argue that students that are in charge use their inchargeness to make their groups either equitable or inequitable. Future work will explore whether additional variables interact with inchargeness to predict levels of equity in group work.

Physics teachers’ conceptions of equity: Access and achievement

“…In physics education research, one of the notions of equity that is commonly used includes fairness of opportunity to learn for all students (Esmonde, 2009). Given that "opportunity to learn" is a vaguely defined term, scholars in mathematics and science education research have measured opportunities to learn using the quality and quantity of students' participation in the class (Archibeque et al, 2018;Shah and Lewis, 2019;Jeon et al, 2020;Holmes et al, 2022). In this case, equity means that all students share turns and time to speak and have authority over ideas and learning tools in class, such as experimental equipment, writing boards, etc.…”