Making Masculinity in Plasma Physics

Pettersson, Helena

doi:10.23987/sts.55269

Cited by 10 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 43 publications

(23 reference statements)

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“…There is a large gender disparity in representation in the physics community, with men dominating in both rank and number [1]. In studying this, much emphasis in physics education research focuses on gender gaps in performance, such as concept inventories and course grades [2,3].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Who does what now? How physics lab instruction impacts student behaviors

Quinn¹,

McGill²,

Kelley³

et al. 2019

2018 Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings

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While laboratory instruction is a cornerstone of physics education, the impact of student behaviours in labs on retention, persistence in the field, and the formation of students' physics identity remains an open question. In this study, we performed in-lab observations of student actions over two semesters in two pedagogically different sections of the same introductory physics course. We used a cluster analysis to identify different categories of student behaviour and analyzed how they correlate with lab structure and gender. We find that, in lab structures which fostered collaborative group work and promoted decision making, there was a task division along gender lines with respect to laptop and equipment usage (and found no such divide among students in guided verification labs).

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Who does what now? How physics lab instruction impacts student behaviors

Quinn¹,

McGill²,

Kelley³

et al. 2019

2018 Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings

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show abstract

“…The demographic composition of physicists is not representative of the general population, with men overrepresented not only in number but also in high-ranking positions within the physics community [1]. In exploring the underlying mechanisms for this, there has been a large focus in education research on gaps in performance between men and women on concept inventories and course grades [2,3].…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Group roles in unstructured labs show inequitable gender divide

Quinn¹,

Kelley²,

McGill³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Instructional labs are being transformed to better reflect authentic scientific practice, often by removing aspects of pedagogical structure to support student agency and decision-making. We explored how these changes impact men's and women's participation in group work associated with labs through clustering methods on the quantified behavior of students. We compared the group roles students take on in two different types of instructional settings; (1) highly structured traditional labs, and (2) less structured inquiry-based labs. Students working in groups in the inquiry-based (less structured) labs assumed different roles within their groups, however men and women systematically took on different roles and men behaved differently when in single-versus mixed-gender groups. We found no such systematic differences in role division among male and female students in the traditional (highly-structured) labs. Students in the inquiry-based labs were not overtly assigned these roles, indicating that the inequitable division of roles was not a result of explicit assignment. Our results highlight the importance of structuring equitable group dynamics in educational settings, as a gendered division of roles can emerge without active intervention. As the culture in physics evolves to remove systematic gender biases in the field, instructors in educational settings must not only remove explicitly biased aspects of curricula but also take active steps to ensure that potentially discriminatory aspects are not inadvertently reinforced.

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“…Undersökningen knyter an till tidigare etnologisk forskning om akademiker och hur de förhåller sig till dagens arbetsliv (jfr Öhlander et al 2016) samt dessa högutbildades villkor i en doktorandutbildning (jfr Gerholm & Gerholm 1992, Schough 2004. Etnologisk forskning om arbetsliv låter sig med fördel förenas med studier gjorda i de vetenskapliga laboratorierna (Latour & Woolgar 1979, Pettersson 2011, Wiszmeg 2016. I denna miljö skapas, precis som i andra arbetsliv, både en formell och en informell kunskap om hur man ska förhålla sig till allt från yrkesskicklighet, karriärer, identitet och så vidare.…”

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Det mätbara arbetslivet i laboratoriet

Hansson

2017

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Today’s publishing system with H-index and Impact Factors has made it easier to measure research productivity and working life in academia. This article investigates the consequences of this measurability and competition for PhD-students that work in a biomedical research group. The ethnographic material is interviews with seven Swedish PhD-students that were employed in various research groups at the same university. They were all women between 25 to 30 years old. The central questions for the article are how do the PhD-students relate to measurability and competition in working life? But the article also discusses what the PhD-students experiences can say about the measurable working life more generally? Those PhD-students that criticizes the measurability of the publishing system, also seems to create other experiences of the working life than those PhDstudents that accept the competition. For the latter group, the “entrepreneurial self ” can be used as a summary term describing the specific experiences developed within the scientific laboratory. The “entrepreneurial self ” is an individual that is future-oriented and constantly strives to do more to claim his or her position within the academia. Today’s publishing system risks preclude those individuals that are driven by other goals and visions.

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Making Masculinity in Plasma Physics

Cited by 10 publications

References 43 publications

Who does what now? How physics lab instruction impacts student behaviors

Who does what now? How physics lab instruction impacts student behaviors

Group roles in unstructured labs show inequitable gender divide

Det mätbara arbetslivet i laboratoriet

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