Archive: Fall 2014
Fall 2014 Awards
Strand: Scholar-in-residence
Physics Identity Research Collaboration
Eleanor Close
This project supports the development of a collaborative research agenda around issues of physics identity development and its relationship to students' major and career choices. Physics identity and its development through participation in communities of practice is a relatively new area in PER, and has implications for teacher preparation, for the design and implementation of physics programs, and for recruiting students into STEM majors, particularly students from under-represented groups. PERTG funds will support travel to visit the Physics Education Research Group at Florida International University. FIU and Texas State University are both Hispanic-Serving Institutions with significant teacher preparation programs and large Physics Learning Assistant programs, and are therefore good sites for the study of physics identity and physics teacher identity development in diverse student populations. I plan to visit FIU's reformed (Modeling/ISLE) introductory courses, observe elements of the FIU LA program, and explore possibilities for joint research projects.Strand: Organizer
Disseminating gender research in physics education to physicists at the APS March Meeting
Zahra Hazari
The goal of this grant was to bring a new perspective on gender issues in physics education to an invited session of the APS March Meeting 2015. Additionally, the grant enabled a new interaction between a few gender researchers focusing on physics education. In particular, Allison Gonsalves was invited and supported by this grant to travel to the conference and present her work in a 3-hour invited session together with Vashti Sawtelle, Geoff Potvin, and Zahra Hazari. The session was sponsored by APS's Committee for the Status of Women in Physics (CSWP) and entitled "Supporting the Recruitment and Retention of Women in Physics". The talks and panel discussion had a significant impact on a large audience of physicists who were actively contributing questions and comments. The presenting researchers also initiated discussions of collaborative work while at the conference.Strand: Innovation and community resources
Developing Transdown (transdown.org): A lightweight syntax for researchers who transcribe data.
Brian Danielak
The goals of Transdown are: to provide a human-readable way for researchers to include rich media in their transcripts, such as images or audio; to enable a software ecosystem that makes it easier than ever to share beautifully formatted transcript; to define a future-resistant format for archiving transcripts that can be ported to different kinds of transcription software. To find out more and try it out yourself, visit Transdown.A Podcast Exploring Research Group Norms: Spotlight on Alan Schoenfeld's Research Group
Angie Little
In this podcast I explore research group norms. What makes group meetings feel more productive? What makes group meetings a comfortable place to share work-in-progress? What might lead graduate students to feel more or less comfortable speaking up or presenting in a group meeting? Many different kinds of people go into academia, each with their own personal preferences and norms of interaction. In addition, there is not always a lot of training in academia in group facilitation skills. In this podcast, my goal is to create a tool to support research groups in talking about how to make their spaces better according to their goals. Visit the Piecing Together Podcast.
