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As students pursue a bachelor's degree in physics, they may ponder over which area to specialize in, such as theory, computation, or experiment. Often students develop preferences and dislikes, but it's unclear when this preference solidifies during their undergraduate experiences. To get a better understanding, we interviewed eighteen physics majors who were at different stages of their degree regarding their interest in theory, computation, and experimental methods. Out of the eighteen students, we chose to analyze only nine students who rated computation and theory the lowest. Our analysis did not include interest in experiment because the ratings were less negative. We used Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) and Lucidchart to analyze students' responses and create individual graphical representations of the influences for each student. Through this, we uncovered how various factors such as learning experiences, self-efficacy, and outcome expectations influenced their low interest in a particular method. We found that lack of knowledge and experience is often the main reason why self-efficacy was lower. Students' lack of interest is also influenced by negative outcome expectations (e.g, math-intensive and a bad work-life balance) more than other SCCT factors. Our findings could help physics departments and educators identify positive and negative factors that could lead to a more motivating and inclusive physics curriculum.
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Access to opportunities affects physics majors' interest and choice of methods specialization
Physics is a degree that supports many career paths, and students often develop preferences for particular methods, such as theoretical, computational or experimental. However, it is not well understood how those preferences develop and affect students' later career decisions. We used Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) as the basis for interpreting students' decision-making processes. SCCT provides a framework for connecting learning experiences, self-efficacy, and outcome expectations with students' interests, goals, and decisions. Semi-structured interviews with 8 physics students were conducted. This analysis focuses primarily on a single student to provide space to explore all three method specializations (theory, computation, and experiment) in more depth. We find that the availability of resources and learning opportunities had a significant impact on students' career choices. Theoretical and computational experiences were readily available through classwork, undergraduate research, and could be worked on at home and in peer study groups. Students lacked the ability to work on experimental physics outside of infrequent classroom opportunities and could not build peer networks that supported their experimental skill growth, which was linked to lower interest and self-efficacy in regards to experimental physics.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1846321
- PAR ID:
- 10323334
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Physics Education Research Conference 2021
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1119/perc.2021.pr.Cardona
