Abstract
Participation in a learning assistant program supports both stronger physics student and instructor identity, and reconciles these into a coherent integrated physics identity.
Highlights
In this paper we analyze the experience of undergraduate students in the Physics Learning Assistant (LA) program at Texas State University for evidence of how participation in the LA program has affected elements of LAs’ identity, in what ways and through what program elements
Our driving questions are about students’ experience(s) of participation: What is happening during the LA experience that could lead to the outcomes measured in other studies? How do students describe their experiences in the LA program, and how do they evaluate the meaning and impact of the various elements of their experience? This section describes the data sources and methods of analysis used in order to investigate these questions
While we do not attempt to quantify the prevalence of each theme in this analysis, for every theme described below the data contained more examples than those quoted; while we describe evidence of shifts in a number of aspects of the lived identity of the LAs in this study, not all LAs experienced all of these shifts
Summary
In this paper we analyze the experience of undergraduate students in the Physics Learning Assistant (LA) program at Texas State University for evidence of how participation in the LA program has affected elements of LAs’ identity, in what ways and through what program elements. The LA program at Texas State University is based on the model developed at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU-Boulder) [6] and the successful LA program at Seattle Pacific University [7], and supports course reform in the introductory calculus-based physics sequence. The LA programs at CU-Boulder and Seattle Pacific University have been highly successful at recruiting physics and other science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors into K-12 teaching [6,7]. In courses with LAs, both the LAs and the students enrolled in the course demonstrate increased conceptual
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