Abstract
Informal learning experiences in physics reinforce stereotypical practices, fail to intersect in positive ways with the biological sciences, and continue to be less accessible to students from historically marginalized groups.
Highlights
It has been a pressing concern in physics and science education that students’ career interests in these fields decline across the K-12 spectrum and that students from vulnerable populations become more marginalized in physics and science during the K-12 time period [1,2,3,4]
This study provides a unique contribution because of the national scope of the data utilized and the ability to reveal systemic trends with respect to how certain K-12 level informal science education (ISE) experiences are related to college students’ physics identity as well as how significant ISE experiences are distributed such that certain groups continue to be marginalized
Drawing on data from a retrospective cohort survey study of college students, we examined the effect of informal science education experiences within two time ranges on students’ physics identity
Summary
It has been a pressing concern in physics and science education that students’ career interests in these fields decline across the K-12 spectrum and that students from vulnerable populations become more marginalized in physics and science during the K-12 time period [1,2,3,4]. The broader education system has often relied on informal science education as a means towards engaging students’ interests and providing less prescriptive activities for the purpose of fostering science agency and identity development [9,10,11]. In physics, it is unclear how effective different informal science education initiatives have been for fostering physics identity. This is important to consider given the promise of informal science education as a bastion for disciplinary identity development as well as the rapid increase of informal science education programming [12,13]
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