Abstract
Undergraduate physics students who facilitated informal physics programs positively developed their physics identity, experienced an increased sense of belonging to the physics community, and improved their communication and teamwork skills.
Highlights
Many physics departments and national labs in the United States run informal programs
We present the findings from a mixed methods study on the impact of different kinds of informal physics programs on a large number of undergraduate and graduate students facilitating these programs at Texas A&M University
Because our goal is to identify the effects of facilitating informal physics programs on the development of university students, we needed three theoretical frameworks: one to define learning, one to define identity, and one to explain how powerful learning happens
Summary
Many physics departments and national labs in the United States run informal programs. These programs are often called “public outreach” [1], reflecting a historical understanding of their main purpose: building a bridge between “ivory tower” physicists and the general public, as well as providing unique opportunities for engaging children in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), especially unprivileged children [2,3,4,5,6,7]. There have been calls from prominent scientists to train future generations of scientists to be effective science communicators [2,10] and to recognize public outreach effort as an integral part of scientists’ careers in academia [1,11]
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