Physics education research: A research subfield of physics with gender parity
Barthelemy, R., Dusen, B., & Henderson, C. (2015). Physics education research: A research subfield of physics with gender parity. Physical Review Special Topics: Physics Education Research, 11 (2), 020107. doi:10.1103/PhysRevSTPER.11.020107
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2015Discipline
Matemaattis-luonnontieteelliset aineetCopyright
© Published by the American Physical Society. Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of
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Women currently outnumber men in obtaining undergraduate degrees but are underrepresented within
STEM fields. However, women’s representation varies by STEM field, and even further by STEM subfield.
One field that has held a persistent low representation of women is physics. This paper seeks to uncover the
truth behind an anecdotal claim that the subfield of physics education research (PER) has a higher
representation of women than physics as a whole. Graduate students in PER completed an online survey to
assess their demographics, trajectory in PER, climate experiences, and goals for their research. The
response rate for the survey was 68%, yielding 125 total respondents. This paper will focus on the 91
respondents enrolled in U.S. graduate programs. It was found that women make up 51% of the U.S. PER
graduate students in this sample, as compared to only 19% of physics graduate students overall. Survey
findings also revealed that both women and men in PER graduate programs experience similarly positive
working relationships with faculty and fellow students. Last, both men and women reported building a
stronger scientific workforce and becoming better teachers as goals for their PER research.
...


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Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as © Published by the American Physical Society. Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Further distribution
of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and
the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.