Physics Teachers' Reflections on Their Analysis of Equity Patterns in Group Work

• In Event: Computational Thinking in Elementary and Secondary Classrooms: Models for Teacher Professional Development

Abstract

Objectives
STEM education has value to students and to society (Bybee, 2010), but access to STEM remains limited to people from dominant social marker groups (Peckham et al., 2007). The objective of this work was to investigate how high school physics teachers analyzed equity patterns in the participation of historically marginalized students as they engaged in groupwork to solve computation problems.

Theoretical Framework
We utilized the equity analytics framework (Reinholz & Shah, 2018) to analyze “patterns of equity and inequity in classroom discourse” (p. 141). Equity analytics spotlights two phenomena: social markers (e.g., race, gender, dis/ability) (SMs) and discourse dimensions (DDs). Discourse dimensions are aspects of classroom talk that the teacher wishes to track, such as the length of time a student talks or the substance of that talk. Hence, our research question asks: What affordances and/or constraints do physics teachers perceive in the SMs and DDs they tracked to analyze student groupwork, particularly as it relates to equitable participation?

Methods & Data Sources
We collected classroom observation data of students in groupwork. As a classroom observation tool, EQUIP helps determine which students are able to participate in classroom discourse and thus quantifies equitable student participation. Data presented here were collected from 8 teachers’ EQUIP accounts to aggregate the SMs and DDs being tracked. We followed up with teachers in a focus group setting to discuss how well these markers helped to analyze patterns of equity and inequity. Discussions were recorded and field notes referenced to create a narrative around the utility of the SMs and DDs.

Results
With respect to SMs, all 8 teachers tracked race and gender, yet some SMs were under-utilized by the group because they were not as relevant for a specific locale (e.g., one teacher used religious affiliation because race was mostly homogenous). With respect to the DDs, all but one of the teachers tracked the type of talk that students engaged in and with whom they were speaking (e.g., to the teacher). While these DDs yielded valuable insights into group work, teachers also found certain DDs to be less useful because they were difficult to quantify (e.g., “active” versus “passive” participation). Thus, some DDs—such as interaction type—were better nuanced for illuminating equity patterns. We further explicate these insights in the poster.

Scholarly Significance
The significance of this work is directly tied to how teachers conceptualize equity. We ask: what do teachers believe is within their purview as it relates to equity patterns within student group work? These ways of thinking about equity, through SMs and DDs that are measurable, help to create a more complete discussion related to both the qualitative and quantitative notions of equity.

Authors

• Nickolaus A Ortiz, Michigan State University

• Julie Christensen, Michigan State University

• David Stroupe, Michigan State University

• Sunghwan Byun, North Carolina State University

• Ai-Khanh Nguyen, University of Washington - Seattle

• Niral Shah, University of Washington