Describing and Mapping the Interactions Between Student
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Florida International University FIU Digital Commons FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations University Graduate School 6-30-2017 Describing and Mapping the Interactions between Student Affective Factors Related to Persistence in Science, Physics, and Engineering Jacqueline Doyle Florida International University, [email protected] DOI: 10.25148/etd.FIDC001978 Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd Part of the Engineering Education Commons, and the Other Physics Commons Recommended Citation Doyle, Jacqueline, "Describing and Mapping the Interactions between Student Affective Factors Related to Persistence in Science, Physics, and Engineering" (2017). FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 3353. https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/3353 This work is brought to you for free and open access by the University Graduate School at FIU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of FIU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY Miami, Florida DESCRIBING AND MAPPING THE INTERACTIONS BETWEEN STUDENT AFFECTIVE FACTORS RELATED TO PERSISTENCE IN SCIENCE, PHYSICS, AND ENGINEERING A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in PHYSICS by Jacqueline Doyle 2017 To: Dean Michael R. Heithaus College of Arts, Sciences and Education This dissertation, written by Jacqueline Doyle, and entitled Describing and Mapping the Interactions Between Student Affective Factors Related to Persistence in Science, Physics, and Engineering, having been approved in respect to style and intellectual content, is referred to you for judgment. We have read this dissertation and recommend that it be approved. _____________________________________ Zahra Hazari _____________________________________ Joerg Reinhold _____________________________________ Laird Kramer _____________________________________ Geoff Potvin, Major Professor Date of Defense: June 30, 2017 The dissertation of Jacqueline Doyle is approved. _____________________________________ Dean Michael R. Heithaus College of Arts, Sciences and Education _____________________________________ Andrés G. Gil Vice President for Research and Economic Development and Dean of the University Graduate School Florida International University, 2017 ii © Copyright 2017 by Jacqueline Doyle All rights reserved. iii ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION DESCRIBING AND MAPPING THE INTERACTIONS BETWEEN STUDENT AFFECTIVE FACTORS RELATED TO PERSISTENCE IN SCIENCE, PHYSICS, AND ENGINEERING by Jacqueline Doyle Florida International University, 2017 Miami, Florida Professor Geoff Potvin, Major Professor This dissertation explores how students’ beliefs and attitudes interact with their identities as physics people, motivated by calls to increase participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers. This work combines several theoretical frameworks, including Identity theory, Future Time Perspective theory, and other personality traits to investigate associations between these factors. An enriched understanding of how these attitudinal factors are associated with each other extends prior models of identity and link theoretical frameworks used in psychological and educational research. The research uses a series of quantitative and qualitative methodologies, including linear and logistic regression analysis, thematic interview analysis, and an innovative analytic technique adapted for use with student educational data for the first time: topological data analysis via the Mapper algorithm. Engineering students were surveyed in their introductory engineering courses. Several factors are found to be associated with physics identity, including student interest iv in particular engineering majors. The distributions of student scores on these affective constructs are simultaneously represented in a map of beliefs, from which the existence of a large “normative group” of students (according to their beliefs) is identified, defined by the data as a large concentration of similarly minded students. Significant differences exist in the demographic representation of this normative group compared to other students, which has implications for recruitment efforts that seek to increase diversity in STEM fields. Select students from both the normative group and outside the normative group were selected for subsequent interviews investigating their associations between physics and engineering, and how their physics identities evolve during their engineering careers. Further analyses suggest a more complex model of physics and engineering identity which is not necessarily uniform for all engineering students, including discipline-specific differences that should be further investigated. Further, the use of physics identity as a model to describe engineering student choices may be limited in applicability to early college. Interview analysis shows that physics recognition beliefs become contextualized in engineering as students begin to view physics as an increasingly distinct domain from engineering. v TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE Chapter I: Introduction ........................................................................................................ 1 Research Questions ........................................................................................................ 5 Background and Literature Review ................................................................................ 5 Intersectionality.......................................................................................................... 7 Identity framework..................................................................................................... 9 A note about social cognitive career theory ............................................................. 10 Other salient theoretical constructs .......................................................................... 11 Relationship Between Theoretical Frameworks ........................................................... 18 Chapter II: Survey Development and Deployment ........................................................... 20 Survey Development .................................................................................................... 20 Survey Deployment ...................................................................................................... 24 Chapter III: Attitudes associated with Physics Identity .................................................... 26 Introduction .................................................................................................................. 26 Motivating the search for discipline-specific effects ............................................... 26 Research Questions .................................................................................................. 27 Methodology ................................................................................................................ 27 Results of the Primary Model ....................................................................................... 31 Discussion and Interpretation of the Primary Model ................................................... 40 Results and Discussion of the Secondary Models ........................................................ 47 Differences with the Primary Model........................................................................ 49 Implications and Directions for Future Work .............................................................. 50 Limitations of this Study .............................................................................................. 52 Chapter IV: Topological Mapping of Student Affective Factors ..................................... 54 Introduction .................................................................................................................. 54 Background .................................................................................................................. 55 vi Challenges of Intersectionality in Quantitative Research ........................................ 55 Another Approach to Understanding Student Diversity: Cluster Analysis ............. 56 Topological Data Analysis as a Means of Clustering .............................................. 57 Topological Data Analysis in InIce ......................................................................... 57 Methodology ................................................................................................................ 58 Description of InIce Survey ..................................................................................... 58 Attitudinal Factors ................................................................................................... 59 Survey Demographics and Self-Identification ......................................................... 64 Requirements to perform TDA using Mapper ......................................................... 65 The Mapper Clustering Algorithm........................................................................... 69 Chosen Filter Function for InIce Data ..................................................................... 71 Advantages of TDA over other Cluster Analyses.................................................... 72 Challenges of using TDA and Mapper with Quantitative Student Data .................. 77 Results .........................................................................................................................