Talking about Equity in Physics Classes

Danny Doucette and Johan Tabora

When we were asked last month to write about the Underrepresentation Curriculum for the FEd newsletter, we were honored and excited to share our approach to teaching about systemic racism in physics classes. Since then, the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and others have provoked such a strong and urgent national response that talking about racial justice in physics class has become both inevitable and necessary. Black lives matter. As educators, we strongly decry the endemic systemic racism and white supremacy that have continually oppressed Black lives and commit to uprooting these discriminatory structures through our teaching.

For teachers who need resources to have conversations about systemic racism and other systemic social injustices in the classroom tomorrow, we have some recommendations.[1] On the other hand, if you are looking to incorporate anti-racist pedagogy into your science curriculum, we offer to you the Underrepresentation Curriculum.

In “A Framework for K-12 Science Education”, the National Research Council calls for concerns about equity to be placed at the forefront of our efforts to develop and deliver science instruction in the 21st century[2]. In past newsletters, articles in the FEd Teacher Preparation Section have addressed how instructors can adopt inclusive teaching practices that address curricular topics, like multiple representations and sense-making, as well as socio-cultural aspects of education like identity, belonging, and affect. This article introduces a complementary approach that seeks to help students understand the nature of essential social issues as they pertain to science by examining the underrepresentation of racial, ethnic, gender, and other social groups in physics. Underrepresentation acts as the starting point for the curriculum, which uses discussions, reflections, and other activities to help students learn about the importance and complicated reality of equity and inclusion in both physics and the modern world, while also helping students better understand themselves and their own various identities.

The Underrepresentation Curriculum builds on more than a decade of development by physics teacher Moses Rifkin and others. A team of volunteer high school and college educators develops and refines curriculum modules, runs workshops, cultivates resources and community, and conducts research on the curriculum. Over time, the curriculum has been adopted and used by middle school, high school, and college teachers around the world.

The curriculum starts by asking students to do a bit of research about the life of a physicist from a traditionally marginalized group. This leads to the question that will guide our discussions, supported by historical data from APS and AIP: “Why are there so few Black (or women, or Latinx, or LGBT, or disabled) physicists?” Students tackle this question using scientific tools and modes of thought: proposing hypotheses and seeking falsifying evidence, obtaining and plotting data, developing explanatory models, and negotiating understandings collaboratively with their peers. Along the way, we ask students to attend to an assumption that lies at the heart of scientific practice: is science objective, subjective, or somewhere in between? They also seek to answer the question posed by Chief Justice Roberts, “What unique perspective does a minority student bring to a physics class?”[3] By studying topics that involve the intersection of social issues and science, students not only realize the utility of the relevant scientific skills they have already developed, but also come to appreciate the interwoven nature of society and science.

After this introduction to key topics, teachers who use the Underrepresentation Curriculum choose from a variety of specific topics to explore next, including stereotype threat, meritocracy, systemic racism/sexism, racial privilege, implicit bias, intersectionality, and the concept of a model minority. For each, the curriculum provides a flexible set of activities and prompts for guided reflection. The curriculum wraps up by calling on students to take action based on what they’ve learned. In the past, students have embraced this opportunity by creating posters, podcasts, videos, reflective texts, poetry, songs, or other forms of expression, and also by going out into their schools and communities to learn more.

The first question we always hear when we explain the curriculum is, “when do you have time for all that?” It’s a fair question. As educators, the editors of the Underrepresentation Curriculum are intimately familiar with the time pressure associated with teaching in a high school or college. We wrote the curriculum to be flexible: a brief implementation can be done in as little as 90 minutes, or a full course of study can productively fill two weeks of classes. Some instructors implement the Underrepresentation Curriculum during the last class before winter break, following AP exams, during the class after a difficult assessment, or dispersed throughout the year. The curriculum is most effective after teachers have had an opportunity to establish norms and develop a community of respect in their classrooms. Being able to have respectful, productive discussions is an essential prerequisite to teaching the Underrepresentation Curriculum since much of the curriculum is built on small and large group discussions around sensitive topics.

Talking with students about race, gender, disability, or other social issues can be intimidating. For that reason, the Underrepresentation Curriculum is flexible enough to be adapted to a variety of different settings and implementations. There is scope for instructors to discuss their own experiences, welcome the voices of outside experts (or experts within the classroom), or simply rely on well-articulated perspectives from readings. In general, teachers who use the Underrepresentation Curriculum tend to acknowledge their own identity and potential biases and then focus on promoting productive and respectful discussions amongst students, acting as a guide rather than an authority. The goal is to help students learn how to frame and talk about these issues in an engaged and productive way, not to advocate for any particular political opinion. Rather than adopt a “both sides” approach, we encourage students to consider as broad a range of perspectives as possible, including those that may be unfamiliar to them.

The response from students has been powerful. They quickly see that “there’s really no class that would be better to talk about [equity],” and that “our race affects almost every aspect of our lives.” Following the curriculum, students are less likely to view science as a strictly objective enterprise, more likely to describe their race as important to their lives, and more likely to believe that equity is important in science.

If you work with future physics teachers, or if you are a physics instructor yourself, and would like to take a look at the Underrepresentation Curriculum, visit our website at underrep.com. We are currently asking that new users fill out a short survey before accessing the curriculum materials so we can understand who is using the curriculum, provide support and community, and track our impact. For some background on the curriculum, and discussion of its positive impact on students, papers by Moses Rifkin[4] and Abigail Daane and collaborators[5] explain how the curriculum has been implemented at the high school and college levels. Abigail Daane has also published research on the impact of the curriculum on college learners[6]. We welcome correspondence at underrepstem@gmail.com, and look forward to hearing from you!

Danny Doucette is a PhD student in Physics Education Research at the University of Pittsburgh and a former high school teacher. Johan Tabora is a PhD student in Science Education at the University of Illinois-Chicago and a high school physics teacher with the Chicago Public Schools.

[1] https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/fall-2016/dont-say-nothing

https://www.npr.org/2020/06/04/868600478/q-a-how-to-talk-to-kids-about-george-floyd

[2] https://www.nap.edu/read/13165/chapter/16

[3] https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201602/supreme.cfm

[4] https://aapt.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1119/1.4940167

[5] https://aapt.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1119/1.4999724

[6] https://www.compadre.org/per/items/detail.cfm?ID=14200, https://www.compadre.org/per/items/detail.cfm?ID=14580, https://www.compadre.org/per/items/detail.cfm?ID=15247

Disclaimer – The articles and opinion pieces found in this issue of the APS Forum on Education Newsletter are not peer refereed and represent solely the views of the authors and not necessarily the views of the APS.