An equity investigation of attitudinal shifts in introductory physics

TL;DR

This study analyzes seven years of attitudinal data from introductory physics courses to examine equity in attitude shifts across gender and ethnicity, finding no disparities and supporting attitudinal equity.

Contribution

It provides a detailed disaggregation of attitudinal data by gender and ethnicity, demonstrating equitable attitudinal shifts in UMI courses over seven years.

Findings

Women and underrepresented ethnic groups show similar positive attitude shifts.

Attitudinal support is consistent across gender and ethnicity.

Results hold even when considering interaction effects.

Abstract

We report on seven years of attitudinal data using the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey from University Modeling Instruction (UMI) sections of introductory physics at Florida International University. This work expands upon previous studies that reported consistently positive attitude shifts in UMI courses; here, we disaggregate the data by gender and ethnicity to look for any disparities in the pattern of favorable shifts. We find that women and students from statistically underrepresented ethnic groups are equally supported on this attitudinal measure, and that this result holds even when interaction effects of gender and ethnicity are included. We conclude with suggestions for future work in UMI courses and for attitudinal equity investigations generally.