Diversity in Physics Education Research: A Decade of Inclusion and Future Challenges

TL;DR

This paper analyzes a decade of physics education research to assess diversity focus, highlighting progress in gender studies and identifying gaps in research on less visible student groups and their interactions with teaching methods.

Contribution

It provides a corpus-based analysis of diversity research in physics education, revealing strengths and areas for future growth in inclusivity and student diversity.

Findings

Extensive research on gender diversity among physics students.

Limited studies on less visible student groups.

Room for growth in exploring interactions between student attributes and teaching methods.

Abstract

Diversity has an important, multifaceted role in the success of education. I have used a corpus analysis of the first ten years of Physical Review Physics Education Research to investigate the diversity, broadly defined, of physics education research. The results show that the physics education research community has extensively investigated the diversity of physics students, especially with respect to gender. However, some less visible but still numerous groups of students are little studied. On the whole, the contents of Physical Review Physics Education Research reveals a robust research community in physics education, but there is room for growth with respect to working with different kinds of students and the interactions between student attributes and teaching methods.