Infusing equity, diversity, and inclusion throughout our physics curriculum: (Re)defining what it means to be a physicist

TL;DR

This paper discusses integrating equity, diversity, and inclusion into physics curricula to create more inclusive classrooms, highlighting models and positive impacts on students' identities and perceptions of physicists.

Contribution

It introduces two approaches for broadening physics education to reflect diverse professional identities and provides evidence of their positive effects.

Findings

Enhanced students' sense of identity as physicists.

Improved perceptions of what it means to be a physicist.

Models successfully implemented at different institutions.

Abstract

Increasingly, the physics community is attending to issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion, both in language and action. We are more publicly recognizing our individual responsibilities as physicists to address social injustice and systemic oppression. To this end, our physics classrooms are key levers for action. While we have made great strides in teaching traditional content and habits of mind useful in physics, if we expand our educational practices to more completely reflect the full range of what it means to be a physicist, we can make our classrooms more inclusive and equitable and support the needed diversification of our field. Ultimately, how, and by whom, physics is enacted are part of the discipline itself and ought to be included in our teaching about the professional practices of physicists. We present two complementary approaches for broadening the focus of our classes, share models for enacting these in middle-division physics courses at two distinct institutional types, and provide evidence of positive impacts on students' sense of identity and notions of what it means to be a physicist.