Critical look at physics identity: An operationalized framework for examining race and physics identity

Studies on physics identity are appearing more frequently and often responding to increased awareness of the underrepresentation of students of color in physics. In our broader research, we focus our efforts on understanding how racial identity and physics identity are negotiated throughout the experiences of Black physicists. In this paper, we present a Critical Physics Identity framework that can be used to examine racialized physics identity and demonstrate the utility of this framework by analyzing interviews with four physicists. Our framework draws from prior constructs of physics identity and racialized identity and provides operational definitions of six interacting dimensions. In this paper, we present the operationalized constructs, demonstrate how we use these constructs to code narrative data, as well as outline three methods of analysis that may be applied to study systems and structures and their influences on the experiences of Black students.

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Figure 1

The constructs drawn from to develop the Critical Physics Identity framework. The bottom gray row shows constructs drawn from the physics identity framework [3]. The top blue row shows the constructs drawn from the racialized identity resources framework [4].

Figure 2

An excerpt from Cara’s coded interview using the Critical Physics Identity constructs.

Figure 3

An excerpt from Jeff’s coded interview using the Critical Physics Identity constructs.

Figure 4

An excerpt from Owen’s coded interview using the Critical Physics Identity constructs.

Figure 5

An excerpt from Cindy’s coded interview using the Critical Physics Identity constructs.

Figure 6

The code counts for each construct in the Critical Physics Identity framework for each participant.

Figure 7

The percentage of positive, negative, and neither material resource codes per participant. Each percentage is normalized to the total number of material resources that were coded in each participant’s interview.

Figure 8

Preliminary model for the Critical Physics Identity framework connections.