Professional contexts of physics instructional labs: More than technical support

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Instructional labs: Improving traditions and new directions.] Most, if not all, physics undergraduate degree programs include instructional lab experiences. Physics lab instructors, both faculty and staff, are instrumental to student learning in instructional physics labs. However, the faculty-staff dichotomy belies the complex, varied, and multifaceted landscape of positions that lab instructors hold in the fabrics of physics departments. Here we present the results of a mixed-methods study of the people who teach instructional labs and their professional contexts. Recruiting physics lab instructors across the United States, we collected 84 survey responses and conducted 12 in-depth interviews about their job characteristics, professional identities, resources, and experiences. Our investigation reveals that lab instructors vary in terms of their official titles, job descriptions, formal duties, personal agency, and access to resources. We also identified common themes around the value of instructional labs, mismatched job descriptions, and a broad set of necessary skills and expertise. Our results suggest that instructors often occupy overlapping roles that fall in between more canonical jobs in physics departments. By understanding the professional contexts of physics lab instructors, the rest of the physics community can better promote and engage with their critical work, improving laboratory learning both for students and for the lab instructors who teach and support them.

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Figure 1

Percentage of institution types with access to the following equipment types “off-the-shelf mechanics experiments,” “off-the-shelf E&M experiments,” “off-the-shelf advanced lab experiments,” “standard electronics,” “radioactive materials,” “lasers and standard optics,” “particle detection,” “telescopes,” “cryogens,” “microscopes,” and “research grade equipment.” The institution types are labeled R1 (blue), R2 & D/PU (green), master’s only (orange), bachelor’s only (pink), and all (yellow). Note: Institutional classifications from Ref. [35]. R1 and R2 refer to doctoral universities with “very high” or “high” research activity, respectively. D/PU refers to “Doctoral/Professional Universities.”

Figure 2

Percent of faculty or staff respondents who selected each responsibility along the horizontal axis.

Figure 3

Equivalent agreement statement based on the average score on the value scale from Table 4.

Figure 4

Individual distributions on select items from the value scale from Table 4. Across each row the vertical axis has the same scale for direct comparison [panels (a) and (b) have a max of 50, panels (c) and (d) have a max of 25]. (a) “Instructional labs are valued,” (b) “I wish I could do more in the instructional labs,” (c) “I can hire adequate staff to run the instructional labs,” and (d) “Instructional lab staff are adequately compensated.” The horizontal axis for each panel is a standard five-point Likert scale from “Strongly Agree” at the far left to “Strongly Disagree” at the far right.