June 19, 2015
Research featured in Physics Today Online column
Physics Today Online featured research by assistant professor of physics Eleanor Sayre and former K-State postdoctoral Paul Irving in the June 12 edition of The Dayside Column.
"Identity statuses in upper-division physics students" — published in Cultural Studies of Science Education — tracks three K-State undergraduate physics students as physicists across the curriculum, focusing on the middle years. The authors use the theories of identity status and communities of practice to describe how the students found their paths through undergraduate physics and developed a physics subject-specific identity. The data comes from interviewing the students and observing their participation in an advanced physics lab course.