Physics education research’s implicit views of physics faculty

Abstract

Physics education researchers sometimes conduct research on physics faculty change; we also write about faculty when we do research on implementing reforms in physics classrooms, or when we talk about how faculty affect students’ understanding. This study classifies mentions of physics faculty in PERC and PhysRev-PER journals in order to study implicit frameworks used by the PER community when viewing and writing about faculty. Furthermore, mentions are categorized to give a sense of what aspects of instructors are most often commented upon. While no overall tendency towards positive or negative mentions was found, in the category of faculty beliefs, mentions were significantly negative, while in the category of faculty goals, mentions were significantly positive. We report this as a starting point for PER researchers to analyze the way we view and talk about other faculty.