0000000000869292
AUTHOR
Charles Henderson
Is Education Getting Lost in University Mergers?
Mergers are common phenomena in higher education institutions. Improving educational quality is typically one of the stated goals of university mergers. Yet, little information exists about how merging institutions approach this goal. This paper presents results from a study of planning documents created prior to four mergers in the Finnish higher education system. These documents show that there was little concrete attention given to the educational issues related to the mergers. Most attention was placed on administrative issues and issues related to research. When educational issues were mentioned, it was almost always in the form of vague goals with few details provided about how the go…
Physics education research: A research subfield of physics with gender parity
Women currently outnumber men in obtaining undergraduate degrees but are underrepresented within STEM fields. However, women’s representation varies by STEM field, and even further by STEM subfield. One field that has held a persistent low representation of women is physics. This paper seeks to uncover the truth behind an anecdotal claim that the subfield of physics education research (PER) has a higher representation of women than physics as a whole. Graduate students in PER completed an online survey to assess their demographics, trajectory in PER, climate experiences, and goals for their research. The response rate for the survey was 68%, yielding 125 total respondents. This paper will f…
Gender discrimination in physics and astronomy: Graduate student experiences of sexism and gender microaggressions
[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Gender in Physics.] Sexism occurs when men are believed to be superior to women, and is thought to be one of the reasons for women’s underrepresentation in physics and astronomy. The issue of sexism in physics and astronomy has not been thoroughly explored in the physics education literature and there is currently no clear language for discussing sexism in the field. This article seeks to begin a conversation on sexism in physics and astronomy and offer a starting point for language to discuss sexism in research groups and departments. Interviews with 21 women in graduate physics and astronomy programs are analyzed for their individual experi…