Title: Misery Creates Company: Female Student-Developed Support Systems in Physics Classes
Students’ difficulty in understanding scientific concepts has been extensively reported in the body of literature. Within this area, learning science is often viewed as a cognitive process while emotions are temporal reactions to events as byproducts. Further, students’ negative emotions are usually considered an impediment to learning and rational thinking. In this talk, I will discuss how female students’ emotions affect their learning and doing of science and their feelings of belonging in an inquiry-based physics class. I will also discuss how teachers can help students engage in their activities and feel safe talking in physics class.
About Mihwa
Mihwa Park is an Assistant Professor of STEM education at Texas Tech University (TTU). She earned her Ph.D. in Science Education from the University at Buffalo. Before joining TTU, she was a post-doctoral research associate at Michigan State University and then transitioned to a faculty position at the University at Buffalo, where she worked for three years. Her research interests involve 1) science and STEM teacher education with a focus on teachers’ emotions about teaching, formative assessment practices, and reflective thinking, 2) students’ conceptual understanding of science concepts and their academic emotions in learning and doing science, and 3) formative assessments integrated into science learning activities.
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