Investigating Structural Messaging in Introductory Physics

Research in psychology and education has highlighted the critical importance of student beliefs related to their personal learning, performance, and fit in undergraduate STEM courses. In this project, we investigate the impact of structural messaging on students' beliefs and their classroom experiences. In contrast to explicit instructor messaging (i.e., what an instructor says or emphasizes), structural messaging includes the implicit ways that elements of course structures (e.g., activities, assessments, course policies, etc.) communicate ideas about how students should engage in course activities and what it means to learn physics. Failure to align the structural and explicit instructor messaging may limit the effectiveness of instructors’ messaging goals. We will provide examples of how structural messaging is an existing latent theme in PER and present initial structural messaging findings from an introductory physics course re-designed to support students’ growth mindset and sense of belonging. We present findings from interviews where students discuss structural elements of this physics course and those in other courses, comparing how those elements impacted their beliefs and experiences differently.