This study investigates how undergraduate physics majors develop an interest in specific subfields. We examine interest formation through the lens of social cognitive career theory (SCCT) using four SCCT constructs: learning experiences, self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and proximal environmental influences. We conducted 27 interviews with physics majors across multiple years of study between 2020 and 2022. Our first research question used SCCT constructs to provide detailed insights into factors affecting interest formation in various subfields of physics. We identified many factors that positively impacted students' interests, such as positive learning experiences (e.g., coursework, experimental projects, extracurricular clubs, and self-directed learning), high self-efficacy (e.g., encourages seeking new opportunities and developing positive outlooks on future careers), outcome expectations (e.g., wanting a stable job and work-life balance), and proximal environmental factors (e.g., influences from the COVID-19 pandemic and institutional factors). Our second research question involves a comparison between the two subfields that had the largest number of students expressing interest, which were astronomy and astrophysics and biomedical physics. Exposure to astronomy occurred prior to college, while biomedical physics was usually encountered during college. Additionally, outcome expectations related to biomedical physics revolved around practical or clinical applications that helped people, while astronomy was linked to fundamental, curiosity-driven research. By understanding these factors that affect how students develop their interests, we hope to provide valuable insights to physics departments and career guidance professionals who want to better support physics majors' transitions beyond the bachelor's degree.

In the summer of 2020, as COVID-19 limited in-person research opportunities and created additional barriers for many students, institutions either canceled or remotely hosted their research experience for undergraduates (REU) programs. The present qualitative phenomenographic study was designed to explore some of the possible limitations, challenges, and outcomes of this remote experience. Overall, 94 interviews were conducted with paired participants; mentees (N = 10) and mentors (N = 8) from six different REU programs. By drawing on cultural-historical activity theory as a framework, our study uncovers some of the challenges mentees faced while pursuing their research objectives and academic goals. These challenges included motivation, limited access to technology at home, limited communication among REU students, barriers in mentor-mentee relationships, and differing expectations about doing research. Despite the challenges, all mentees reported that this experience was highly beneficial. Comparisons between the outcomes of these remote REUs and published outcomes of in-person undergraduate research programs reveal many similar benefits, including student integration into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics culture. Our study suggests that remote research programs could be considered a means to expand access to undergraduate research experiences even after COVID-19 restrictions have been lifted.

As students pursue a bachelor's degree in physics, they may ponder over which area to specialize in, such as theory, computation, or experiment. Often students develop preferences and dislikes, but it's unclear when this preference solidifies during their undergraduate experiences. To better understand, we interviewed eighteen physics majors at different stages of their degrees regarding their interest in theory, computation, and experimental methods. Out of the eighteen students, we analyzed only nine students who rated computation and theory the lowest. Our analysis did not include interest in the experiment because the ratings were less negative. We used Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) and Lucidchart to analyze students' responses and create individual graphical representations of the influences for each student. Through this, we uncovered how various factors such as learning experiences, self-efficacy, and outcome expectations influenced their low interest in a particular method. We found that lack of knowledge and experience is often the main reason why self-efficacy was lower. Students' lack of interest is also influenced by negative outcome expectations (e.g., math-intensive and a bad work-life balance) more than other SCCT factors. Our findings could help physics departments and educators identify positive and negative factors that could lead to a more motivating and inclusive physics curriculum.

Analogies are known to be powerful tools for making sense of unfamiliar ideas in terms of already understood concepts. Science students regularly encounter unfamiliar ideas, such as microscopic objects that are invisible to our everyday experience and behaviors dictated by quantum mechanics. An understanding of basic concepts of quantum mechanics is useful in many disciplines, especially with the growing field of quantum information sciences and technologies. Physics researchers often use analogies in their own research and science communicators use them to make quantum ideas accessible to K-12 students and across STEM disciplines, but analogy use in upper-division teaching has been less researched. Our research goal is to understand how analogies are used to teach quantum mechanics, and specifically, what prior knowledge is used as a basis for analogies within two widely used quantum mechanics textbooks. This textbook analysis shows the most common bases for analogies include: mathematical structures from linear algebra, which are applied to model quantum systems; everyday life examples, which are used to make quantum systems more familiar and understandable; and macroscopic classical phenomena, which are used to highlight differences between classical and quantum mechanics. We also find authors use different conventions, based on the various cue words that authors use to indicate analogy-based reasoning. In the STEM classroom, this research has implications for enhancing student learning about abstract topics in science.

In the summer of 2020, due to COVID-19, institutions either canceled or remotely hosted their research experience for undergraduates (REU) programs. We carried out a 16-week longitudinal study examining the impact of these fully remote research experiences on mentees' psychosocial gains (e.g., identity). We studied the phenomenon of a remote research experience from the standpoint of the mentees (N = 10) and their mentors (N = 8), who were each interviewed seven and three times, respectively (94 total interviews). All mentees reported that this experience was highly beneficial through different factors such as other recognition and self-recognition, which led to their development of a sense of belonging, self-efficacy, and identity despite working remotely. Then, we synthesize these results with prior literature and develop a framework showing how different experiences and constructs affect the physics and researcher identity development. Gaining a greater understanding regarding factors leading to the growth of psychosocial gains may help REU coordinators and REU mentors to redesign their undergraduate research program and provide the support that their mentees' need to have a positive undergraduate research experience.

Understanding how physicists solve problems can guide the development of methods that help students learn and improve at solving complex problems. Leveraging the framework of cognitive task analysis, we conducted semistructured interviews with theoretical physicists (N 1/4 11) to gain insight into the cognitive processes and skills that they use in their professional research. Among numerous activities that theorists described, here we elucidate two activities that theorists commonly characterized as being integral to their work: making assumptions and using analogies. Theorists described making assumptions throughout their research process, especially while setting their project's direction and goals, establishing their model's interaction with mathematics, and revising their model while troubleshooting. They described how assumptions about their model informed their mathematical decision making, as well as instances where mathematical steps fed back into their model's applicability. We found that theorists used analogies to generate new project ideas as well as overcome conceptual challenges. Theorists deliberately sought out or constructed analogies, indicating this is a skill students can practice. When mapping knowledge from one system to another, theorists used systems that shared a high degree of mathematical similarity; however, these systems did not always share similar surface features. We conclude by discussing connections between the ways theorists use assumption and analogy and offering potential new avenues of research regarding applications to instruction.

Due to the growing concerns surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, colleges and universities either canceled or remotely hosted their 2020 National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) programs. This analysis is part of a larger study examining the impact of these fully remote experiences on professional and psychosocial factors such as mentees' sense of belonging, identity, and self-efficacy and their retention in STEM degree programs. We present a single-student case study and describe the dramaturgical analysis which centers on identifying five fundamental constructs within the data: objectives, conflicts, tactics, attitudes, and emotions. These items investigate what the participant in the remote REU program experienced and how this experience changed the ways in which he thinks about his future career decision making. Our analysis explored four different sub-narratives: lack of community in virtual REU, mentor support, perception of the real nature of the experience in a virtual format, and future career decision-making. The mentee reported that this experience was highly beneficial and that he developed a sense of belonging and identity, despite working remotely - often from his own bedroom.

The ways in which physics majors make career decisions is a critical, yet understudied, aspect of the undergraduate experience. Such decisions are important to students, physics departments, and administrators. In this project, we specifically examine how students develop interests and intent to pursue specific subfields of physics by interviewing 13 physics majors from all years of study. The interviews examined factors that led students to choose their most preferred and least preferred subfields. Interviews leveraged the framework of Social Cognitive Career Theory, a model that describes how several constructs such as self-efficacy, learning experiences, and outcome expectations relate to decision-making Findings highlight the differences in decision-making between upper-division students and beginning students. For instance, we see how popular culture and popular science provide an initial learning experience about certain subfields, such as astronomy and astrophysics, which strongly affect beginning students' perceptions of that subfield. Initial exposure to biology and chemistry in high school or early undergraduate classes often negatively affected students' interests in fields like biophysics or chemical physics. Data also suggests a splitting between students with respect to their outcome expectations of a desirable career in science. While some students prioritize using science to help people, others prioritize discovery of new knowledge through science, and some are in between. Students in both groups form perceptions about subfields that do not align with their identities and hence make decisions based on these perceptions. For instance, a student who prioritizes helping others through science may be quick to reject astrophysics as a subfield choice as they do not think that astrophysics can help people enough.

Students' use of support from peers and instructors is an important aspect of success in college. This preliminary phenomenographic study examines a variety of help seeking behaviors of undergraduate majors in physics and life sciences and factors that lead to those behaviors. Seven students described their experiences using semistructured interviews during the summer of 2021. The analysis was structured around identifying characteristics of peers and instructors, as well as personal help-seeking attitudes, that either promoted help seeking or help avoidance. Peers were generally the first source of help, and were prioritized based on ability and the closeness of the relationship. Instructors fostered help seeking through availability and a non-judgemental demeanor. A feeling of vulnerability and fear of judgement was cited as the most common reason for avoiding help. The findings provide insights for faculty and departments seeking to encourage student success.

In the Summer of 2020, as COVID-19 limited in-person research opportunities and created additional barriers for many students, institutions either canceled or remotely hosted their Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) programs. The present longitudinal qualitative phenomenographic study was designed to explore some of the tools, communities, norms, and division of labor that make up the remote research program and some of the possible limitations, challenges, and outcomes of this remote experience. Within the context of the undergraduate research program, the paper makes a comparison between outcomes of the remote and in-person research experience. Overall, 94 interviews were conducted with paired participants; mentees (N=10) and mentors (N=8) from six different REU programs. By drawing on Cultural-Historical Activity Theory as a framework, our study has explained the remote format has not opened a gap between mentees' research and academic objectives from the REU program and what they got at the end. All mentees reported that this experience was highly beneficial. Comparisons between the outcomes of the remote REU and the published outcomes of in-person UREs revealed many similar benefits of undergraduate research. Our study suggests that remote research programs could be considered as a means to expand access to research experiences for some students even after COVID-19 restrictions are lifted.