# More than technical support: the professional contexts of physics
instructional labs

LM Dana1<EMAIL_ADDRESS>she/her Benjamin Pollard1<EMAIL_ADDRESS>he/him
Sara Mueller2<EMAIL_ADDRESS>she/they 1Worcester Polytechnic
Institute, Worcester, MA 01609, USA  2Brown University, Providence, RI 02912,
USA

###### Abstract

Most, if not all, physics undergraduate degree programs include instructional
lab experiences. Physics lab instructors, both faculty and staff, are
instrumental to student learning in instructional physics labs. However, the
faculty-staff dichotomy belies the complex, varied, and multifaceted landscape
of positions that lab instructors hold in the fabrics of physics departments.
Here we present the results of a mixed methods study of the people who teach
instructional labs and their professional contexts. Recruiting physics lab
instructors across the US, we collected 84 survey responses and conducted 12
in-depth interviews about their job characteristics, professional identities,
resources, and experiences. Our investigation reveals that lab instructors
vary in terms of their official titles, job descriptions, formal duties,
personal agency, and access to resources. We also identified common themes
around the value of instructional labs, mismatched job descriptions, and a
broad set of necessary skills and expertise. Our results suggest that
instructors often occupy overlapping roles that fall in between more canonical
jobs in physics departments. By understanding the professional contexts of
physics lab instructors, the rest of the physics community can better promote
and engage with their critical work, improving laboratory learning both for
students and for the lab instructors who teach and support them.

##  I Introduction

Instructional labs are an essential part of formal physics instruction. They
offer opportunities for learning distinct from theory courses [1], and support
such learning when they are structured around lab-specific learning goals [2,
3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]. In parallel to such research on particular instructional
lab structures and pedagogies, work has been done to investigate more fine-
graned or elemental aspects of learning in physics labs. For example,
researchers have studied processes and experiences specific to learning
experimental physics [9, 10, 11, 12] and social dynamics and equity in lab
group work [13, 14]. However, when it comes to the people who teach and
support instructional physics labs, relatively little has been studied.
Research involving lab instructors has focused on documenting their
perspectives on particular learning outcomes such as modeling [15] or
measurement uncertainty [16].

It is important to understand the people who teach, support, and run physics
teaching labs and the resources available to them. One reason for this
importance is that the administration of lab courses tends to require greater
infrastructure needs than theory-based courses [17]. At the introductory
level, the labs may be coordinated with a theory lecture, fully integrated
with theory components, or stand alone as their own course. In any case, intro
labs are typically necessary to satisfy accreditation purposes. In labs beyond
the first year (BFY), while such courses are typically stand-alone, the
activities might be project-based, group-oriented, and/or writing focused. In
each of these cases, the needs for those courses are often provided not just
by the instructor of record, but also by additional staff or faculty
supporters. This wide variation in course structures, roles, and titles
creates a complex and varied landscape for physics instructional lab
professionals.

To the best of our knowledge, there is no previous work investigating physics
lab instructors and support staff as a social or professional group. Here, we
seek to understand and document the structure, environment, and capabilities
of the instructional support staff 111We use the word “staff” to refer not
just to people whose jobs are not considered faculty, but more generally to
refer to anyone working to teach or support instructional labs. that run
instructional physics labs across North America. People in these positions
often fall outside traditional academic roles in their university. They can be
at very different places in their careers, and their positions can afford
varying levels of access to resources and institutional power. This study of
instructional lab personnel illuminates both issues and triumphs surrounding
access to concrete resources (like equipment, space, and funding) as well as
to human resources (such as personnel, student employees, and departmental
support). We aim to answer the following research questions:

  1. 1.

In terms of job title, experience, and social identity, who are the people
engaged in supporting and teaching instructional physics labs?

  2. 2.

How do they describe their roles, particularly with respect to their duties
and agency?

  3. 3.

How do they perceive the value of instructional labs, both in their local
context and more broadly by the physics community?

Additionally, to add necessary context to the answers to these questions, we
explore the following:

  1. 1.

What resources both in equipment and personnel are available to these folks?

  2. 2.

How does the availability of resources vary by institutional context?

Through answering these research questions, we aim to elevate, acknowledge,
and support the people who work in physics instructional labs. Understanding
the professional context of such physicists is relevant to any lab
transformation project, no matter its particular pedagogy or learning
objectives. Thus, beyond documenting for the sake of research, we hope this
work will also be used to inform and improve future pedagogical reforms of
physics lab courses.

##  II Background

There has been much scholarship concerning the culture of physics overall and
on sub-disciplines and sub-cultures within physics. Researchers have also
studied the experiences of physicists and physics learners with particular
social identities, especially those subject to marginalization and oppression.
We begin by briefly outlining that previous work in Sec. II.1. Then in Sec.
II.2, we provide a brief overview of more general research that studies the
structures and institutions of higher education in the US, focusing on staff
positions but not specific to physics. We do not claim for these overviews to
be comprehensive; we intend only to point to the broader context in which our
study is situated, highlighting the aspects that connect to the results of our
work. In Sec. II.3 we describe professional societies that connect and serve
physics lab instructors, and then conclude in Sec. II.4 with positionality
statements that situate ourselves in these larger contexts.

###  II.1 Physics culture(s)

Physics as a culture has been studied in a variety of ways, typically focusing
on certain cultures within physics as a discipline. One influential and
established work on physics culture is Beamtimes and Lifetimes by S Traweek
[19]. Traweek’s work focused on the international culture of particle physics
in the 1980s. A notable aspect of physics culture in that work, and one that
underlines much of the study presented here, is “physics as a calling.”
Traweek writes (p. 21), “The senior physicists who manage the lab are said to
have been outraged at the very idea of a union, which suggested that people
could consider their work at the lab as a mere job. The physicists generally
have been committed to being scientist since early adolescence, and their own
training teaches them to consider physics as a calling, not an occupation.”
The dichotomy between physics as a calling and as an occupation is not
specific to the culture of 1980s particle physics. It complicates the idea
that physicists hold jobs purely for materialistic motivations. Instead,
Traweek suggests that working as a physicist is as much an aspect of identity
as it is of income.

A second aspect of physics culture that Traweek identified is that physics is
a “culture of no culture.” This aspect might seem contradictory to a culture
that considers its work a calling rather than employment. However, more recent
work by A. Hodari et al. [20, 21] reconciles this dilemma though the notion of
objectivity. The authors of that paper write about how objectivity is central
to (white) physicists’ conceptions of themselves, and how this pervading
culture of supposed objectivity often conceals underlying lenses and biases
stemming from social, cultural, and institutional systems. They identify the
culture of no culture as a manifestation of “the lie” that, through a “special
form of mental gymnastics,” allows physicists to embody such contradictions.
This phenomenon is especially salient when it comes to forms of identity-based
oppression [20, 21]. Such complexity in physics culture overall is context for
the professional and social identities of physics lab instructors; it is
impossible to tell these stories without this context.

Other recent studies have focused on the crisis of culture in undergraduate
physics departments with respect to the experiences and retention of
undergraduate students. In particular, women, gender minorities, and
underrepresented racial/ethnic minorities in physics are a focus of active
research. For example, the Team-Up report [22], a 2020 American Institute of
Physics report that focused on implementing cultural changes for Black
undergraduate students, presents a detailed description on how to help
students cultivate a “physics identity,” indicating that physics is more than
just a degree to find a job, but that one is entering a prestige community by
becoming a physicist. A related body of scholarship examines the
underrepresentation of women and other gender minorities in physics. For
example, Lewis et al. [23] focuses on women in physics’s sense of belonging,
as a proxy for work that has highlighted that women leave physics because they
did not feel a sense of belonging in the culture of physics [24].

###  II.2 Staff in academia

While we are unaware of previous research on physics laboratory instructors
and support staff, we draw upon a body of scholarship on staff (as distinct
from faculty) in higher ed that is not specific to physics. By the numbers,
staff in academia constitute almost half of all academic positions [25].
Perhaps the most pervasive theme that emerges from this group as a whole is a
picture of overwork, burnout and role ambiguity [26, 27, 28, 25]

In 1998 Lorden reviewed the literature up to that point on attrition in
student affairs offices. At that time attrition rates ranged from 32% in the
first 5 years to 61% within the first 6 years. They identified the reasons for
leaving as limited opportunity for advancement and professional development,
burnout, unclear job expectations, and conflicts between the values that
motivated them to enter the field, the realities of their job, and low pay
[28]. Twenty years later, in 2018, Mullen et al. surveyed 789 student affairs
professionals job stress, burnout, job satisfaction and turnover intention,
before the 2020 pandemic. They found that 21% of the respondents reported
moderate to high symptoms of burnout symptoms, and that burnout was predictive
of respondents intention to leave the field [27].

The nature of staff jobs contributes to these phenomena. In 2016 Wilk compiled
a comprehensive analysis of the work-life balance and expectations for
administrators in academia. In that work they define “administrators” as a
university worker who is salaried, focusing on workers in the student affairs
office and technology group. They found that, ”Although part of the larger
university, each division had its own culture, expectations, and accepted
practices.” [25]. Their work identified a cultural expectation that held
across groups: a pressure to work longer hours than contracted, to the point
that 79% of student affairs workers had difficulty finding a work-life
balance. Wilk pointed to expectations by both supervisors and students, who
expected 24/7 connection. Since 2020, research on academic staff has taken on
even more dire tones, focusing on burnout in all roles. For example, Winfred
and Paris (2022) conducted a study surveying American collegiate registrars
about their experiences and institutional policies (1,080 respondents), and
their research found increased burnout, where the common cause was
unsustainable workloads and an expectation of constant availability [26].

###  II.3 Professional communities of physics lab instructors

There exist several professional organizations that include physics laboratory
instructors, but only one whose mission is explicitly physics lab instruction
focused. The Advanced Laboratory Physics Association’s (ALPhA) mission is to
provide communication and interaction among advanced laboratory physics
instructors worldwide. Since 2007, ALPhA has served a specific subset of the
community of physics lab instructors, namely, laboratory professions focused
on instructional labs beyond the first year of undergraduate education.
According to ALPhA, as of April 2023, they have over 200 members
222https://advlab.org/about. This constitutes a significant part of the
advanced physics lab community: for context, as of 2021 there 754 universities
in the United States that offer physics degrees at all levels, 494 of which
offer Bachelors as their highest physics degree [30]. While multiple
professionals from the same university are often members of ALPhA, it is not
always assured that there is a laboratory specific professor or staff member
at all of these universities. In our view, ALPhA is the most substantially
representative professional organization that is specific to physics lab
instructors and supporters in the US.

In addition to ALPhA, there is an overlapping physics lab community within a
larger professional organization, the American Association of Physics Teachers
(AAPT). AAPT maintains several committees specifically on labs and equipment,
and attracts a wider audience as it includes both the first year and BFY
teaching lab community.

Both AAPT and ALPhA hold summer conferences at regular intervals, offer
workshops for professional development and idea sharing, and maintain email
lists for asynchronous communication. They act not only as supporting
institutions for physics instructional labs, but also as hubs for networking
and community building.

###  II.4 Positionality statements

We, the three authors of this work, wish to acknowledge and make explicit the
positions, stances, and perspectives we bring to this study. We do this as a
best practice in social science research [31, 32] in order to give important
context to our findings. We drew on our positions and lived experiences when
conducting this study, in particular during the initial visioning and planning
phases, creating our interview protocol, and recruiting participants. During
data analysis and interpretation we have worked to preserve and faithfully
represent the perspectives of our interviewees, however, we acknowledge that
in the end our own perspectives are inextricable from the analysis process.

L.D. is the physics laboratory manager at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. She
is both a graduate student working on her PhD, and a staff member who runs the
introductory teaching physics labs at WPI. Her job duties involve writing lab
material, maintaining equipment, managing the graduate and undergraduate
students who teach the laboratories, teaching, and grading. Previously she was
a technical instructor at MIT in the 8.13/8.14 lab course.

B.P. is a junior non-tenure-track teaching faculty member who regularly
teaches the theory parts of large intro physics courses, and also teaches an
upper-division lab course for physics majors. He mentors undergraduate and
graduate students, including L.D., in Physics Education Research (PER) at his
institution. He also works with L.D. in her capacity as the instructional lab
manager for their department. His work in PER has focused almost exclusively
on lab courses; it was through that work that he became familiar with the
physics lab instructor community as a PER postdoc. Previously, he completed
his PhD as an experimentalist in the field of nano-optics. Though he considers
himself a novice physics lab instructor and a “labs person,” he still orients
to the lab instructor community primarily as a researcher and a relative
outsider.

S.M. is a technical instructional labs staff and adjunct faculty member who
supports the beyond first year laboratories, manages the instructional staff,
and teaches the graduate level laboratory course at their institution. They
completed their Ph.D. in experimental condensed matter physics and spent some
of their graduate work using quantitative educational psychology tools like
motivation to study physics education in graduate student populations. They
consider themselves to be a newcomer but insider to the laboratory instruction
community.

While not a primary site of analysis of this work, social identities came up
in our data and are discussed in our analysis below. Moreover, social
identities are relevant in social science research even if they are not
explicitly studied. Therefore we wish to acknowledge for additional context to
our work that all of the authors of this study identify as early-career,
white, and queer, with a range of gender identities, (dis)abilities, and
socio-economic upbringings. We note that our own social identities are
generally well-represented in our study population as shown in Table 1.
However, most of the study participants have been involved in instructional
labs for longer than the authors.

##  III Methods

The mixed-methods approach we used for this study began with a 37 question
survey at the end of which we solicited participation for follow-up
interviews. We used the survey responses to get a broad overview of research
questions (RQs) 1, 3 as well as contextual questions 1 and 2 (see Section I).
Our interviews formed a rich complement to the survey responses, allowing us
to more deeply engage with RQ 2 and contextual question 1 in particular.

###  III.1  Survey Methods

In Spring 2022, the authors created a survey to collect information about the
structure, environment, and capabilities of the instructional support staff
and faculty who run physics laboratories across North America. The survey
contained a mix of free-response, multiple answer, and single answer questions
exploring the respondent’s job title, responsibilities, professional
relationships (both locally and broadly), equipment and resource availability,
perception of value, and demographic information. The survey items are
included as an appendix to this paper. At the end of the survey, respondents
were offered an opportunity to be interviewed for the study. None of the
survey questions were forced-response. While most of the participants answered
each question, it may be the case that the total number of responses to an
individual question is less than the total number of respondents. We initially
solicited survey participation in-person at the AAPT 2022 Summer Meeting and
then later through the ALPhA email list-serv. In the first 45 days of the
survey, 82 initial responses were recorded.

In an effort to engage with institutions that are historically and presently
under-supported and resourced, we developed a database for additional
outreach. Student workers created a spreadsheet from the NASA Minority Serving
Institutions Exchange with the Physics filter and combined that with the
institutions Carnegie designation, Geographic Location, City, State, AIP
Institution Name, Highest Physics Degree offered, Astro Program, 2020-21
First-Term Introductory Physics Course Enrollment. [33, 34, 35] From this
database we created a randomized list of Native American-serving Non-Tribal
Institutions, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Asian American and
Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions, Hispanic-Serving
Institutions. Seeking to have equal proportion of these 5 populations
represented in our list, we identified 40 institutions to reach out to, and
the student workers were able to find the emails and contact information of 31
of them online. We then emailed those 31 universities with a link to our
survey. We received three additional responses to our survey were from these
institutions, and included them in our data set. Information regarding the
institutional characteristics of participants in this study are given in Table
2.

Our survey was built and administered through Qualtrics
333https://www.qualtrics.com/. Likert response questions were analyzed with
SPSS 444https://www.ibm.com/products/spss-statistics and open response
questions were analyzed in MS Excel 555https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/microsoft-365/excel.

###  III.2  Interview Methods

We conducted semi-structured follow-up interviews with survey participants who
opted-in to participating in such an interview. Our interview protocol was
developed from our initial RQs. Each question constituted a separate section,
namely, “Career path and organizational structure,” “Relationships and
identities,” “Resources and agency,” and “Value from institution.” Our
protocol may be found in an appendix to this paper. As the interviews were
semi-structured, follow up questions were utilized as time and interviewee’s
schedule allowed. Where interview subjects were inclined to expand they were
encouraged to do so, with limited direction from the interviewer.

Many survey respondents from our initial round of outreach indicated that they
were interested in doing a follow-up interview with us. L.D. contacted these
respondents via email and conducted the interviews. Surveys were conducted
remotely using video conference software 666https://zoom.us/. They ranged
anywhere from 37 to 96 minutes. There were a total of 12 interviews collected,
occurring between August 5, 2022 and September 9, 2022. Of those 12
interviews, only 11 were analyzed due to extenuating circumstances. Recordings
were automatically transcribed by OtterAI 777https://otter.ai/, and then
initially reviewed by L.D. for correctness.

####  III.2.1 Coding Process

We conducted a qualitative analysis of the interview transcriptions consisting
of two passes through our data set. First, we performed a content analysis via
deductive coding that was based on our research questions and interview
protocol. Second, we identified a subset of that initial content analysis and
performed a thematic analysis via inductive coding to reveal emergent themes.
We used both the NVivo 888https://lumivero.com/products/nvivo/ and Dedoose
999https://www.dedoose.com/ software applications to conduct our analysis.

We started with an a priori set of codes based on our research questions,
which also aligned with the questions in our interview protocol. These codes
were organized under two overall categories, “Job characteristics” of the
interviewee’s position and “Resources” available to the interviewee 101010We
created additional categories and codes, but chose to focus on these two for
this study. Additional analysis of our transcripts will perhaps be a focus of
future work.. After creating this initial codebook, all three authors reviewed
the first 10 or so minutes of one of the interviews synchronously and assigned
codes to excerpts collaboratively. In so doing, we shuffled, refined, and
clarified our code definitions as needed. Then, L.D. coded the remainder of
that interview, applying codes to all excerpts she identified as relevant.
B.P. independently coded the excerpts identified by L.D. without looking at
her coding. These two coding assignments were compared for inter-rater
reliability (IRR). We used Cohen’s Kappa [44] as a measure of IRR, which
yielded a kappa value (averaged across all codes) of 0.41 for “Job
characteristics” and 0.87 for “Resources.” All three researchers met to
discuss and reconcile all the “Job Characteristics” excerpts that L.D. and
B.P. coded differently, further refining our code definitions as needed. With
this refined codebook, S.M. independently coded the entirety of another
interview in our data set, and then B.P. independently assigned codes to the
excerpts they had identified. This second round of IRR yielded kappa values of
0.77 for “Job characteristics” and 0.85 for “Resources,” which we deemed a
sufficient level of agreement to proceed. L.D. and B.P. then coded the
remaining interviews independently.

After this initial content analysis, we selected three of the a priori codes
for further thematic analysis. We selected these codes based on both their
prevalence in the data set and their relevance to our RQs. Each researcher
independently reviewed all of the excerpts labeled by one of these codes and
created an emergent codebook to represent the themes they identified,
assigning each excerpt at least one emergent code. We subsequently met and
collaboratively reviewed each others’ thematic analyses, coming to consensus
on our final emergent code definitions and applications after discussion.

####  III.2.2 Member Checking

After we synthesized our findings, created an outline of this manuscript, and
identified the quotes we intended to present below, we performed a basic
member checking process. L.D. emailed each interviewee whose quotes we had
selected, sending them our transcription of their quote and a brief
explanation of our interpretation of it. We asked them in our message if they
were comfortable with the quote being used anonymously in this paper, and if
the characterization of the quote was accurate. They were given the option to
respond via email or to schedule a Zoom call with L.D. In total, four
interviewees received such an email, and all four responded via email. One
agreed with no further feedback. The remaining three had requests to clean up
the language of their quote while preserving the original meaning, and one
also asked to clarify the meaning of our interpretation. After we responded to
each via email, the remaining three interviewees agreed with our use of their
quote and our interpretation of it. The final, agreed-upon language and
interpretation are the quotes presented in this manuscript.

##  IV Survey results

We present results from our survey responses across four main areas of
interest for lab instructional staff. We start by outlining the basic
characteristics of the people who teach and support instructional labs,
including their social identities and institutional contexts. We then turn to
characterizing the resources, defined broadly, available for their work. We
distinguish these resources into two categories, first describing more
concrete resources such as laboratory space and equipment, and second
describing less tangible resources such as informational resources and social
networks. Then we describe the responsibilities of instructional lab staff,
and conclude by presenting responses about the value of instructional labs.

###  IV.1 Characteristics of Lab Personnel

Table 1: The data set consists of 84 total survey respondents and 11 total interviewees. The entries in this table correspond to the percentage of respondents and number of interviewees that indicated the given characteristics in the survey. Per our data management plan, we do not show percentages less than 5% to preserve the anonymity of our survey takers.  Characteristic | Survey respondents | Interviewees
---|---|---
Gender |  |
Women | 26% | 3
Men | 68% | 8
Non-binary |  $<$5% | 0
Prefer not to answer |  $<$5% | 0
Education Level |  |
Some college or Associates |  $<5$% | 0
Bachelor’s | 12% | 2
Master’s | 17% | 1
Doctoral | 68% | 8
Race or ethnicity |  |
White | 94% | 11
Any other race |  |
and ethnicity |  $<$5% | 1
Role |  |
Faculty | 52% | 6
Staff | 48% | 5

The demographics of all respondents and interviewees are shown in Table 1. The
survey questions contained more options than are presented in the table, in
particular with respect to race or ethnicity, but we present aggregated
categories here in order to preserve anonymity. We note that an overwhelming
number of our survey respondents identify as white, and that even less
racial/ethnic diversity seems to exist in this population than in physics as a
discipline overall. With regards to gender, 26% of our survey respondents
identify as women, which is slightly higher than the proportion in physics
degree holders overall [45].

From the survey results, two primary university roles of our participants were
present: faculty and staff appointments. Using responses from the question
“What is your job title?” we were able to label those who said “Professor”,
“Lecturer”, and “Instructor” as faculty. All other job titles were designated
as staff roles, and included titles like “Laboratory Manager”, “Instructional
Technician”, “Director of Undergraduate Laboratories”, and “Lab Coordinator”.
In the 84 respondents, we classified 44 in faculty roles and 40 in staff
roles.

Table 2: Characteristics of the institutions with which our survey and interview respondents are associated, again given in percentage of survey takers and number of interviewees. All classifications were derived from the most recently available Carnegie database. MSI designations for campuses are HBCU: Historically Black Colleges and Universities, AANAPISI: Asian American, Native American, and Pacific Islander Serving Institutions, HSI: Hispanic Serving Institutions. One campus can have multiple designations.  Institution Characteristic | % Survey respondents | Interviewees
---|---|---
Highest degree granted |  |
Doctoral (R1) | 41 | 4
Doctoral (R2, D/PU) | 14 | 1
Master’s only | 12 | 6
Bachelor’s only | 25 | 0
MSI Designation |  |
HBCU | 5% | 0
AANAPISI | 11% | 1
HSI | 11% | 3
None | 71% | 9

The primary differences we observed in the data from those in staff and
faculty roles are in their stated responsibilities in the instructional labs
and the distribution of their respective highest education levels. However,
their perceptions of how instructional labs are valued were not different
based on their role.

Table 3: Duration of involvement in physics instructional labs by role, in numbers of survey respondents. Duration in Instructional Labs | Faculty | Staff
---|---|---
$<$1 yr | 0 | $2$
1 - 5 yr | 3 | $7$
5 - 10 yr | 13 | $9$
$>$ 10 yr | 28 | $20$

Perhaps unsurprisingly, all those in faculty roles are doctoral degree
holders. In the staff designation, we observe that 37.5% of the staff hold
doctoral degrees, 30% have master’s degrees, 25% have bachelor’s degrees, and
7.5% have some college or associate’s degrees. Faculty and staff present a
similar distribution of their tenure in instructional labs with both
populations. Many of the study participants indicate they have been working in
the discipline for more than ten years, as shown in Table 3. We asked
participants who they work with most outside of their institution. Though we
anticipated many of our respondents to be isolated, only 35% indicated “No
one” or “N/A” to this prompt.

These statistics present a snapshot of people, institutions, and job titles of
physics lab instructors and supporters. We present a more detailed description
of survey respondents’ responsibilities and job characteristics in Section
IV.3 below.

###  IV.2 Resources and equipment

Figure 1:  Percentage of institution types with access to the equipment types
along the horizontal axis.

In our own roles in the labs, we know that access to resources and equipment
can be a major factor in our success in the laboratory space. L.D. and S.M.
developed a list of commonly used equipment in the instructional labs. Figure
1 shows the availability of this equipment disaggregated by characteristics of
the institution from which the respondent comes. We note that nearly all
institutions have access to standard electronics and optics in their
instructional labs.

Off-the-shelf equipment, such as PASCO 111111https://www.pasco.com/
frictionless tracks, Vernier 121212https://www.vernier.com/ circuit boards,
and TeachSpin 131313https://www.teachspin.com/ experiments, seem to be
available to most of the respondents in this group. That is not to say that
they are ubiquitous, however, that this type of equipment likely plays a
crucial role in instructional labs.

In contrast, access to cryogens, microscopes, and research grade equipment is
lower across all institution types. Prefacing the findings below (from Figure
2) that most of the purchasing, repairing, and maintaining equipment falls to
those in staff roles, and from the interview responses in Section 6, that
instructional labs staff are “wearing many hats,” it is not surprising that
more complicated equipment and resources that require more maintenance are
rarer.

We also note that though we might naively assume ‘R1’ institutions to have
more resources across the board, we observe that for many categories,
including ‘Research grade equipment,’ ‘R2 and D/PU’, and ‘Master’s only’
institutions have a higher likelihood to have access to these resources. We
suggest that this is likely due to instructional labs pulling double-duty as
both an instructional space and a research one in these contexts.

With respect to human resources, a majority of our survey respondents indicate
that they interact with faculty, other staff, or student employees either
‘Daily’ or ‘Weekly’. More than half of our respondents indicate they are
connected to other instructional labs staff at different institutions. More
insight into the types of resources available to instructional lab staff
emerged from our interviews, as discussed below.

###  IV.3 Responsibilities and Job Characteristics

Figure 2:  Percent of faculty or staff respondents who selected each
responsibility along the horizontal axis.

We asked survey respondents to select any of the responsibilities in Figure 2
that require more than 20% of their work hours during the course of the year.
The responsibilities we anticipated labs staff and faculty to hold ranged from
“Repairing and maintaining equipment” to “Grading” and “Instructing students”
to “Designing new activities.” We additionally added an “another
responsibility not listed” option with text input. The only responsibility
written in more than once was “Safety officer,” which indicates that the list
of responsibilities given in the survey to be an overall robust description of
the tasks associated with instructional labs staffing roles.

We notice two distinct but related arenas of responsibility: logistics and
pedagogy. For staff respondents, a higher proportion of their primary
responsibilities fall into what we term “logistical” support for laboratories.
These responsibilities include “Repairing and maintaining equipment”,
“Maintaining laboratory spaces”, “Purchasing equipment”, “Setting up
laboratory equipment for use”, and “Managing lab staff”. In contrast, and as
we naively would expect, the pedagogical tasks of the lab are more often
primary responsibilities of faculty respondents. For example, nearly all
faculty respondents selected “Instructing students” as a primary
responsibility in their role. There is, however, significant overlap in the
two classes of job title, particularly in designing new laboratories and
writing the instructions for their use.

These responsibilities are closely tied to the organizational structure in
which lab instructors operate. We offer insights into these various
organizational structures through our interviews, as discussed in Section
V.2.1 below.

Figure 3:  Equivalent agreement statement based on the average score on the
value scale from Table 4. Figure 4:  Individual distributions on select items
from the value scale from Table 4. Across each row the y-axis has the same
scale for direct comparison (panels a and b have a max is 50, panels c and d
have a max is 25). a. “Instructional labs are valued”, b. “I wish I could do
more in the instructional labs.”, c. “I can hire adequate staff to run the
instructional labs.”, and d. “Instructional lab staff are adequately
compensated.”

###  IV.4 Perceived value of instructional labs

Table 4: Instructional labs value scale. All items were administered and answered in the survey. Items 7 and 9 are reverse coded in the analysis.  |  Item
---|---
1 |  Instructional labs are valued.
2 |  Instructional lab staff are adequately compensated.
3 |  I have agency to make choices about the instructional labs.
4 |  I can hire adequate staff (students and professionals) to run the instructional labs.
5 |  I have sufficient funding to provide high quality instructional labs.
6 |  I am satisfied with the instructional labs at my institution.
7R |  I wish I could do more in the instructional labs.
8 |  I enjoy my career in the instructional labs.
9R |  I would rather be working in another position at my university.
10 |  I am valued by the faculty in my department.

As part of the survey, we developed a 10-item scale to examine the perceived
value of instructional labs by those working in the field. The items we used
for this work are shown in Table 4. All respondents answered these items on a
5-point Likert scale from strongly disagree with the statement to strongly
agree with the statement. Responses to this scale were well behaved with a
Cronbach’s alpha of 0.828, which corresponds to a good internal consistency
between responses on items. Given that the scale was sufficiently well
behaved, we took an average score on all ten items for each respondent and
plotted them disaggregated by role in Figure 3. The distribution of the
faculty responses (blue) peaks at a score of 4, corresponding to a high
perceived value of instructional labs, with a relatively long tail. The staff
response distribution is flatter and peaks in the 3.5 bin. However, by both
ANOVA and Mann-Whitney testing there is no significant difference in the
distributions.

Certain individual items on this scale showed notable behavior, as
demonstrated in Figure 4. Though answers to the item “Instructional labs are
valued” indicate overwhelming agreement, responses were similarly high for the
item “I wish I could do more in the instructional labs.” This combined with
the middling responses to items regarding hiring and compensation (Figure 4c,
d) indicate that there is a desire in this community for more resources to do
the high quality work expected of them.

##  V Interview results and discussion

Our interview data set comprised transcripts with 11 interviewees. Information
about those interviewees and their institutions is shown in the rightmost
columns of Tables 1 and 2. We provide that information for context of our
interviewee sample population.

###  V.1 Deductive content analysis

Table 5: The codes that resulted from our initial content analysis of the interview transcripts. The bold headings denote the category of the codes below them. The rightmost column counts the number of interviews (out of 11 total interviews) that contained at least one excerpt to which the code was applied.  Code |  Description | Count
---|---|---
Job characteristics |  Discussions about… |
Organizational structure |  …the organizational structure of the labs or courses that the interviewee discussed. This code includes discussions about job responsibilities. | 10
Institutional hierarchy |  …how the interviewee’s job or role fits into their institution’s larger organizational structure of faculty, staff, and students. | 11
Career path |  …the interviewee’s previous professional roles and titles, especially those that led them to their current position. | 11
Value of instructional labs |  …how and to what extent instructional labs are valued. | 11
Value of personal effort |  …how and to what extent the interviewee’s work is valued. | 11
Resources |  Access to… |
Informational resources |  …lab guides, manuals, instructional videos, and other written or electronic materials and documentation. | 6
Education and formal training |  …formal degree programs, continuing education programs, or official professional development opportunities. This codes includes both current opportunities and previous experiences. | 9
Equipment/apparatus/ money/space |  …physical devices and equipment for use in instructional labs, money devoted to instructional labs, or teaching space devoted to instructional labs. | 11
Local faculty and staff workers |  …the expertise and support of faculty and staff colleagues at the interviewee’s current institution. | 11
Colleagues outside institution |  …the expertise and support of colleagues outside the interviewee’s current institution. | 7
Personal agency |  …freedom to make pedagogical or logistical decisions about instructional labs, or about the interviewee’s job structure. | 11
Personal knowledge and skill |  …particular skills, abilities, or expertise possessed by the interviewee. | 9
Student workers |  …students to help teach, prepare, grade, or otherwise support the job of the interviewee, or instructional labs in general. | 10

Our first pass of coding analysis resulted in a set of codes representing the
content of the interviews. Those codes are shown in Table 5, along with
accompanying descriptions and the number of interviewees who spoke about the
code at least once during their interview. These numbers show that all codes
were well represented in our interviews, suggesting that instructors had
substantial things to say concerning our research questions, and that the
overall topics of inquiry resonated with them.

The codes and counts under the “Resources” category broadly align with the
survey findings presented above (Section IV.2). This alignment suggests that
the resources discussed in the interviews are representative of our larger
survey respondent population. However, certain codes under the “Resources”
category had relatively fewer interview counts compared to the rest of the
codes, specifically “Informational resources” and “Colleagues outside
institution.” One might conclude that the lab instructors we interviewed
lacked access to written instructional materials, and that they had few
professional connections beyond the local level. On the contrary, we wish to
stress that the counts in Table 5 under “Resources” are not an indication of
whether interviewees had access to each resource, but rather how salient or
important that resource was to the topics in our interview protocol. We
suggest that these counts represent not the availability of resources, but
their relevance to lab instructors in their professional lives. It is
reasonable to assume that the things lab instructors chose to discuss are
foremost on their minds, and therefore most impactful to their work.

In particular, we note that the lack of “Colleagues outside institution”
counts aligns with the finding above (Section IV.2) that the majority of
survey respondents are connected to other instructional labs staff at
different institutions. However, there is a potential bias in our data set
towards individuals who are connected as such. We discuss this limitation
below (Section V.3).

###  V.2 Inductive thematic analysis

Our second pass of coding analysis focused on the excerpts of three codes from
the first pass: “Organizational structure,” “Personal agency,” and “Value of
instructional labs.” We discuss the emergent themes from each of those topics
in turn.

####  V.2.1 Organizational structure

Table 6: The codes that resulted from an inductive thematic analysis of the excerpts coded with Organizational structure. These codes are organized into two categories: one relating to the particular responsibilities of the interviewee’s job, and one relating to the overall characteristics of their job. Code |  Description
---|---
Job responsibilities |  Interviewee is responsible for…
Build and fix equipment |  …repairing apparatus, or building new apparatus.
Develop |  …conceiving, developing, and refining new lab activities or entire lab courses.
Safety officer |  …ensuring appropriate safety procedures are followed, or that students and colleagues are sufficiently educated on matters of lab safety.
Train / supervise |  …offering training sessions for, or ensuring accountability of, student workers or other lab staff
Job characteristics |  Interviewee describes their job as…
Low effort job |  …requiring relatively little effort.
On call |  …needing to be present and ready to respond to unexpected or in-the-moment events or requests.
Only one |  …being the the only person who works with instructional labs, or a certain type of instructional lab. This code includes descriptions of the difficulty to train people to help out the interviewee.
Permanent |  …expected or assumed to be available to them in perpetuity, unless they do something egregious. This code includes descriptions of tenure, both as an official policy and as an unofficial understanding.
Unofficial / unclear |  …not well defined or unclear, at least to some extent, or involving expectations that are vague or unwritten.

The themes that emerged under “Organizational structure” are represented by
the codes shown in Table 6. These themes clustered under two categories. We
found that interviewees described the structure of their courses and roles in
terms of both the particular job responsibilities they are responsible for,
and the overall characteristics of their work. Here we focus on two themes
that concern these overall characteristics, as (in our view) they illustrate
the qualities of lab instructor work that are atypical, or at least most
distinct from other roles in typical physics departments.

One theme is represented by the “Unofficial / unclear” code, illustrating that
the roles of lab instructors are often vague, undefined, or not well
specified. For example, a section of one of the interviews with a staff
interviewee was transcribed as,

> L.D.: What is your job description? In your own words?
> Interviewee: Okay, in my own words, I couldn’t do that. Because I don’t know
> that I have an official job description…it’s there somewhere, I’m sure. But
> I don’t know that I’ve looked at it or anything.
>

Immediately after this exchange, the interviewee continued to describe in
detail their actual job activities and what they are in charge of in practice.
This passage illustrates that while lab instructor positions usually have
official job descriptions, these descriptions are often disconnected from the
actual work of instructors and tend to lose relevant meaning “on the ground.”
We infer, and the interviewee later confirmed during member checking, that one
reason for this disconnect could be that lab instructor jobs require high
levels of technical skill. That qualification comes with agency (see Table 7
and discussion below), but also involves a fair amount of tasks that are
tedious or mundane, and could even be seen as drudgery. However, because of
the hierarchy in which these jobs exist and the technical skill required, such
tasks often cannot be delegated, and therefore remain stuck with the lab
instructor. As such responsibilities accumulate, the job becomes more and more
disconnected from its official job description.

This idea was further indicated in our survey results. In the open response
“other” option from Figure 2, several survey respondents wrote: “Not at 20%
level, but I do all of these.”

The other theme we highlight here is represented by the “Only one” code. This
code describes being the only person doing the particular work of the
interviewee. While far from ubiquitous in our data set, a subset of
interviewees spoke about the implications of being the only person at their
institution associated with instructional labs overall, or with certain labs
in particular. For example, at one point in the interview protocol
interviewees were prompted to discuss their prior response to the survey
question about their primary responsibilities, and one faculty interviewee
said,

> So I checked them all, and I have done [them all]. I do less of it now. But
> I did a lot of it out of, one, interest. And two, because I was the faculty
> member in charge of our advanced lab class for a while. And so there was
> basically no one else doing it, or was going to do it. And so I did it.

Because the interviewee was the only one, or one of a very few, interested in
physics instructional labs, they ended up doing a wide range of tasks and
serving many roles. As a general trend, we found that lab instructors tend to
“wear many hats” that require a range of overlapping skills and expertise.
This trend is also exemplified by the survey results presented above in Figure
1, which shows that lab instructors access and use a wide range of equipment
for their jobs. This wide range of equipment suggests that lab instructors are
expected to posses significant and broad range of technical expertise, not to
mention the additional non-technical skills necessary for their jobs. We
suggest that such a breadth of overlapping skills and expertise is distinctive
of lab instructor positions, representing a combination of proficiency that is
broader than many other roles in physics departments. This phenomenon is one
of several we observed that suggest that lab instructor roles tend to fill in
the gaps between more canonical roles in higher ed (e.g. pedagogy, technical
expertise, or logistics). In that way, we suggest that instructional lab staff
occupy a liminal space, in the sense of being in between the jobs of their
colleagues. Much work on liminality exists in anthropology, sociology, and
beyond, and we do not claim to fully embrace those connotations here.
Nonetheless, we suggest that elements of perpetual shifting and a sense of
ambiguity characterize the experiences of many lab instructors and support
staff.

####  V.2.2 Personal agency

Table 7: The codes that resulted from an inductive thematic analysis of the excerpts coded with Personal agency. Code |  Description
---|---
|  Interviewee has (or does not have) the agency to…
Fun |  …incorporate aspects of play or fun into their work, and to express those aspects freely.
Instructor vs supporter |  …act as the main person with responsibility in instructional labs. This code concerns how agency is shared between the interviewee and their colleagues.
Learning objectives |  …determine the learning objectives of the instructional labs that they teach.
Flexibility |  …determine their day-to-day schedule, how they spend their time at work, or how they structure their work on a practical or logistical level.

The themes that emerged under “Personal agency” are represented by the codes
shown in Table 7. These themes concern the ways in which interviewees feel a
sense of agency (or lack thereof) over their professional activities, which
range from the type of role they perform in the instructional lab to less
tangible aspects that give interviewees a sense of agency in their
professional lives. Here we focus on one particular theme that we feel is most
distinctive to lab instructor roles when it comes to personal agency:
“Instructor vs supporter.”

The “Instructor vs supporter” theme represents a dichotomy between two types
of roles that lab instructors perform. Interviewees discussed their jobs
falling at various locations on a spectrum between those two roles, and also
moving between them on a day-to-day or even moment-to-moment basis. For
example, a section of one of the interviews with a staff interviewee was
transcribed as,

> L.D.: How much control do you have in determining the learning goals of your
> labs?
> Interviewee: Ah, depends on the instructor. But most of them are pretty darn
> high. Like to 100% or so. Some courses where it’s just, “Here you go, can
> you do the lab thing.” And it’s all me, and that’s perfectly fine. Other
> professors, they want to take a more hands on approach, which I totally
> support, because they’re your students more than they’re mine. And so then
> they can decide how they want to run the labs.

This response illustrates how even a single lab instructor can find themselves
in either a lead or a supporting role depending on who they are working with
that term. It is notable that this interviewee was not describing the
inconsistency of their role in a negative light; they were both fine with
taking charge of the lab, while also supportive of their colleagues to decide
how the labs are run. Here again we see an example of lab instructors shifting
between different roles, tying in with the liminality thread discussed above.
Interviewees described how instructional lab personnel must be able to
navigate this in-between-ness in order to be effective in their jobs.

####  V.2.3 Value of instructional labs

Table 8: The codes that resulted from an inductive thematic analysis of the excerpts coded with Value of instructional labs. These codes are organized into two categories based on whether they describe labs being valued (Positive) or not valued (Negative). Code |  Description
---|---
Positive |  Instructional labs are valued because…
Awards and formal recognition |  …lab courses (or lab instruction more generally) have been formally recognized, for example by university awards or formal public commendation, or in tenure decisions and performance reviews.
Dedicated resources to support labs |  …they receive tangible resources from the department, institution, or individual colleagues. Such resources include funding, equipment, student support, protected time for the interviewee, and dedicated space for instructional labs.
Interest from colleagues |  …administrators or faculty show interest and support for instructional labs, for example by visiting the labs, talking them up, or participating in discussions about lab logistics or learning goals.
Job security / permanence |  …the position of the interviewee is secure, which affords them a level of respect to advocate and express themselves. This security also allows colleagues to rely on them for their expertise and service to the department.
Place in curriculum |  …they are worth significant course credit, are scheduled intentionally, or have explicit descriptions or requirements in the course catalog.
Student learning outcomes |  …students learn valuable things in instructional labs, especially when that learning is backed up by formal or anecdotal evidence, including from students themselves, that the process of learning in labs is worthwhile.
Negative |  Instructional labs are not valued because…
Insufficient / mismatched support |  …the interviewee is left to “pull up the slack” created by a lack of support for instructional labs, or support that is not aligned with what is needed. Lack of support can include insufficient or inappropriate space or too high student-to-instructor ratios. Misalignment can include finding extra work for the interviewee to do in order to justify their position.
Question labs’ value |  …colleagues, students, or the interviewee themself questions whether labs are worth the cost, or the stress, work, or time that labs demand of students.

The themes that emerged under “Value of instructional labs” are represented by
the codes shown in Table 8. They represent the things lab instructors
indicated as evidence that instructional labs were valued (or not valued).
While related to how instructors themselves were valued, these themes
specifically concern the value of instructional labs rather than the
interviewees themselves. We present these themes in two groups: “Positive”
themes describe ways that labs are valued, while “Negative” themes represent
ways that labs are not valued. Here we focus on one negative and three
positive themes to illustrate potentially interesting aspects in how
interviewees talked about the value of instructional labs.

One faculty interviewee spoke of how labs are valued by saying,

> So particularly before we started this curriculum rewrite, the labs were
> seen as something that we had to do for accreditation purposes, but nobody
> really cared about them. Before I arrived at [my institution] many courses
> used this very strange to me format where you know, lab was worth 100 points
> towards your grade. And as long as you got 70% or more, you got all 100
> points. So you just had to show up to the lab and kind of do it. And then
> you got all the points. To me that’s not valuing lab…When I came in, the
> course I taught, I said, we’re not doing that. I said, you’re getting a
> grade for lab, and that’s your grade. Because I valued labs…And anyway, so I
> feel like the labs are a little more valued than they used to be. There’s
> still this mix of some instructors [who] see it as something that they have
> to do and it doesn’t have much pedagogical value, others see it as more
> important.”

We identified two themes in this quote: “Place in curriculum” and “Question
labs’ value.” With respect to the “Place in curriculum” theme, this quote
describes an old and a new grading scheme as indicative of labs’ value. The
interviewee associates a separate and complete lab grade with labs being
valued, and a scheme that amounts to “complete/incomplete” with not valuing
labs. The way the interviewee’s lab is graded is tied to their lab’s
relationship to theory courses and the overall physics curriculum; by grading
labs as a separate entity, they are valued as a distinct aspect of learning on
par with other settings for physics instruction. Valuing labs for their
distinct learning potential parallels existing discourse in physics education
research on labs and their learning goals, mirroring claims that labs have
distinct learning goals from theory courses [1] and should be valued as such
[17].

The beginning and end of the quote highlights another theme in Table 8,
“Question lab’s value.” At the start of the quote, the interviewee implies
that they had agency to change the grading system because “nobody really cared
about” the labs when they arrived. Further reinforcing themes regarding
personal agency discussed above, this lab instructor found agency in their
professional context when they were left to make decisions by default.
However, the interviewee describes that, even after their grading changes,
some of their colleagues recognize labs’ pedagogical value, while others
dismiss labs as unimportant pedagogically. Such dismissal amounts to a tacit
questioning of labs’ pedagogical value, suggesting that grading schemes are
but one piece of valuing instructional labs.

We provide a final example of labs being valued, this time via “Student
learning outcomes” and “Interest from colleagues.” A faculty interviewee
stated,

> Companies come in and say, “Oh, we love your students,” and…“we need more
> students, because they can do this.”…One of my students, [name], he ended up
> getting a bunch of great jobs and ended up at [prestigious national lab],
> and then [that lab] said, “How’d you get so good?” He told them about us,
> and then they came and found us…We’re small enough and make enough noise,
> and it seems like all the administrators through the President [at my
> institution] knows about us and knows that we turn out students that get
> good jobs and do good things. I mean, the President comes by our labs.

This passage describes a specific, concrete example of student learning as
evidence of labs’ pedagogical value, and also points to administrators showing
support for labs because of that learning. Furthermore, the example
illustrates the value of labs in providing students with transferable skills
required to succeed in professional research, skills beyond what is learned in
the standard theory curriculum. Such an outcome is aligned with the larger
discourse of researchers and policymakers around laboratory learning, career
success, and workforce development [49, 50, 51, 52]. This interviewee is
keenly aware of that larger context, and as their quote illustrates, witnesses
its manifestation firsthand. More generally, this quote is evidence that
physics lab instructors are well positioned to act as powerful stakeholders in
efforts to not only value labs in educational systems, but also to maximize
that value through education reform and scholarship.

Overall, we heard from most lab instructor interviewees that their labs are
valued as a whole, confirming what we learned from the quantitative results in
Figure 4a. However, as these themes show, the evidence our interviewees point
to spans a wide range of aspects of professional life and laboratory learning.
Taken together, these results suggest that just as lab instructors often find
themselves in between roles and wearing many hats, so too are their labs
valued in a range of ways and contexts. In fact, while we focus on the
“Student learning outcomes” and “Place in curriculum” themes above, we wish to
highlight that these are the only two themes in Table 8 that deal explicitly
with pedagogy and student learning. The range of themes that emerged here
illustrates that the value of instructional labs covers a much broader scope
in the eyes of these lab instructors than, perhaps, the current scope of
physics education research on instructional labs. As such, we interpret that
instructional labs themselves can exist in a liminal space between (and
beyond) the current ontological systems of physics education research.

Additionally, the themes in Table 8 support and deepen the survey results
presented above in Section V.2.3 on the value of instructional labs. Our
survey results show that lab instructors feel that their labs are valued
overall, but their responses were mixed when asked about particular ways and
aspects that value manifests. In particular, the survey results show that when
framing value in terms of the systems and bureaucratic structures in which
labs exist (namely, hiring staff and compensation), the value of labs varied
from very high to very low. As in the interviews, when our scope of analysis
broadens from more traditional student learning outcomes, the picture of labs’
value becomes more complex. Taken together, we suggest that these constraints
in resources can obscure or override conversations about pedagogy and
learning.

###  V.3 Scope and Limitations

The primary limitation of this work stems from our methods of recruiting
survey and interview participants. Our recruitment approach relied on existing
national professional networks, namely AAPT and ALPhA. Therefore we likely
oversampled people who have the resources and investment to engage with these
communities, while neglecting those who do not. On a distinct but related
note, our response rates were low or nonexistent from important institutional
types, in particular two year colleges, community colleges, and certain types
of minority serving institutions. We also limited our scope to lab instructors
working in the US; we expect that our findings will not transfer directly to
professional contexts in other countries.

More generally, our sample population necessitates caveats and caution when
generalizing to lab instructors overall, and our results should not be
interpreted as representative of the overall population of physics lab
instructors. Rather, they represent a subset of that population that was
subject to selection bias. Nevertheless, our findings illustrate important
features of instructional lab professional contexts, and suggest some ways in
which lab instructors are a distinct stakeholder group in the space of physics
instructional labs. We claim that our results hold sufficient theoretical
generalizability to suggest areas of focus in supporting and valuing lab
instructors. We hope that this work guides further studies, in partnership
with physics lab instructors, that recognize them as key stakeholders in
instructional lab pedagogy.

##  VI Summary and Conclusion

Through surveys and interviews with individuals in physics departments across
the US, we have started to paint a picture of the professional contexts of
physics lab instructors. Our analysis characterizes the people, institutional
and organizational contexts, and resources involved in the jobs of physics lab
instructors and supporters. We have found successful lab instructors to be
competent in a wide variety of technical, pedagogical, and interpersonal ways,
as is required to succeed in a profession with wide ranging job descriptions
that are often unofficial, unclear, and malleable.

While these characteristics can give lab instructors significant levels of
personal agency, they also result in a sense of liminality or in-between-ness
for lab instructors. That sense is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, lab
instructors often prided themselves on the ability to wear many hats, and by
and large, their work and their instructional labs were valued in a variety of
ways. We suggest that it is this wide and overlapping scope of the physics lab
instructor profession that makes lab instructors a unique, complex, and
important population to study.

We also suggest, as an avenue for further study, that the in-between-ness of
lab instructor positions interacts with overall physics culture in complex
ways. One of the reasons lab instructor roles are so multifaceted and far-
ranging is that lab work itself is unpredictable, complex, and uncertain; put
simply, it is messy. Such messiness stands at odds with the notion of
physics’s objectivity as a pure science that brings order and symmetry to the
unwieldy complexity of nature. It is possible that the predominant whiteness
of physics lab instructors may afford many of us the privilege of championing
such messiness in the lab while simultaneously claiming the (false)
objectivity of physics’s culture of no culture. Still, there are calls within
laboratory education to make labs messier (in the sense of more authentic,
uncertain, open-ended, or exploratory), which in a sense begin to break down
the notion of physics’s perfect objectivity. Further research and further
pedagogical reforms are needed to explore what such pedagogical movements
could mean for lab instructors, and for physics culture more broadly.

In conclusion, by identifying what is needed to be successful in instructional
lab professions, and by understanding the constraints that lab instructors
operate within, the broader physics education community can better partner
with, support, diversify, and elevate this critical population. Such efforts
will in turn make experimental physics education better for students as well
as for lab instructors and supporters.

###### Acknowledgements.

We acknowledge the Advanced Laboratory Physics Association (ALPhA), and the
American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) Committee on Labs, for their
support in publicising and recruiting for this study. We also gratefully
acknowledge the students at WPI who assisted with database management in our
recruiting, in particular Alice Gaehring, Bella Lenoce, and Robert Gyurcsan.
Lastly, we wholeheartedly thank our survey respondents and our interviewees
for their time and willingness to share their experiences and perspectives.

##  Appendix A Survey items

For review, survey items are appended as a PDF.

##  Appendix B Interview protocol

Instructional Labs Staffing Project: Interview Protocol L Dana, B Pollard, S
Mueller

We will send them the consent form electronically beforehand, and ask them to
sign it electronically before the interview starts. That way, we can have Zoom
record the meeting from the start, and we won’t need to take time during the
interview to figure out electronic signatures.

We will also send them their answers to the survey as a PDF before the
interview so they can refer to it when it comes up during the interview.

###  B.1 Introduction

So my name is Dana, I am the Lab Manager at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in
Worcester, Massachusetts. In addition to that I am also a graduate student.

The purpose of this interview is to learn about the structure, environment,
and resources of the people that teach and run instructional physics labs.
These interviews will investigate and document the landscape of a critical
professional community in physics education. To that end, it’s really
important for me to hear your perspective on your career to this point, your
current job, and your place in your current institution. This is not an
evaluation of you, your course, your institution, or your students; rather,
I’m just exploring the various contexts that lab instructors find themselves
in. Do you have any questions for me about the purpose of the interview, the
consent form, or how your responses will be used?

This interview has four parts. First, I’ll ask you about your career path and
current position. Then we’ll talk about the professional relationships you
have in your work. Then I’ve got some questions about the resources you have
available in your job. Lastly, I’ll finish with a few questions on how your
work is valued in your institution. So if that sounds good to you, I’ll go
ahead and start by asking some questions about your career path and current
position.

###  B.2 Career path and org structure

  * •

In the survey, you wrote that your job title is $<>$. What is your job
description, in your own words?

  * •

What are the qualifications for your position?

  * •

What was your career path that brought you to this job?

  * •

Why did you apply for your position?

  * •

Is there a promotion path?

  * •

In the survey, you wrote that you have been in your job for $<>$. How
“permanent” is your position?

###  B.3 Relationships and identities

  * •

In the survey, you wrote that your boss is $<>$, and $<>$ report to you. You
also mentioned that you work with $<>$ in your department, $<>$ at your
institution, and $<>$ outside your institution. Did I get all that correct?

  * •

Of all of those relationships you talked about above, which are the most
meaningful/valuable/impactful?

  * •

In what way is your relationship with these other people meaningful?

  * •

How do your personal identities affect your interactions with these people? –
Specific followup if someone is struggling – Some examples of personal
identities might be gender, faculty vs staff, race, field, disability status
etc.

  * •

How much control do you have over your day-to-day schedule and how you spend
your time? Task driven vs schedule driven

###  B.4 Resources and agency

  * •

You indicated in the survey that you have access to this equipment: $<>$. Is
there anything to add to that list?

  * •

What is the funding situation available to you to buy/update equipment?

  * •

Do you think your lab is well funded? In need of more funding? Why do you
think that number was chosen?

  * •

What are some of the items you have to budget for or not buy in order to make
do? What is an item you would like to buy but could not due to budget issues?

  * •

Is there anything on your wish list you would have loved to buy but it’s not
in the budget

  * •

You indicated in the survey that $<$you do or do not interact with student
employees$>$. Did I get that right, and is there anything to add?

  * •

How many students do you hire in a typical semester?

  * •

What do you look for in a student employee.

For this section, I’ll be referring to “your labs,” so first I’d like to talk
a bit about what that phrase means for you.

  * •

Which lab courses or lab spaces do you consider “yours?”

  * •

What makes you feel that those courses are yours?

  * •

What is it about those courses that make them yours?

Next I have a series of questions about how much control or agency you have
over various aspects of your lab(s). As we go through, feel free to mention
other people who have control with or instead of you, and if the timescale
matters (for example, day-to-day versus semester-to-semester).

  * •

How much control do you have in determining the learning goals of your labs?
Course vs individual labs?

  * •

How much control do you have in determining the experiments, supplies, and
apparatus done in your labs, and how and where they are used?

  * •

How much control do you have over the lab guides and/or written documentation
that are used in your labs?

  * •

How much control do you have over the course structure, scheduling, grading,
and logistics of your labs?

  * •

How much control do you have in hiring students and/or support people for your
labs?

  * •

What do students think of working in your labs?

  * •

What is your management style in managing those students?

  * •

What do you think helped most in driving your vision for the lab reform?

###  B.5 Value from institution

  * •

You ranked $<>$ in the survey about how much instructional labs are valued (or
not) by the institution. Please describe a time when you felt that
instructional labs were (not) valued by your institution.

  * •

I’d now like to ask a similar question about you in particular. You ranked
$<>$ in the survey about how much you are valued (or not) by the institution.
Please describe a time when you felt that your work was (not) valued by your
institution. Or past institutions?

  * •

Is there a difference between upper admin and interdepartmental treatment?

###  B.6 Wrap-up

Thank you so much! Those were all the specific questions I had. Is there
anything else you’d like to tell me? Thank you very much for your help with
this project! My colleagues and I will be analyzing these interviews over the
next few months. We plan on writing up our findings for peer review, and
presenting them at the next ALPhA meeting. Before those are finalized, there
might be opportunities for you to review the trends that we find and provide
additional information. We will be in touch about that as things progress.

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