Network analysis of student perceptions of an introductory lab

Abstract: Introductory physics labs can be modeled using the Communities of Practice framework, in which a group of members pursues a common set of goals by learning and implementing a set of agreed-upon practices. Studies of student preferences and behaviors show how students might perceive the introductory lab community differently, as they occupy different positions within the community and engage differently with its practices. Such differences can be particularly sharp along the dimensions of gender, college generation, and racial background. In this proof-of-concept study, we demonstrate how we can explore students' perceptions of the introductory lab community of practice using a drawing-based survey and network analysis. The drawing-based survey collects students' open expressions of their perspectives and guides them to elaborate on the goals, members, and practices of the community. Network analysis allows us to obtain an overview of the most important common elements from a sample of drawings while preserving the openness of student expression. We quantify ``importance'' as the frequency of an element's depiction across the network and its betweenness centrality within the network. We collected $N = 74$ student drawings from a studio-format introductory physics for life sciences sequence. Our network analysis reveals a wide diversity of drawing elements with a focus on centralized hands-on practices and community members and a sparsity of goals across the students' perspectives. We demonstrate how some elements show differences with large effect sizes between identity groups based on gender, college generation, and racial background. We compare these differences to those found in observational studies and discuss future uses of the drawing survey and network analysis approach.