Surveying the State of Writing Education in Physics and Astronomy

TL;DR

This study addresses how physics and astronomy students in the United States learn to write, a crucial skill for research, funding, and public communication. It employs an online survey of 515 participants with P&A training at or beyond the upper-division level, analyzed via descriptive statistics and qualitative coding. Findings show general writing is mainly taught through humanities courses, while discipline-specific writing often arises from lab activities and mentor feedback, with substantial variability across institutions and mentors. The authors argue for structured, discipline-specific writing training integrated into undergraduate and graduate curricula, including authentic tasks, collaboration between writing and disciplinary experts, and accessible resources to reduce inequality and improve preparation for scientific careers.

Abstract

Writing is a critical skill for modern science, enabling collaboration, scientific discourse, public outreach, and more. Accordingly, it is important to consider how physicists and astronomers are trained to write. This study aims to understand the landscape of science writing education, specifically in physics and astronomy, in higher education in the United States. An online survey probing various aspects of their writing training in both undergraduate and graduate school was administered to 515 participants who have obtained training in physics and/or astronomy, or related fields, at the level equal to or beyond upper-division undergraduate study. Humanities and writing requirement courses appear to have a key role in general writing education, while laboratory courses and feedback from mentors are the dominant modes of science writing education in undergraduate and graduate school respectively. There is substantial variation in the quality of writing education in physics and astronomy, often dependent on the student's institution and/or mentor. Some participants also report that their success in disciplinary writing was a result of a solid foundation from K-12 education and/or self-direction towards resources; such reliance on past experiences and student background may contribute to inequality in the field. Many participants also stated a clear desire for more structured writing training to be available in the field. We provide suggestions for how to implement such training to meet the needs of the community identified in the survey.

Figures (4)

• Figure 1: Respondents were asked to report the primary way in which they learned how to write in their undergraduate education, both generally (i.e. in any discipline) and specifically focused on science and P&A. Humanities and writing requirement courses make up the strong majority of general undergraduate writing education, while science- and P&A-specific writing education are often tackled by laboratory courses or feedback from mentors.
• Figure 2: Respondents were asked to report the primary way in which they learned how to write about science (both generally, and specific to P&A) in their graduate education. A strong majority report their primary science writing training was via feedback from mentors, while 16% report training in some form of course and 16% report no training at all. Results are similar for general science and P&A-specific writing.
• Figure 3: Words related to feelings present in the responses to the question "If yes, how did this feedback make you feel?" about feedback from a mentor during graduate education. Words that appear more frequently in the responses are shown in larger font size. The top five words that appear are good (22 occurrences), grateful (13), frustrated (12), fine (10), and supported (10).
• Figure 4: A strong majority of respondents agree that writing is an important skill for physics and astronomy, and a smaller (but still strong) majority are confident in their writing skills.