Perceived Peer Recognition is Important for Physics Students Success

In a first-of-its-kind study, researchers from Drexel University’s College of Arts and Sciences and Cornell University examined and compared perceived and received peer recognition to help college level physics instructors address these perceptions in the class room and encourage students to achieve success. Prior research suggests that peer recognition – the extent to which students feel like their physics classmates view them as strong in physics – is an important factor in students' success in physics courses. While existing studies have examined gender discrepancies in peer recognition, how undergraduate physics students receive recognition from peers for being good at physics and how they perceive that recognition, the relationship between perceived and received peer recognition is not well understood.

Recently published in Nature Physics, the research team found that for men and women receiving the same amount of recognition from their peers as “strong in their physics class,” men reported higher perceptions of their recognition from peers than women.

The study is the first education research article to be published in Nature Physics, demonstrating the importance and acceptance of physics education research as a subfield within the broader physics community.

“Our findings hold important implications for physics instructors,” said Meagan Sundstrom, PhD, Cotswold Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in the College and co-author of the study. “Should instructors intervene on students' perceptions of their recognition or who is getting the recognition?”

Sundstrom and Natasha Holmes, co-author of the study and Ann S. Bowers associate professor of physics at Cornell, analyzed data from over 1,700 introductory physics students in the U.S. and found that women report lower perceptions of their recognition than men, even when men and women are receiving the same amount of peer recognition. Their findings suggest that intervening on perceived peer recognition will likely be more effective than intervening on received recognition.

For the study, physics instructors at eight different institutions in the U.S. gave their physics students an online survey. The survey asked students to list peers they felt were strong in the course material (received peer recognition) and to report the extent to which they felt like their peers viewed them as strong in physics (perceived peer recognition). The research team identified three possible relationships between received and perceived peer recognition based on prior research, and directly tested each relationship’s plausibility using their data. They compared the number of peers who recognized each student (the first question) to their perceived peer recognition (the second question), while also accounting for other demographic variables.

“The findings of our study are an important step toward the larger goal of all students succeeding in their undergraduate physics courses,” said Sundstrom.

Sundstrom added that they hope that the study provides an empirical basis for researchers and instructors to design and implement interventions related to the ways that students internalize the recognition they receive from their physics classmates for “being good at physics.”

Read the full study here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-025-02789-w.