Interdisciplinary Affinity: Definitions and Connections to Physics Identity Tyler D. Scott * , Zahra Hazari † , Geoff Potvin ** , Philip M. Sadler ‡ and Gerhard Sonnert ‡ * Department of Engineering and Science Education, Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29634 † Department of Teaching and Learning, Department of Physics, STEM Transformation Institute, Florida International University, Miami, FL 33199 ** Department of Physics, STEM Transformation Institute, Florida International University, Miami, FL 33199 ‡ Science Education Department, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA 02138 Abstract. Though there has been much progress in research on interdisciplinarity over the last decades, two significant limitations still exist. First, there are inconsistent definitions of what interdisciplinarity is. Second, definitions are limited to performance elements. In a break from this prior work, and building on promising preliminary research, we seek to define interdisciplinary affinity, a measure of students’ self-reported interests and beliefs about interdisciplinarity. On the basis of hypothesized dimensions of interdisciplinarity, we draw on a large-scale national survey to build a useful measure of interdisciplinary affinity. Also, we investigate relationships between interdisciplinary affinity and physics identity, and particularly, the interest and recognition dimensions of physics identity. Keywords: Interdisciplinarity,Physics Identity PACS: 01.30.Cc, 01.40.Fk INTRODUCTION The last few decades have seen a call for interdisciplinary education to train students to tackle today’s interdisci- plinary problems [1, 2]. Some have also argued that inter- disciplinary education is simply more effective [3]. Both arguments also apply to physics. With the development of new interdisciplinary research areas and the need to engage a broader base of physics students, physics would benefit from interdisciplinary perspectives, both to in- crease the number of physics graduates and to improve learning in the classroom. However, research on interdisciplinarity is hindered by a diversity of definitions [4, 5, 6] and by a focus only on performance [e.g. 7, 8, 9, 10, 11]. One theme that seems to be generally accepted across the varying defi- nitions is that interdisciplinarity requires “integration" of information and perspectives from multiple disciplines [10, 8, 4]. The second problem is the customary focus on student performance because it misses the importance of students’ beliefs and interests. Understanding interdisci- plinarity in the affective domain is especially important when trying to understand students’ motivations and per- sistence. By studying interdisciplinary affinity, we can get at the heart of students’ interdisciplinarity. In this study, we define interdisciplinary affinity as students’ in- terest and desire to integrate information and perspec- tives from multiple disciplines as well as self-perceptions of their competence to do so. To connect interdisciplinary affinity to physics, we chose a physics identity framework. Based on work by Gee [12], Carlone and Johnson [13], and Hazari et al. [14], physics identity is viewed as a way of describing how a person relates to the field of physics. Potvin and Hazari [15] summarize developments in quantitatively measuring physics identity. Following these researchers, this study looks at physics identity composed of students’ interest in physics and their feelings of being recognized by others as a physics person. Because physics identity is a strong, significant predictor of physics career choice [14] we can use it to investigate how interdisciplinary affinity is connected to physics engagement. In previous work we found a significant association between characteristics of interdisciplinary affinity and physics identity [16]. This is evidently a special connec- tion because a link between interdisciplinary affinity and mathematics identity is weaker. These results raise in- triguing questions about the nature of interdisciplinary affinity and its connections to physics identity. Among the limitations of that previous work is that interdisciplinary affinity was defined by only two sur- vey questions and physics identity by four survey items. Also, that work did not investigate any more specific questions such as how interdisciplinary affinity is con- nected to the different dimensions of physics identity. This study is guided by two research questions: Q1. How can interdisciplinary affinity be quantitatively measured? edited by Engelhardt, Churukian, and Jones; Peer-reviewed, doi:10.1119/perc.2014.pr.055 Published by the American Association of Physics Teachers under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. Further distribution must maintain attribution to the article’s authors, title, proceedings citation, and DOI. 2014 PERC Proceedings, 235