  Students' beliefs about the extent to which meaningful others, including
their peers, recognize them as a strong science student are correlated with
their persistence in science courses and careers. Yet, prior work has found a
gender bias in peer recognition, in which student nominations of strong peers
disproportionately favor men over women, in some instructional contexts.
Researchers have hypothesized that such a gender bias diminishes over time, as
determined by students' academic year: studies have found a gender bias in
science courses aimed at first-year students, but not in science courses aimed
at beyond first-year students. This hypothesis that patterns of peer
recognition change over time, however, has yet to be tested with longitudinal
data--previous studies only examine snapshots of different students in
different science courses. In this study, we isolate the effect of time on peer
recognition by analyzing student nominations of strong peers across a
two-semester introductory physics course sequence, containing the same set of
students and the same instructor in both semesters, at a mostly-women
institution. Using a combination of social network analysis and qualitative
methods, we find that while many students receive similar levels of peer
recognition over time, the four most highly nominated students--the recognition
celebrities--exhibit some change between semesters even in this highly
controlled setting. Furthermore, we observe that these changes in the
celebrities track closely with changes in student outspokenness and that being
outspoken is likely more important for gaining recognition than earning a high
grade in the class. These findings lend support to prior work's hypothesis that
peer recognition changes over time, but also challenge the generalizability of
previous results (i.e., that patterns of recognition are related to students'
academic year).
